Once you've changed the screen mode to hide background elements you can focus on tailoring the Photoshop workspace to suit your requirements. When you open Photoshop it displays the default interface layout - this clutters your work area with a variety of floating palettes. By default the palettes are stacked in a column at the right-hand side of the screen.

Photoshop groups related palettes together; the Navigator palette is grouped with the Info palette and the Color, Swatches and Styles palettes form another group. A third group consists of the History, Actions and Tool Presets palettes and the final group holds the Layers, Channels and Paths palettes. You can move palette groups around the screen by dragging them.

You can grab any palette by its tab and drag it away from its default group; this enables you to single out the palettes that will be useful for a particular project. You can hide unwanted palette groups by clicking on the left-hand button at the top of each group, which becomes red when you hover over it.

If the default palette grouping doesn't suit, then do it your way! You can pick and mix to create new groups that contain the palettes most useful to you. Simply drag a palette from one group and place it next to palettes in another group. This is called ‘docking'. You can also dock palettes in the palette well at the top of the

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