Complete guide to Photoshop preferences

[DavePinMinn]

Is there a complete reference somewhere that goes through ALL the preferences and explains what each item does?  Preferrably at LEAST as current as 2020 (I presume there's nothing for 2021...

I'm going through the preferences in 22 and I realized I have no idea what some of these do or why they're important to me...  Like in the Tools prefrence - like why would I care about "vary round brush hardness based on HUD vertical movement" - just as an example. 

Seems like a good idea to go through everything and TRY to make sure things are set right.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

I know no such list and it would seem like an excercise of dubious merit to compile one. 

The performance related ones have their documentation as befits their importance: 

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/performance-preferences.html

»like why would I care about "vary round brush hardness based on HUD vertical movement"«

Do you rescale brush tips by ctrl-alt click-and-dragging horizontally? The corresponding vertical movement changes their hardness. 

The red brush-tip-display has been messed up with 22.0.1 so it is currently a bit less well illustrated but still potentially useful … 

»Seems like a good idea to go through everything and TRY to make sure things are set right.«

What’s »right« depends on your taste, the kind of work you do (like how the Dark Color Themes are wrong for print-related work), your computer, … so some experimentation may be necessary. 

Going through all the Preferences settings may indeed be a good idea (at least as a kind of «brain-teaser«), but depending on the work you do and how you use Photoshop some may just have no importance for you. 

[DavePinMinn]

I disagree with your premise that it's of "dubious merit".  Even Nikon provides a complete set of information for every preference in every menu so you can more intelligently determine what's "right for the kind of work you do".

But, you answered the question - NO, Adobe doesn't provide anything to help users who have no idea what "vary round brush hardness..." means or whether it's important or not to their "kind of work".  It appears that users are left to guess at the preferences that may be useful or necessary.  Seems unproductive, and I suspect rather frustrating for new users.

[Guest]

Some of the preferences are explained here

https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/essential-photoshop-preferences-beginners/

For me I never worry about or question what each preference setting does, I just change the following settings, leave the rest to default and concentrate on the Photoshop UI

[DavePinMinn]

Thanks for the reply.  Yeah, I have those (other than the thing about content aware tracing) turned on, along with some others...  I'll leave it as it is...