Managing Panels In Photoshop CS6

Before we begin our look at the panels, let’s first make sure we’re both seeing the same panels, and in the same locations, on our screen. To do that, we just need to make sure we’re both using Photoshop’s default workspace. We’ll coverworkspaces in another tutorial, but basically, a workspace is a way for Photoshop to remember which panels should be displayed on the screen and where they should be located. Photoshop ships with several built-in workspaces that we can choose from, and we can even make our own. For now, if you look in the top right corner of Photoshop’s interface, you’ll find the workspace selection box. It doesn’t actually say Workspace anywhere, but by default it should be set to Essentials. If it’s not set to Essentials, click on the box and choose the Essentials workspace from the top of the list that appears:
Then, let’s reset the Essentials workspace itself so that all of the panels are placed back in their default locations. There’s a good chance they already are unless you’ve been moving things around on your own, but just to make sure, click on the word Essentials in the selection box and then choose Reset Essentials from down near the bottom of the menu:

The Panel Columns

Now that we’ve made sure we’re both seeing the same panels, let’s learn how to manage and organize them. Photoshop’s panels are located in columns over on the right side of the screen. By default, there’s two panel columns – a main column on the right and a secondary, narrow column beside it on the left (both highlighted in the screenshot below):


Let’s take a closer look for a moment at the main column of panels. By default, Photoshop opens three panels for us – theColor panel at the top of the column, the Adjustments panel in the middle and the Layers panel at the bottom. How do we know that we’re looking specifically at the Color, Adjustments and Layers panels? We know because each panel has its name displayed in a tab at the top of the panel:

Panel Groups

You’ve probably noticed that even though there are only three panels open, there’s actually more than three panels listed in the main column. We can clearly see other tabs with different panel names listed as well. For example, the Color panel at the top has a Swatches tab to the right of it. The Adjustments panel has a Styles tab to its right, and the Layers panel actually has two other tabs – Channels and Paths – beside it. What’s up with that? Well, with so many panels to work with in Photoshop, Adobe had to come up with a way to prevent them from cluttering up the entire screen. The solution was to group, or "nest", two or more panels together into panel groups. This way, multiple panels can fit into the space of a single panel!

How does it work? Let’s look again at one of the panels currently open for us – the Color panel. We know it’s the Color panel because it says "Color" in the tab at the top. Yet beside it is another tab that says "Swatches". This additional tab is for another panel that’s grouped in with the Color panel but is currently hiding behind it. Only one panel at a time can be active in a group, and we can tell which panel is active because the other panels have their name dimmed. To switch between panels in a group, all we need to do is click on their tabs. Here, I’ve started with the Color panel open in the group, but by clicking on the Swatches tab, the Swatches panel moves to the front of the group and becomes active. The Color panel moves to the background, but I can easily switch back to the Color panel at any time by clicking on its tab:

Changing The Order Of Panels In A Group

Notice that the Adjustments panel is listed first in the group and the Styles panel is listed second. There’s no particular reason why the Adjustments panel appears first, and in fact it’s easy to change the order of the panels. All we need to do is click on a panel’s tab at the top of the group, and then with the mouse button still held down, drag the tab left or right. Here, I’ve clicked on the Adjustments tab to select it, and without lifting my mouse button, I’m dragging the panel towards the right to move it to the other side of the Styles tab:


This time, to close the whole group at once, choose Close Tab Group from the menu that appears: