TMO Quick Tip - Photoshop CS3: Fly-out Palettes

by , 7:30 AM EDT, March 28th, 2007

Photoshop is always a good indicator of what to expect from the interfaces in all of the Creative Suite applications, and Photoshop CS3 is no exception. One of the features I've come to cherish in Photoshop CS3, and now the other CS3 apps, are dockable fly-out palettes.

Screen real estate can be hard to come by, especially on a PowerBook, MacBook, or MacBook Pro, and Adobe's applications gobble it up quickly with loads of palettes. The Creative Suite 3 applications, however, are a little easer on your workspace since you can dock all of your palettes to the side of your Desktop, and fly-out individual palettes as you need them.

InDesign's docked palettes...

All Palettes now include a docking button in the upper right corner. Clicking it docks your palettes to the edge of your Desktop. Clicking on an individual palette's icon will fly it out when you need it. Clicking the palette's icon or docking button again drops it back in place with the rest of your docked palettes.

...work just like Photoshop's.

True, earlier versions of the Creative Suite applications included a form of dockable palettes, but CS3 refines the concept and turns it into a truly slick feature that works across all the products.

Jeff Gamet is TMO's Morning Editor and Reviews Editor. He lectures, teaches and speaks on Mac OS X and design-related topics, and is the author of The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X from Peachpit Press.

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