Why Adobe ‘Configurator’ Will Revolutionize The Way You Use Photoshop
For newcomers, Photoshop can seem like a labyrinth. The photo editing app is very powerful, but with great power comes great complexity — figuring out how to do what you want can take longer than actually doing it.
To help make Photoshop more flexible and bit easier to work with, Adobe has just released Configurator — an add-on that makes it easy to customize Photoshop panels to suit your needs.
The customization options mean that you can take your favorite menu items, actions, palettes and other tools and create your own easy-to-access panel. All the menu items and tools in Photoshop are available within the Configurator panel builder, and adding then to your custom panel is as simple as dragging them into your creation.
While the customization features are very nice, the real power of Configurator lies in the ability to swap your creations and download tools from other Photoshop users. The packaged files work much like Flash extensions — just download the panel and double click the file so that Extension Manager can install it. Restart Photoshop and the new panel will be available at Windows >> Extensions >> (Panel Name).
Take the sharing idea a bit further and Configurator might make the web-based Photoshop tutorial obsolete.
Rather than simply spelling out the steps necessary to get a certain look for your images, Configurator allows Photoshop gurus to package their entire workflow as a script, create a panel to run the script and make the whole thing a one-click download.
For example, Photoshop maven Russell Brown has put together a panel that walks you through the process of of creating lenticular images — Brown’s panel includes instructions and then simple one-click buttons to execute the actual steps (screenshot, download panel).
Configurator panels can even have embedded live video files, which allows you to watch video tutorials in Photoshop and follow along using your own images — no more flipping between the browser and Photoshop.
To see Configurator in action, check out Nack’s video demo, which shows some of the possibilities. At the moment there aren’t any available, but keep an eye on this Adobe Exchange page to find out what others are doing with Configurator.
Configurator is a free download and you can grab it from Adobe Labs. Configurator requires Photoshop CS4.
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