Personalize Photoshop by changing its background color
When it comes to retouching images, one of the most powerful apps to be found on the net is without a doubt Adobe Photoshop. It is the most used tool for creating images, both by professional users and by amateurs. There are all kinds of tools, functions and effects that allow us to give our photos or drawings a professional finish. However, in addition to these tools, we must also take into account the options for customizing the working environment which will help us to be more comfortable when using the tool. One of these options is, for example, changing the color of the workspace background.
By default, Photoshop uses a dark gray color (# 2c2c2c) which takes up most of the workspace. Against this dark background is the white canvas on which to start drawing or editing.
If the picture is clear, we have no problem. However, if we are working with an image with dark tones, we surely find on more than one occasion that we cannot differentiate the background from the limits of the image that we have opened.
In the customization options that we will find in Photoshop, we are going to show you different ways to change Photoshop background color. This way we can adjust it according to the tones and colors of the image that we are going to edit or simply to our taste, to have the background with which we feel more comfortable.
Do not confuse the background of the PS with the background of the image
It is necessary to clarify the difference between these two concepts. We are going to talk about how to change the background of Photoshop program, that is, the color of the main interface of the program. But we won't go into detail on how to change the background of the image. This setting does not affect open images, rather it is a usability improvement for us.
Changing the background of a Photoshop image involves getting started with editing topics. We can change the background color or replace it with a different one. But that is not the main focus of this article.
Steps to change Photoshop background color
From the configuration menu
One of the ways to change this default background color is to do so from the tool's configuration menu. To do this, just open the configuration options of this tool (Ctrl + K, as we explain in Photoshop keyboard shortcuts) and from there we will go to the “Interface” section.
Here we can see how different color themes appear by default. These themes modify a little the general parameters of the interface, allowing to choose between 4 different shades of gray.
If what we want is to change the background color then what we need to do is bring up the menu of the Standard screen mode , choose the option "select custom color" and choose in the box that appears the color that we want to use as Photoshop background.
As we can see, this will only change the background color of our working environment, but all other elements will remain as is, unaltered. Now we can define the edges perfectly and work better.
Other features to customize color in Photoshop
As most of you will surely know firsthand, it is essential to fully customize the interface of programs used like Photoshop. In this specific case, this is something that is particularly important among designers or the professionals photographic retouching . In fact, making certain adjustments to a program like this can directly impact our day-to-day productivity.
We are telling you this because since we are in these windows to change Photoshop's background color, maybe we will try something else in this direction. And is that from the same Interface tab that we discussed, we have other settings configurable very interesting. Thus, a little below the colors, you have more possibility to specify the behavior of the panels by default. The same thing happens with the visualization of the color channels or with the different tones that the application menus will display.
As a precaution, we will tell you that from this same section, we can also change the general language to be used in Photshop, or the size of the fonts that we are going to see.
From the workspace itself
If we don't want to go into Photoshop options, another really quick way to change the background color of our workspace is from that same space. To do this, we just have to right click on the workspace (be careful, not on the canvas) and choose the color that we want to use in this workspace.
We can choose one of the predefined colors that we saw in the previous point or choose a custom color.
When we have the color we can see how different the Photoshop background is already and we can work much better with the image.
How to revert to Photoshop default colors
If for some reason we are not convinced with changing the background color in Photoshop, we can always revert to the default settings.
To do this, simply return to the Photoshop Preferences menu (Ctrl + K) and choose "Default" in standard screen mode.
We can also do this by right clicking on the workspace, as in the previous point, and choosing the “Default” option to be able to reuse the background color according to the theme we are using.
