Work with tabbed documents and floating windows in Photoshop

Open the images in Photoshop

Before we look at tabbed and floating documents, let's first We open some images in Photoshop . I have used here Adobe Bridge to navigate to a folder containing three images. I want to open all of them at once in Photoshop. To do this, I'll click on the image on the left to select it. Next, I will press and hold a key Special Shift B And I will press On the photo on the right. This selects all three images at once, including the one in the middle. Then, to open all three in Photoshop, I'll double-click any of the thumbnails:

Classified documents

Work with tabbed documents and floating windows in Photoshop

By default, Photoshop opens our images as tabbed documents. We'll look at what that means in a moment. But at first glance, something doesn't seem right. I opened three pictures but where are they? Only one of the three is displayed on the screen (image of a swallowtail butterfly from Adobe Stock):

Tabs

Work with tabbed documents and floating windows in Photoshop

It may not look like it, but the other two photos are also open. We can't see them at the moment. That's because Photoshop opened the images as a series of tabbed documents. If we look along the top of the image, we see a row of Tabs . Each tab represents an open image. The name of each image appears in its own tab. The highlighted tab is the one that is currently active, which means that it is the one we see on the screen. Other tabs are hidden behind it and are not currently visible:

Switch between tabbed documents

Work with tabbed documents and floating windows in Photoshop

To switch between tabbed documents, just click on the tabs. At the moment my third picture (the tab on the right) is active. I'll click on the tab in the middle to select it:

And now we see a different picture on the screen. By default, we can only display one image at a time. So the image that was visible a moment ago now disappears into the background (butterfly on flower image from Adobe Stock):

I'll click on the tab on the left to select and activate it:

And now we see the other image I opened (the blue butterfly image from Adobe Stock):

Switch between tabbed documents from the keyboard

Besides clicking tabs, we could also switch between tabbed documents from the keyboard. On a Windows PC, tap Ctrl + Tab To move from left to right from one tab to another. On a Mac, tap Ctrl+Tab . To move between tabs in the opposite direction (right to left), tap Shift+Ctrl+Tab (Win) / Shift + Control + Tab (Mac).

Change the order of tabs

To change the order of tabbed documents, tap and hold a tab and drag it to the left or right of the other tabs. Release the mouse button to drop the tab into place. Make sure, however, that you're dragging horizontally. If you drag diagonally, you may accidentally create a floating document window. We'll look at floating windows next:

Floating document windows

The other way to view your open photos in Photoshop is to view them as floating document windows . Let's say you have multiple images open as tabs, like I do here. To turn one of the tabs into a floating window, click on the tab and, holding down the mouse button, drag the tab down and away from the other tabs:

When you release the mouse button, the image appears in a floating window in front of other tabbed documents. You can move floating windows around on the screen by clicking in the gray tab area along the top of the window, then dragging them with your mouse while holding the mouse button:

Show all open images as floating windows

If you want to switch all Tabbed documents to floating windows, go to list Window In the menu bar along the top of the screen, select Arranging , then choose Float All in Windows :

And now all XNUMX of my pictures appear in floating windows, with the currently active window in front of the others. Again, we can move windows around on the screen to reposition them by clicking and dragging the tab area along the top of each window. To activate a different window and bring it to the front, just click on it:

View the list of open documents

One of the main advantages of viewing our images as floating documents is that we can see more than one image at a time. But this can also cause problems. Opening too many floating windows at once can add clutter to the screen. Also, some windows can completely block others from viewing. Fortunately, there is an easy way to locate any image that is open in Photoshop, even if you can't see it.

Go up to the list Window at the top of the screen. Then look down at the bottom of the list. You will see an easy to use menu for each open photo. The currently active photo has a checkmark next to it. Click on any image in the list to select it, making it active and bringing it to the fore:

Back to tabbed documents

To switch from floating windows to tabbed documents, go to List Window And choose Arrange Then choose Consolidate All to Tabs :

And now my images appear again as tabbed documents, with only one image visible at a time:

Set Photoshop preferences

Once you've selected the display style you prefer (tabbed documents or floating windows), you can tell Photoshop to open all future images in that style using an option found in Preferences. If you use Photoshop CC , then on a Windows PC, go to Menu Editing at the top of the screen, and select Preferences , then choose Workspace . On a Mac, go to List Photoshop CC , and select Preferences , then choose Workspace :

If you are using Photoshop CS6, actually Windows PC, go to the “menu” Release , and select Preferences , then choose Interface . On a Mac, go to List Photoshop , and select Preferences , then choose Interface :

Open documents as tabs

This opens the Photoshop Preferences dialog box set to either the Workspace class (Photoshop CC) or the Interface class (Photoshop CS6). Find the option that indicates Open documents as tabs . By default, this opening is selected, which means that all your images will be opened as tabbed documents. If you prefer to have them open as floating windows, deselect this option:

Enable floating document window docking

There is a second option right below it that is also important. controls Enable Floating Document Window Docking (Say that five times fast) What if we could drag one floating window into another and merge them together, creating tabbed documents inside a floating window:

To show you what I mean, here I have two of my photos opening side by side as floating windows. I'll click on the tab area along the top of the window on the left and start dragging it To The window is on the right. When I swipe up towards the top of the window on the right, we see Blue highlight box appears around its edges. This highlight box tells me that if I release my mouse button at this point, Photoshop will dock both images together within the same floating window:

I'll release the mouse button, and now both images are grouped together as tabbed documents within a single floating window. This can be a useful feature for keeping related images organized on screen. As with regular tabbed documents, I can easily switch between them by clicking their tabs. To detach the images again and place them back in their floating windows, all you have to do is click on one of the tabs and drag it away from and out of the window, then release the mouse button:

The Enable Floating Document Window Docking option is enabled by default. If you decide you don't like this feature, you can easily turn it off by unchecking the option in Photoshop's preferences.

Close a single document or floating window

Finally, to close a single image open as a tabbed document, click the small “x” icon on the edge of its tab. On a Windows PC, there is an “x” to the right of the tab. On a Mac (which is what I'm using here), you'll find it on the left:

To close an image open in a floating window, on a Windows PC, click the “x” icon in the upper right corner of the window. On a Mac, click the red “x” in the upper left corner:

Close all open documents

l Close all open images regardless of whether you view them as tabs or floating windows, rise to a file menu at the top of the screen and choose Close all :