Talking Back to Dialog Boxes

Photoshop reacts immediately to some menu commands. But for other commands, the program requires you to spell out your exact needs before it processes your request. If you see an ellipsis (three dots, like so . . .) next to a command name, that’s your clue that you’re about to see a dialog box.

Figure 2-5 shows a sample dialog box. As the figure demonstrates, a dialog box can contain any or all of six basic kinds of options. The options work as follows:

Figure 2-5: The anatomy of a dialog box.

• Use a text box to enter text or numbers. Double-click in a text box to highlight its contents, and then replace the contents by entering new stuff using the keyboard.

• Slider bars are used to increase or decrease a numerical value in text boxes.

• Radio buttons let you select only one option from a group. The selected radio button is filled with a black dot; unselected radio buttons are hollow.

• Although you can select only one radio button at a time, usually you can select as many check boxes as you want. To select a check box, click in the box or on the option name that follows it. A check mark fills the box to show that it’s selected. Removing a check mark (by clicking again) turns off the option.

• Some multiple-choice options appear as drop-down list boxes.

  Remember

  On the Mac drop-down list boxes are called pop-up menus. For the sake of simplicity in this book, we call this feature a drop-down list box.

  Click the small down arrow to display a list of options and then click the desired item. As with radio buttons, you can select only one option at a time from a drop-down list box.

  Tip

  If you change your mind about settings you made in a dialog box, you can quickly revert to the default settings by pressing and holding the Alt key (Option key on a Mac). The Cancel button magically changes to a Reset button. Click the Reset button to return to the original default settings.