Quick Tips 6: Document Docking

I just upgraded to CS5! Yeah! I haven't really had a chance to explore it yet, though. For the most part, it looks a lot like CS4 and I am not overwhelmed by and differences that make it hard to use. I remember when I updated from Photoshop 7 to CS4, it was a HUGE jump! Anyway, as I was setting it up I remembered something I had to learn to change in preferences both in CS4 and CS5, so I thought I'd do a Quick Tip about it, since there may be others out there, like me, who want to fix it.

Because in digital scrapbooking I am constantly opening elements and pulling them into my document, I want to have each element in it's own seperate window. CS4 and 5 have a setting where, if  you pull something in, it creates a "tab" for it. This is called "document docking." So, if I pull in multiple elements, picture, etc, it looks like this:

As you can see, all the documents opened are tabbed at the top, so you can click on each tab to see it. For some projects, this might be useful. But it just drives me nuts. A short fix is to click on thebutton on your top toolbar and choose "float all in windows." This will put them in their own separate windows, but they will still tab when you open something new, and sometimes when you drag something across another window, it will suddenly get tabbed into that document whether you want it to or not.

To fix this, go to Edit>Preferences>Interface. You will see this screen. Just unclick the "Open Documents as Tabs" if you just want them to open separately. If you want to make it so they will not tab on their own when you drag it, uncheck the "Enable Floating Document Window Docking"

Now when you open your elements and pictures, your page will look like this: