7. Assign an Opener Application to a File  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 1 Install an Application from Disc or Download 2 Find, Launch, and Quit an Application
Navigating to the Applications folder and picking an icon from the Dock aren't the only ways to launch applications. Perhaps even more useful is the fact that you can automatically launch an application simply by double-clicking a document created by that application. Mac OS X allows you to assign a certain opener application to any individual document, or to all documents of a given type. This is the application that will launch when you double-click the document, opening the file so you can work with it.  KEY TERM Opener application The application you set a document to open with. When you double-click the document, this is the application that will launch to open the document.
| 1. | Find the Document You Want Open the Finder and navigate to a document to which you want to assign an opener application. For instance, if you want to open a JPEG image file in Adobe Photoshop, first use the Finder to locate the JPEG file in question. Select the JPEG by clicking it. TIP If you want, you can select the opener application for a given document on a one-time basis. In the Finder, Control +click (or right-click) the document; from the contextual menu that pops up, select Open With . All the installed applications capable of opening the selected document appear in the resulting list. Select the application you want to open the selected file in, and the application will launch. | | 2. | Get Info Select Get Info from the File menu or from the Finder's Action menu. Alternatively, press  , or Control +click or right-click the file and select Get Info from the contextual menu that appears. 7. Assign an Opener Application to a File  | | 3. | Open the Open With Pane
In the Info panel, click the gray triangle next to the Open with heading. All the applications capable of opening documents of the same type as the selected document (in this case, a JPEG image) are listed in the drop-down menu.
| | 4. | Select an Opener Application
Select the application you want the document to open in. The document is immediately associated with the application you choose, and you can close the Info panel. You will know that the document's application has been changed because its icon will now reflect the new application. In the example shown, the Yosemite picture file was originally associated with the Mac OS X Preview application; now it is associated with Adobe Photoshop .
| | 5. | Apply to All Such Documents
If you want to open all JPEG images in Photoshop, click the Change All button. Be careful with this optionif you have previously set up a lot of different JPEG images to open in different applications, that information will be overridden and lost when you click Change All .
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