Keeping track of all the images on your hard drive can be a daunting task. Even if you take care to label each file name and tuck each file away into its proper folder as best you can, chances are you will still wind up with a lot of images that need to be sorted.

And what if you are great at organization, but don’t know which image is best for a particular project? Finding the image you want to work with on your hard drive can be a daunting task as well.

Photoshop 7 introduced the File Browser feature, and Photoshop CS supports more features. With great ease you can scan the thumbnails of your images on your hard drive until you’ve found just the image you are looking for.

1. To open the File Browser, select File -> Browse or Window -> File Browser.

2. By default, the File Browser is displayed in the palette well. To display the File Browser in a separate window, choose Show in Separate Window from the palette menu.

3. In the Folders tab, you can navigate the hard drive looking for folders with images. To view or hide a folder’s contents, double-click the folder name.

4. On top of the thumbnails is a folder icon and drop-down menu that you can use to scan for folders in a linear fashion up and down the folder tree on your hard drive.

5. To move up one folder from your current location in the folder hierarchy, click the folder icon to the left of the drop-down menu located above the thumbnails.

6. When an image is selected, you can review the image and stored metadata (information about the image itself) in the lower lefthand corner of the File Browser.

7. You can edit certain preferences for the File Browser including the option to create custom-sized thumbnails and high-quality preview images. To bring up the File Browser Preferences dialog box, go to the Photoshop menu and select Preferences -> File Browser (Mac OS) or Edit -> Preferences -> File Browser (Windows).