Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual

Opening an Existing Document

Opening files is simple in most programs, and that holds true in Photoshop, too. But Photoshop gives you a few more options than you’ll find elsewhere because it’s amazingly versatile at working with a wide range of images. Photoshop knows how to open Adobe Illustrator, Camera Raw (Working with Raw Files), JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, EPS, and PDF files (Opening Recent Files), along with Collada DAE, Google Earth 4 KMZ, Scitex CT, Targa, and several other file types most folks have never heard of.

Note

These days, Photoshop supports more formats than ever, including JPS and PNS (a stereo image pair that’s captured by cameras with two lenses or one lens that’s split in half to produce 3D images), as well as BIGTIFF (for TIFFs larger than 4 GB). It also allows for more bit depth (think “colors”) in TIFF files. (For more on bit depth, see the box on Understanding Bit Depth). New in Photoshop CC is the ability to open JPEGs that are 65,535 pixels in width or height (in previous versions, the limit was 30,000 pixels).

You can open files in Photoshop in several ways, including the following:

• Double-clicking a file’s icon whose format is associated with Photoshop (like JPEG or TIFF), no matter where it’s stored on your computer.

  Tip

  To change file association on a Mac, single-click the file’s icon and then press ⌘-I. In the resulting Info dialog box, locate the Open With section and then pick a program from the drop-down menu. If you want to change the association for ...