Level 2 Plus

Lesson 6

Arranging Palettes

“Palettes” are structures in Elements that make editing images easier and more powerful.

Introduction

In this lesson, we will change the default palette configuration of Elements. We will remove some less useful palettes, reorganize the palettes on the screen, and replace some of them with palettes that we feel are more useful.

We have selected an image to work on. In this lesson we are not actually going to work on this image.

But this action allows us to enter the “Standard Edit Screen”.

From the “Icon Menu”, select:

[ Edit ]

[ Go to Standard Edit ]

Elements 3 contains “palettes”. These allow the user to easily accomplish editing functions.

In the “Default Setup”, the palettes are constrained to a “Palette Bin”. We don’t like this setup and don’t recommend it for you.

We also don’t like the specific palettes that serve as defaults.

This pane shows the default palettes all stacked up in the “Palette Bin”.

You can see what is open on your desktop.

This is done from the Main menu. Select:

[ Window ]

Everything that is open on your desktop has a check mark beside it

You can drag the “How To” palette out of the “Palette Bin” by grabbing the blue bar at the top.

To remove this palette from view, you should click on:

[ X ]

You can drag the “Styles & Effects” palette out of the “Palette Bin” by grabbing the blue bar at the top.

To remove this palette from view, you should click on:

[ X ]

You can drag the “Layers” palette out of the “Palette Bin” by grabbing the blue bar at the top.

Do not remove this palette from view.

Shorten the “Layers” palette by placing your mouse at the bottom of the palette and dragging your mouse up.

When the “Palette Bin” is active, the “Palette Bin Arrow” appears as shown.

[ Palette Bin Arrow ]

The screen will now appear as shown, without the “Palette Bin”.

Now we wish to select three new palettes for our desktop.

This is done from the Main menu. Select:

[ Window ]

Select:

[ Color Swatches ]

[ Info ]

[ Undo History ]

Our three new palettes have been deposited onto the desktop.

“Color Swatches”

“Info”

“Undo History”

As well as the one original palette that we kept:

“Layers”

Grab each palette by the blue border and drag it to the left side of the screen. There, they can be stacked ready for use.

With everything that we have done, your image may be partially buried under the new palettes.

If this has happened, follow these steps:

From the Main menu, select:

[ View ]

From the drop down menu, select:

Your image should now appear neatly beside your stack of palettes.

Summary

In this lesson, we changed the default palette configuration of Elements. We removed some less useful palettes, replaced them with more useful new palettes, and reorganized our palettes on the screen.