Interface Preferences: Optimizing the Workspace

Under the Appearance Section

There are dropdown menus here dictating how your canvas and artboards are displayed within the workspace. Setting these borders to “None” removes the artificial drop shadows around your document windows.

Drop shadows and 3D borders add unnecessary visual clutter and require additional UI rendering from your system’s graphics processor. Disabling them helps make Photoshop run faster, especially on older machines, by removing that minor rendering overhead. We want a clean, fast, and distraction-free workspace.

1. Turn off Drop Shadows on Tabs and Document Windows (Reduces visual clutter and minor GPU rendering overhead)

Change the border settings from “Drop Shadow” to “None” (or “Line” for Artboards) to speed up UI drawing and keep the interface looking flat and modern.

Navigation: Edit > Preferences > Interface

Standard Screen Mode: Border -> None
Full Screen with Menus: Border -> None
Full Screen: Border -> None
Artboards: Border -> Line