Can’t Find A Photoshop How-To? Make Your Own!

This quick tutorial shows how you can create your own How-Tos for any Photoshop technique or operation

In my last article on Photoshop How-Tos, I showed how Photoshop’s Help menu already has several frequently-asked-for techniques and operations ready to view and study. But if there’s one technique you keep reading up on over and over, or if you want to give a helping hand to a novice user, you can create your own.

HTML-Based

The coolest thing about custom-made How-Tos is that they are HTML-based: if you know how to build a webpage, then you can do this. Moreover, this also means that anything online is fair game to be accessed via a How-To in the Help menu, though I’ve found that (despite what the Adobe Help Center says) you cannot link to a webpage online—more on this later. For this tutorial I’m going to save and make accessible the Removing Backgrounds tutorials I wrote last month, including my tutorial on removing backgrounds using the Extract filter, Background Eraser, Magic Eraser and Magnetic Lasso.

I’ve saved the Extract filter tutorial from my web browser to my desktop (HTML only; the images can be accessed via the Internet) and now we begin the tutorial:

Step 1: Save your HTML file in the Adobe Photoshop CS2\Help\Additional How To Content folder. In Figure 1 you will see my HTML files (”back1.html” through “back4.html”) along with three other files Photoshop has placed there by default:

• Add_001.howto controls what you see in the Help menu. You will be editing this later to display your How To.
• Add_001.html is a simple HTML template for your use when writing How Tos.
• HowToInstructions.html is the How To you are reading when you select Help -> How to Create How Tos -> Create your own How To tips.

Figure 1: The files you need to make the How-To.

Step 2: Open the Add_001.howto file in any text browser. This is where you modify the Help menu. You’ll already see the entry for Help -> How to Create How Tos -> Create your own How To tips. Use the same format to create your own:

“Help menu item” “Cascading menu item” HTMLFileName.html

For this tutorial, I will use four entries, one for each tutorial, and place them under a new “Removing Backgrounds” section in the Help menu:

“How to Create How Tos” “Create your own How To tips” HowToInstructions.html
“Removing Backgrounds” “Background Eraser tool” back1.html
“Removing Backgrounds” “Magic Eraser tool” back2.html
“Removing Backgrounds” “Magnetic Lasso tool” back3.html
“Removing Backgrounds” “Extract filter” back4.html

Step 3: Save the Add_001.howto file and restart Photoshop. Changes don’t take effect until Photoshop has restarted.

Figure 2: Your custom-made How-To!

Figure 2 shows the resulting Removing Backgrounds section in the Help menu, complete with my four tutorials! Note that, even though I put my tutorials in the right order in the .howto file, Photoshop will alphabetize the cascading menu so if alphabetical order is necessary you will need to number your entries or reword them.

Another note: you can create more than one .howto file and insert them into the same folder. Photoshop will read from all these files when creating the Help menu. This is really helpful if you have a colleague with his own How-Tos that you want to incorporate into your own system. Just pull the files into your Additional How Tos folder, and Photoshop will take care of the rest.

Problems and bugs

Adobe allowed two major bugs to remain in the How-To customization process, and you will probably encounter them if you use How-Tos so I will list them here:

The How-To instructions say you can link to HTML documents online as well as on your computer. This is wrong; I’ve tried it with this tutorial, and I had to revise it because it just wouldn’t work. The problem is the recent addition with CS2 of Adobe Help Center. When a Photoshop How-To links to an online HTML file, Help Center tries to access it by default, and it’s not a web browser so all it does is spit you out at the Adobe Photoshop Help opening screen. I tried uninstalling Help Center but Photoshop requires it to access any of the How-Tos as well as Photoshop Help.

I see this as another symptom of Adobe’s rush to get CS2 out on the market when consumers were expecting it (roughly 18 months after the original CS release date). Adobe Bridge has been pointed out as another buggy release brought out too soon. I suspect Adobe Help Center was also attached to CS2 in a rush.

You can’t control which application will open your How-Tos. If you have any web design applications on your computer, you may find your How-Tos being opened by them and not your web browser. My How-Tos open in Dreamweaver 8, which in the case of my Designorati tutorials display without the white background! Simpler webpages will display well (which makes that supplied template look tempting). If you are teaching students with only a few core applications on their computers, and no web design applications, then I’ll bet the How-Tos open in their web browsers.

ImageReady also supports custom How-Tos

Custom-made How-Tos are not restricted to Photoshop; ImageReady supports them as well, and they share the same Help folder so your How-Tos will also show up there. Acrobat does not support custom How-Tos.

Conclusion

It’s ironic that Photoshop, probably the one application with the most publications, tutorials and websites devoted to it, has a framework in place for tutorials right in its Help menu, but I have never heard about it—not once! I don’t think it’s been supported or promoted very well, and it shows in the drawbacks it still carries with it, but there’s an opportunity there to load the application itself with killer tutorials without ever leaving the keyboard.