Icons are all over Photoshop. They enable you to quickly pick and choose from a wide array of editing options. In the Display & Cursor preferences dialog box you can choose whether to show channels in color, double the pixels of your images, or use dithering.

You can also specify what icons you would like to see while editing an image.

1. For Macintosh users, go to the Photoshop menu and select Preferences -> Display & Cursors. For Windows users, select Edit -> Preferences and select Display & Cursors. If you are in the dialog box from the previous task, you may select Display & Cursors from the drop-down menu at the top of the dialog box.

2. In the Display and Cursor preferences dialog box, under Display, you can colorize each channel component. To have a channel reflect the color it represents, select Color Channels in Color, instead of the default grayscale representation in the color channels.

3. If you want to dither colors that your video card cannot render properly, select Use Diffusion Dither. Diffusion dithering is a method to position multicolored pixels in a scattering effect so as to simulate colors.

4. To speed up preview modes or command tools, select Use Pixel Doubling. The image resolution is halved by doubling the pixels, giving the image a temporary blurry effect that lasts until the preview mode or commands are finished.

5. Under Painting Cursors you can specify the type of cursor Photoshop displays when you are using the painting tools. These tools include the brush, pencil, art sprayer, color replacement brush, history and art history brushes, eraser, healing brush, rubber stamp, pattern stamp, smudge, blur, sharpen, dodge, burn, and sponge tools. You have three options: Standard, which uses the icon of the current painting tool; Precise, which resembles a crosshair with a small target pixel at its center; and Brush Size, which indicates the size of the brush currently selected.

6. Under Other Cursors you have two options: Standard and Precise. This option controls cursor appearance for the nonpainting tools, which include the marquee, lasso, polygon lasso, magic wand, crop, slice, patch, eyedropper, pen, line, paint bucket, gradient, magnetic lasso, magnetic pen, measure, and color sampler tools.