Now that you're going to be working in Photoshop, you might want to start talking like a designer. Designers, like professionals in most specialist fields, have their own terminology and words for things. A comp (short for "composite") refers to a mockup of the final solution that a designer has in mind.

Traditionally, "comp" is used in the print world to refer to page layouts, but for web designers it usually refers to a static interface prepared entirely in Photoshop for the client to look over before he or she decides to proceed. You might even hear it being used as a verb: "comping" is the process of creating that mockup site.

Photoshop's "out of the box" workspace consists of the following components:

Menu bar:

You will probably already be familiar with the menu bar from other programs. This runs across the top of your Photoshop window, and contains various menu options for Photoshop's tools.

Options bar:

The options bar sits beneath the menu bar and holds contextualized options for different tools. It also contains the palette well, where you can "dock" palettes.

Toolbox:

By default, the toolbox sits to the left of your Photoshop window, and contains shortcuts to Photoshop tools.

Palettes:

Individual "panes" that hold information or options for working with your file, known as palettes, float on the right-hand side. Each palette is labeled with a tab, and can be minimized, closed, grouped with other palettes, or dragged to the palette well. In the example at the top of the next page, the Navigator palette contains a thumbnail of the image that allows you to zoom in or out of the image quickly, and to change the part of the image displayed on the screen.

Document windows:

Each open document has its own document window with a status bar along the bottom. The status bar sits to the right of the zoom percentage displayed in the bottom left-hand corner, and displays information that's specific to the document.

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