Whenever I see photographs of PE2 it always seems to have a gray work area. I don’t mean the canvas to a photograph but the background to the work area itself … for example Page 9 in Mikkel Aaland’s book PE2 Solutions. My work area background is just my own desk top … which is full of all sorts of distractions. I am well used to my set up by now and tend to use the file browser to fill in the gap but am I missing something or is the gray work area just to make the book illustrations looks clearer.
When you see the gray background to the desktop, you’re looking at a screenshot taken from a Windows machine. I keep the background of my Mac a gray and make sure I don’t have a bunch of folders and junk laying out all over the desktop.
Should be the same with a Mac, but if you maximise Elements, then you can’t see the desktop. The normal background of Elements with no images open is grey. Thats how I work anrhow.
Paul, that’s one of the big differences between mac and windows.All mac applications that are written to Apple’s standards allow the program to float over the finder desktop. You can have,say, a word document open on your desktop and a PE document also and switch between them by clicking on the one you want to work on right now.
Wendy, you can make your desktop neutral gray by going to system prefs>desktops>solid colors and picking the one you want, but of course that won’t get rid of the clutter.
You can also go to system prefs>general>appearance and choose graphite to eliminate most other system color, except folder color. But buttons,bars and such will also be gray if you pick that one.
Pardon my interruption, but I have a request. I just purchased this Elements 2.0 software, and proceeded to request the training CD, and was informed (had I but read the flyer!!) that the offer expired on Feb. 28, ’03. Anyone willing to share their cd, or know where I might get a copy? thanks, awc
Got the CD – ain’t worth it. Read this newsgroup – will give you waaaaaaaaaaaay more information and help than that disk ever did.
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Pardon my interruption, but I have a request. I just purchased this
Elements 2.0 software, and proceeded to request the training CD, and was informed (had I but read the flyer!!) that the offer expired on Feb. 28, ’03. Anyone willing to share their cd, or know where I might get a copy? thanks, awc
Wow. I’ve heard some interesting reasons for having to leave this scintillating forum, but a cat fight in the garage is a new one! 🙂
I never got the CD, andrew, but the posts about it from people who did indicate you aren’t missing much. This forum is a good source of information, and there are also a lot of free tutorials on the internet.
Andrew I have the CD but I found out more by checking on the messages here, reading a few books and trying out various tutorials. As Beth says there are some fantastic free tutorials around and when you get stuck … just ask here!!.
Barbara thanks for the information but by now I think have got used to using Elements as it is and I’m not sure that I would fancy a gray desktop so I guess I will stick with the Mac blue. I think that Macs are totally wonderful … 🙂 🙂
I’m not really sure that I would really like a "back" to my workspace, the floating set up makes it so easy to flit back and forth when you are trying out a tutorial.
Now all we need to know is what happened in the Cat fight 🙂
The tutorials in Help are really quite good. I’ve also learned a great deal from tutorials on the web, this forum and The Challenge.
Side note: I discovered just a couple of weeks ago, duh…after having Elements for several months…that there is a folder (called Stock Art) full of images (over 100) on the install CD. What a find! I copied the whole folder to my hard drive to make it easier to access. They provide lots of opportunity for playing and learning Elements. Who put those there and why didn’t someone tell me? LOL I don’t recall any reference to this in the tutorials or in the manual, although I have skipped around a lot. I discovered it when working through a lesson in the book, "Create! The No nonsense Guide to Photoshop Elements."
With my Mac, I just keep what I am working on with PSE or whatever program, on top, and a page in Netscape, or whatever else below. Just switch the windows back and forth, and there won’t be any ‘background’ to get in your way. You can stack pictures and use ‘windowshade’ when comparing them, its like swimming or riding a bike, you can’t explain it, you just do it.
This is so easy on a Mac that I can’t even figure how to explain it. Barbara explained it much better than I. Whatever you click on to bring it to the top, will bring that particular program active. And you can have many, many running. It is all sort of transparent. It is even easier on OS X, and I am still on 9.2.2.
The clutter is another problem altogether,,,,,, Jane
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