7 Basics

page two
The View menu contains two commands that you need to be particularly aware of. The ‘Show Extras’ item will turn on, or off, all the items that can be individually turned on or off via the Show submenu, shown open below. If you ever find a little number showing up in the extreme upper left corner of your open images, you can get rid of it by deselecting the Slices item from the Show menu.

     Sometimes, if you are trying to move a selection into a precise location, the ‘marching ants’ can get in the way. These can be turned off by deselecting Selection Edges from the Show menu.
     Make sure you turn Selection Edges back on, afterwards. Otherwise, you will have no visual indication of an active selection. So long as there is a selection active, edits cannot be made to any other part of your image, so you can imagine how puzzling it would be to forget that you have an active selection.
     Turning an item off in the Show menu does not affect its performance, it simply makes it not visible.
      If you’re in a hurry, you can turn off all the extras by deselecting Show Extras, or by pressing Ctrl-H. Press that key combination again later, to turn them back on.
     Note that items in the show menu are only available if they already exist in your document. Therefore, you must have annotations (made with the notes tool) or guides on your picture or those options will be grayed out in the menu.
     To make guides, turn on Rulers (View > Rulers) and then click on a ruler and drag onto your picture. A pale blue line will be dragged out of the ruler. Those lines do not print.
      Slices will always be available since every picture starts off as a single slice. If you click on the slice tool by mistake, slices are automatically turned on and that little number appears.

Older Tutorials
Quick Mask
Adjusting Contrast
Using Curves
Scanning Negatives
Rubberstamping
More Adjustments
Sharpening
Filters
Color

The other item in the View menu that is important to know about is Snap. If this is selected, selections, crop boundaries, and layers will jump to document edges, slice edges, guides, and grid lines whenever they get within a few pixels of them.
      This can be extremely annoying if you are trying to position an item near, but not against an edge, or if you are trying to crop a small amount off the edge of an image. Turn them all off by deselecting Snap, or turn off individual Snap To items by deselecting them from the Snap To submenu, shown below.

Last, the Window menu. Some basic menu items that you need to know are there.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2002 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com