Palettes

If you've ever used an Adobe application before, you know what a palette is. Certain functions and tools are always at your disposal, and these "float" on top of your document and are called floating palettes. Palettes can be shown or hidden, and some palettes can expand or contract to show more or less information.

As you'll quickly find out, there are a lot of palettes in each application, and your entire screen can quickly get filled with palettes, leaving you with little or no space to view or work with your document. But don't worrythere are plenty of ways to adjust palettes so that you can best take advantage of them.

Palettes share many similarities. The part where the name of the palette appears is called the palette tab. On the upper-right corner of the palette is a little triangle inside a circle. Clicking on it opens the palette menu (see Figure 4.2), where you can choose from several additional options or functions. At the bottom of a palette is usually a row of palette buttons that provide more functionality as well.

Figure 4.2. The Appearance palette in Adobe Illustrator CS2.

You can move palettes around by grabbing their title bar, and you can resize some of them by grabbing the lower-right corner. You'll notice that palettes "snap" to each other and to the edges of your screen.

Showing/Hiding Palettes

The simplest way of working with palettes is showing and hiding them. You'll find all the palettes listed in the Window menu for any of the suite applications. A check mark next to an item means that the palette is open, or showing (see Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3. A check mark indicates that the palette is already open on your screen.

Double-clicking on a palette's tab collapses the palette so that it takes up less space (see Figure 4.4). Whenever you need the palette again, double-clicking on the tab reveals the contents of the palette.

Figure 4.4. A collapsed palette.

Notice that some palettes have little arrows in front of the name in the tab (see Figure 4.5). Those arrows indicate that the palette has multiple states or ways it can be displayed, each showing fewer or more options. Clicking once on the arrows changes the state of the palette. Clicking repeatedly on the arrows cycles through all the states of the palette (see Figure 4.6).

Figure 4.5. You know that a palette has multiple states when you see the up and down arrows in the palette tab.

Figure 4.6. The three states of the Color palette in Illustrator.

Did you Know?

Press the Tab key to quickly clear your entire screen of palettes. Press Tab again to restore your palettes onscreen. If you press Shift+Tab, all of your palettes become hidden except for your toolbox (which we cover in detail later in this chapter).

Clustering and Docking Palettes

Palettes can be manipulated, giving you even more control over how they display (and take up space) on your screen. We discussed before how clicking on and dragging the title bar of the palette lets you move it around your screen, but if you grab your palette by the palette tab instead, you'll notice that when you drag it around, you'll get an outlined "ghost" of your palette (see Figure 4.7).

Figure 4.7. Dragging a palette from the palette tab gives you a ghost outline.

You can drag this ghost outline into another palette to create a cluster of palettes. Notice that as you drag the ghost into another open palette, that palette gets a thick black outline around it (see Figure 4.8). In a cluster of palettes, clicking once on the palette tab brings that palette into focus. For example, if you have the Stroke, Gradient, and Transparency palettes in the same cluster, clicking on the Transparency palette tab brings that palette to the front (see Figure 4.9). Of course, you can still access the different states of each palette, as mentioned earlier. The benefit of creating a cluster of palettes is that you can have multiple palettes on your screen, but have them take up the screen space of just one palette.

Figure 4.8. The black outline indicates that you're about to create a palette cluster.

Figure 4.9. The Stroke, Gradient, and Transparency palettes clustered in Illustrator CS2, with the Transparency palette in front.

If you drag the ghost outline of a palette to the very bottom of another palette, you'll notice that only the bottom of the receiving palette gets a black outline (see Figure 4.10). This indicates that you'll be docking the palettes instead of clustering them. Docking a palette attaches it to another so that the two act as one palette (see Figure 4.11). Double-clicking on the palette tab of the upper palette collapses all the docked palettes in one fell swoop. Some palettes enable you to use the keyboard to navigate through them. The Color palette is one such palette in which you can enter CMYK values and tab between them. When you have palettes docked to each other, you can also tab between the palettes. So if you had the Stroke palette docked to your Color palette, you could tab through the CMYK values and then press Tab again to edit the Stroke weight value.

Figure 4.10. A black line at the bottom of the palette indicates that you're about to dock the palette.

Figure 4.11. The Color palette and the Stroke palette in Illustrator CS2, docked.

Stashing Palettes

Sure, collapsing, clustering, and docking all of your palettes can be fun and even helpful in making room on your screen, but Adobe is always known for making even cooler featuresand you won't be disappointed with this one. It's called Palette Stashing, and it's currently available only in InDesign and GoLive. (Hopefully, Adobe will be adding this functionality to Photoshop and Illustrator in future releases.)

Here's how this feature works. Grab a palette by its tab and drag it to the left or right side of your screen. When you get to the edge of your screen, you'll notice that the tab switches to a vertical orientation (see Figure 4.12). When you let go of the mouse, the palette is now "stashed" along the side of your screen. Click once on the palette tab, and the palette slides open, revealing its contents. Click on the tab again, and the palette slides back to its stashed position (see Figure 4.13). It's a totally cool way to free up some valuable space on your screen while keeping the palette close at hand. Of course, you can stash palettes that have been clustered together, too.

Figure 4.12. The vertical outline indicates that you're about to stash your palette.

Figure 4.13. The Pages palette in InDesign CS2, in both an open and a stashed state.

I know that you're having way too much fun right now stashing and unstashing your palettes (I'll admit that it can be quite addictive), but I want to direct your attention to a feature that takes everything you've learned about palettes so far and brings it to the next level: Custom Workspaces.

Custom Workspaces

No doubt by now you're overwhelmed with the plethora of palettes in any one of Adobe's applications. Besides having to understand what each of those palettes is for, you can already tell that your screen is going to be a mess of palettes. Many people spend precious time moving their cursor around the screen looking for a palette they have hidden somewhere under three other palettes. And when you're actually working on your document, all those palettes get in the way, so you're always moving them around (see Figure 4.14). Life would be so much easier if there was just a way to control or manage all of these palettes.

Figure 4.14. "Palettes Gone Wild"a daily occurrence on my computer.

Luckily, there's a feature in the suite called Custom Workspaces that enables you to save the position of all your palettes and reset your screen to that setting at any time. In fact, you can keep multiple workspaces so that you can easily switch among them.

Using this feature is really quite simple. Start by opening the palettes you want, and then position them to your liking on the screen. Cluster them, dock them, stash themall to your heart's content. When you have everything perfectly positioned and set up, choose Window, Workspace, Save Workspace (see Figure 4.15), and give your new workspace a name. You can create as many workspaces as you like by repeating the process.

Figure 4.15. Saving a workspace in Photoshop CS2.

Whenever you want to switch workspaces, all you have to do is choose one from the Window, Workspace submenu, and, like magic, your screen will adjust to the new palette configuration. Just in case you go crazy and define totally wacky workspaces, the kind and thoughtful people at Adobe included a default workspace allowing you to quickly get back to normalcy (see Figure 4.16).

Figure 4.16. Choosing the default workspace.

By the Way

If you're using two monitors, this feature can be extremely helpful in arranging different palette layouts for different tasks. And if you're using a laptop that is sometimes connected to a desktop monitor, Custom Workspaces enables you to easily arrange your palettes for optimal use when you're just on the laptop or attached to the monitor.