This part of the guide is devoted to tuning of Photoshop interface and tools, i.e. things you are seeing while working. There are things you never use for CG purprose, but they are presented on the screen and take their amount of memory. Also, some features not very useful for work can be excluded.

Optimization of Photoshop Interface and Tools

1. Disable Photoshop Help

While working, you can use hotkeys very fast and mechanically, and it it easy to push wrong keys. But by some hotkeys very heavy features like Photoshop Help, that slows down or even stops your work, are called. Go to Edit->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts, expand "Help" menu item, find "Photoshop Help" command and delete the hotkey assigned to it. This prevents launch of Photoshop Help by accidentally pressing of F1. Anyway, you can acsess Help through "Help" menu. This point is similar to "Disabling Adobe Bridge" trick from the first part of the guide and can be applied to any Photoshop menu item you prefer not to launch.

2. Disable excessive rendering

By default, when you open a file in Photoshop and start to work with it, it renders not only on the canvas, but also in few places: Layers, Channels, Paths palettes, Histogram and Navigator. Navigator is useful tool, but other renders can be disabled without inconvenience in work. On the Layers palette, every mask or adjustment layer adds another dynamically changing picture. Go to Layers (Channels, Paths) palette -> Palette Options and set size of thumbnail as "none". Histogram doesn't render the picture, but shows in real time how the file changes, and every brush stroke forces Histogram to work, although you may not need this feature. For CG purprose, this palette can be just removed from the screen.

3. Disable Tool Tips

Tool Tips are useful, if you aren't much familiar with Photoshop tools, because they show names of tools and keyboard shortcuts assigned to them. But if you are well experienced in Photoshop, you don't need them. However, you always can turn them on if you are messed up.
Go to Edit->Preferences->Interface and uncheck the box "Show Tool Tips".

4. Using various Workspaces for various purproses

Photoshop has many palettes for various purproses. Every palette is a dynamic window that interact with work process and needs some memory. You don't need all of them on the screen, for example, for CG you never need "Animation" and "Paragraph" palettes, so why they must be loaded? "Workspaces" is Photoshop feature for organization of palettes you need for work. Put preferred palettes on the screen, set the place for each of them and click the "Workspace" button on the Option Panel right under Photoshop menu bar. Then select Save Workspace. In this way, you can save various sets - for painting, web design, retouching of photos, for work with type etc., and you will always see only palettes you need for work. This feature also allows to save your personal settings of Keyboard Shortcuts and Menus.

5. Using various Brush Sets

Often painting process requires use of many various brushes. Every brush is a picture that is loaded in memory when Photoshop starts, and is stored in memory no matter are you using it or not. So it is good idea, to choose your favorite brushes and make a set from them to disable loading of unnesessary brushes. Expand Brush Preset picker on the Option Panel, open side menu (small black triangle button) and select Preset Manager. Here you can organize and save your brushes as you wish. To save a new set, select preferred brushes by Alt+Left mouse click and select Save set. You can save various sets for painting, retouching, design and so on, and load only brushes you need instead of loading all of them at once.
[!] Saving and keeping your sets of tools on the hard drive save a lot of time.

6. Using Tools Presets instead of various brushes

Some brush sets contain brushes like "Brush Tool Hard Round 200px, Brush Tool Hard Round 19px, Brush Tool Soft Round 50px, Brush Tool Hard Flat 20px". They are just copies of one brush and are identhical by their settings except size and softness. It was made for new users to don't complicate their meeting with Photoshop tools, but for advanced use there is more smart solution that prevents Photoshop from loading of many identhical brushes by using of Tools Presets to tune and load just one brush. The same brush can be variated by its hardness, roundness, flow etc., and in this way you can win some speed by loading one brush instead of ten. Tune your brush accordingly to your wishes, then expand Brush Preset picker on the Option Panel, open side menu and select New Brush Preset. Then you can remove unnesessary brushes from your brush list.

7. Setting simple brush cursor

Photoshop allows user to choose various brush cursor types. While painting, brush cursor moves very fast and needs time for rendering. The more simple the cursor is, the less time for its rendering is needed.
Go to Edit->Preferences->Cursors and select "Standard" cursor. It is the fastest choice, because this cursor type is the same for all your brushes and doesn't need to be reloaded when you change the brush.
You can also try to work with "Normal Brush Tip" cursor. It shows you the form of brush, but without its fine details as it would be in case of choosing "Full Size Brush Tip".

Part I • Part III
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