One annoying “feature” we’ve had to endure throughout the years with virtually all the graphics applications we use is the prolific increase of palettes that we are forced to work with daily. If you use Adobe Photoshop, you probably have at least 5 to 6 palettes open at all times. Even a simple ad layout in InDesign might find your screen with 6 to 8 palettes minimum… because lets face it, you never know what you’ll need until you see it in front of you. Even with InDesign’s sliding/docking palettes feature, you may find your screen getting crowded. One solution that works well for me is to take advantage of Adobe’s Workspaces feature. Workspaces, available in all of Adobe’s CreativeSuite apps, are a way of displaying only the palettes you want/need for a specific task. You can save different workspaces and access them at any time. For instance, if you’re working on a text-heavy book in Adobe InDesign, you could have all of the text-related palettes open and arranged on screen the way you want and save that workspace. Then when you go to add graphics, you can switch to a different workspace that might include more design-specific palettes. The screenshot above shows only one custom Workspace in Photoshop, but I have several set up for InDesign for specific tasks. Another option, of course, is to learn the keyboard shortcuts!