In Photoshop, you can have several documents open at the same time. This is often useful when comparing images, and even necessary when using a Photoshop CS feature like automatic colour matching.

 

To open multiple files, just open each file one at a time according to the methods described in lesson 1.3. If you find that your screen is overpopulated with images, minimize the image canvases that are not in immediate use by clicking the minimize button on the upper right of the image window (the minus sign). The minimized window will still be available as a blue bar at the bottom of the screen.

 

 

Here you can see a Photoshop CS screen with three images opened. The dune image is in the foreground and is currently active with the duck image in the background and a third image minimized at the bottom left of the screen.

 

To make the duck image active, we can just click on the thick blue title bar at the top of the image, or on the image itself (note that if you have a tool selected, clicking on an image can implement the tool). The duck image will assume the foreground position and will become active.

 

To activate the minimized image, click on one of the restore buttons (the button with the overlapping windows symbol on it, or the button with the single window symbol on it). You could also right click on the title bar of the minimized window and select Restore. If you perform any of these actions the minimized image will again be visible on the screen.

 

 You can make any of the images fill the entire Photoshop screen area by clicking the maximize button which is just to the left of the given window’s close button.