History and actions
History is a record of all the things you did. If you mess up, you can go back. It's a pallet in newer versions so that it's easier to go back and forward without hitting the "undo" button a bunch of times.
Actions are an advanced feature that allows you to save and playback a certain set of commands. Unless you constantly use a set of plugins and layer styles to the point of needing them to need a set up point and click to do all of that at once, I can't see this being useful in terms of drawing.

Navigator Info and Histogram
Navigator is basically a quick zoom in and zoom out feature. slide the bar at the bottom to get a better view, and drag around the red box on the thumbnail image.
Info mostly gives you the color information or X/Y axis on any given spot you run your mouse over.
Histogram is a chart that shows you where the most colors are located.

Layers Channels and Paths
Layers are a fundamental part of any drawing that would be colored or drawn in photoshop. you generally add layers when you don't want your original image messed up. imagine having a piece of paper and then tracing paper over it, only the tracing paper is clear. that's basically what a layer is. artists who scan line art into photoshop will add a new layer and color on it, so that if they mess up or something doesn't look right, they don't have to worry about their line art getting messed up.
Channels are an advanced feature where you can tweak the RGB (red green blue) values on any given image. It's something I won't touch, but mastering them can prove extremely useful when cleaning up scanned images.
Paths is just a pallet for managing the vector paths you may have made. Unless you're dealing with vectors, you probably won't even bother having that up.

Color Swatches and Styles
Color seems to be a self explanatory thing, but it's where you'd pick the color you want to draw with.
Swatches has sets of specifically picked colors. Can be used to decide what combination of colors you'd want to use. Ideal for spriters and pixel artists though.
Styles is a set of different interesting effects you can apply to layers with something on them. Not real useful, but has it's purposes.

Character Paragraph (not shown in image)
Character is for text that you maybe using when typing
Paragraph is how that text will be displayed. Ie: left alignment, centered, etc.
Animation (not shown in image)
used for making gifs, specifying sliced images for website buttons and rollover images, has a few interesting features.

There! Don't expect ALL of these to be in your photoshop, because some of them may not be, and if you can't see them, try going up to the top, clicking "window" and looking for them. I also apologize if I missed any, which I probably have XpX lol

Guide: 06/28/08 | Posted By: whtdragon | 0 comments