Photoshop Lightroom Bridge

Hello everyone, it is Thursday already! The time flies

Quite often I get asked this question from people on my Photoshop courses:

” I have just installed a new version of Photoshop (CS5 or CS4) and I still have CS3 installed. I don’t need both versions. Shall I remove CS3? Is it safe to uninstall it?”

Yes, you can uninstall previous versions of Photoshop, the new version is not dependent on the old version. You can safely uninstall it. You  may want to deactivate it before you uninstall so you could install it again if you need it later on.

If you use an old computer, try CS5 or CS4 out first and see if you are happy with it. It may not run that well on the old hardware, it is being optimized for new hardware in computers.

To De-activate it, go to Help -> Deactivate…  in Photoshop.

Just to confirm once again, multiple versions of Adobe software can co-exist without any issues. This means that you do not need to uninstall CS3 (CS4) if you want to install CS5.

I hope it helps

Have a great day!

If you have a 64 bit system, you can have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Photoshop installed (installing 64-bit version requires 64-bit operating system, f.ex. Windows Vista or 7). You can also install just one of them.

If you install them seperately (some people do it) , Windows will pick up the latest version to default the file association. What it means is that if you try to open Psd file from your Windows Explorer, it will launch the default (read: latest) version of Photoshop (either 32-bit or 64-bit). This brings some troubles – what if you want to open all the files in 64-bit but the latest one you installed is the 32-bit version? When you double-click on Psd files, they will automatically open in 32-bit version.

Here is the trick to change it (this will require changing the Windows Registry but it will be easy):

Open the Windows Registry by running regedit.exe (press Win key + R key to launch Open window)

When you type in regedit.exe and press Enter, Windows Registry will open.

Navigate to  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\Photoshop.exe\shell\edit:

Change the path to the version of Photoshop.exe you want to use (32 or 64 bit), and that one will be the new default whenever “Photoshop” is chosen as a file association.

And that’s it! I hope you enjoy that and remember – Be careful!  :-)

Hello everyone! Happy day to you!

One of the first things you should do before you start working with Photoshop is to set up Colour Settings. To do that, you can follow me using any Photoshop version (the same settings apply).

One of the reasons why we do it is because the printed images and the images used on the Internet are limited on the range of colours they can display. You also need to set the proper Colour Spaces depending how you are going to use the images.

To access Colour Settings, go to Edit -> Color Settings in Photoshop menu as on the screenshot below:

The default settings look like on a screenshot below (North America General Purpose as Adobe is an American software).

However, if you live in Europe you will need to change that. Here is the list of available options:

RGB will mostly depend on how you use the images:
- if you put images online, you would set it to sRGB – default colour space for computer screens
- if you print images, it depends where you print them. You will need to contact your printer to find out what colour space they use. They may use sRGB (most high street photo labs use them) or Adobe RGB (semi-professional and professional labs).

For CMYK, if you live in Europe, the default used by all printers would be Coated FOGRA 39.

Down under Color Management Policies, I set all the options to: Convert to…

I also select options:
- Ask when opening
- Ask when Pasting
- Ask when Opening

below so I get prompted what I want to do if the image I am trying to open or paste into the design uses a different Colour Space. Then I can decide how to treat the image (the dafault option from Color Settings dialog box will be selected).

When you are finished you can press OK to accept all the settings or you can also save them on the hardrive by clicking on: Save…

And we are done!

Have a wonderful day and… till tomorrow!