Saving workspaces in Paint by Zaweba
Save named panel layouts in Paint by Zaweba, use the Photography, Painting, Graphics and Web and Motion workspaces, and lock them so nothing moves.
Different jobs want different screens. Retouching a portrait needs Layers, History and adjustment controls close at hand. Painting needs brushes and colour. Making a web banner needs alignment and artboards. Rather than dragging panels around every time you switch jobs, Paint by Zaweba lets you save each arrangement as a named workspace and swap between them from one menu.
Where workspaces live
Everything is under View > Workspace. From there you can save the current panel layout under a name, switch to another saved one, and delete any you no longer use. A workspace remembers which panels are open, where they are docked or floating, and how they are tabbed together. Menu and toolbox customisations are saved with named workspaces too, so a workspace can strip the interface down to just what a job needs.
The workspaces you start with
Four are added for you: Photography, Painting, Graphics and Web, and Motion. They are added once and then behave exactly like your own, which means you can change them, save over them or delete them. Treat them as starting points. Open Photography, move the panels to suit how you work, and save it again under the same name or a new one.
The names tell you the intended jobs. Photography is for editing and retouching pictures from a camera. Painting is for brush work. Graphics and Web is for layouts, shapes and text. Motion is for the animation side of the app.
Making your own
The simplest way to build a workspace is to do a real job and adjust panels as you go. When the layout feels right, save it. Name it after the task rather than the date, such as Product shots or Comic inking, so you can find it again months later.
A few ideas that work well. A focused retouching workspace with History, Layers and Navigator visible and everything else tabbed away. A painting workspace with Brushes and Colour floating on a second monitor. A review workspace with almost nothing visible, for checking work before export.
Lock Workspace
Once a layout is right, Lock Workspace stops panels being moved, docked, floated, tabbed or split. It is surprisingly useful. Panels are easy to drag by accident, especially with a pen, and a stray drag can leave a panel floating halfway across the canvas. With the workspace locked, the layout stays put however you click.
Lock it when you are working, and switch the lock off when you deliberately want to change the layout. Then save and lock again.
Switching during a job
Nothing stops you changing workspace in the middle of an edit. The picture, its layers and its history are not touched; only the panels move. A natural rhythm on a photo is to start in Photography for corrections, switch to a retouching workspace for detailed clean-up, then to Graphics and Web if you are adding text for a post.
Common slip-ups
Forgetting to save after a change is the main one. If you rearrange panels and want that arrangement back later, save it as a workspace before you move on. The other is building too many near-identical workspaces. Three or four clear ones are easier to live with than a dozen that differ by one panel.
Workspaces take a few minutes to set up and then quietly save time on every job. Combined with Lock Workspace, they make Paint by Zaweba feel like it was laid out for you.
