Bad on screen display of text using CS

JG
Posted By
Jim Gizzi
Oct 21, 2004
Views
655
Replies
12
Status
Closed
We have 3 machines running CS, all have the same problem. Windows XP Pro, Windows XP Home and XP SP2 are the installed OS’s and all exhibit the same pain in the butt problem. On screen text in an image is not shown properly. Hard to describe but it goes mostly blank with the text lines shown but not the characters. or it might show the first few letters of typed text and then blank after that until text is "entered/rendered" Once the text is "rendered" using the enter key all is well, but this makes working on placing text in an image a pain at best and impossible in some situations.

This was never an issue before CS, nor can I find anyone having a similar problem. Any ideas as to what the problem might be and how to go about fixing it? We’ve been living with it for almost a year but marketing pieces are due now and this issue is causing quite a bit of pain.

Would appreciate any help.

Jim Gizzi

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

T
tacitr
Oct 21, 2004
Any ideas as to what the problem might be and how to go about fixing it?

I have seen this problem crop up if the line of text is more than about 2,000 pixels wide.

We’ve been living with it for almost a year but marketing pieces are due now and this issue is causing quite a bit of pain.

What are you doing setting text in marketing pieces in Photoshop??! Photoshop is the wrong tool for setting text. You’re not doing your whole page layout in Photoshop, are you?


Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
JG
Jim Gizzi
Oct 22, 2004
Problem starts way before text line length reaches 2000 pixels.

Yes, we do the entire page layout in PS. Have the bundle but the learning curve on INdesign is too steep. We are a photogrphy shop so most of the layout is images anyway. Not like we have to flow paragraphs of text.

Might be the wrong tool for most folks but we prefer what works for us. Saves time, effort and aggravation. Also, while maybe PS is the wrong tool to use, it should still work at least as good as it used to.

"Tacit" wrote in message
Any ideas as to what the problem might be and how to go about fixing it?

I have seen this problem crop up if the line of text is more than about 2,000
pixels wide.

We’ve been living with it for almost a year but marketing pieces are due now and this issue is causing quite a bit of pain.

What are you doing setting text in marketing pieces in Photoshop??! Photoshop
is the wrong tool for setting text. You’re not doing your whole page layout in
Photoshop, are you?


Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
S
Stuart
Oct 22, 2004
Jim Gizzi wrote:
Problem starts way before text line length reaches 2000 pixels.
Yes, we do the entire page layout in PS. Have the bundle but the learning curve on INdesign is too steep. We are a photogrphy shop so most of the layout is images anyway. Not like we have to flow paragraphs of text.
Might be the wrong tool for most folks but we prefer what works for us. Saves time, effort and aggravation. Also, while maybe PS is the wrong tool to use, it should still work at least as good as it used to.

Illustrator would be better than Photoshop (unless you have the same problem with that too), books are not that expensive and a little bit of time spent learning the right software would save in the long run.

Stuart
AM
Andrew Morton
Oct 22, 2004
Jim Gizzi wrote:
We have 3 machines running CS, all have the same problem. Windows XP Pro, Windows XP Home and XP SP2 are the installed OS’s and all exhibit the same pain in the butt problem…

Do they all happen to have the same model of video card? I imagine that the drivers would be different between XP and 2000, but they may share the same core which is getting something wrong; an updated driver may be available.
Are the computers underpowered for the job: if you give PS a longer time to react to the typing, do the letters appear? Is there much disk drive activity while you’re typing the text?
Does this only happen with one font?
If you switch off the anti-aliasing while you’re entering the text, does that improve the situation?
Are you using a large size for the text?

Andrew
T
tacitr
Oct 22, 2004
Problem starts way before text line length reaches 2000 pixels.
[snip]
Might be the wrong tool for most folks but we prefer what works for us. Saves time, effort and aggravation.

Well, considering you’re having problems, it obviously DOESN’T save you time, effort, and aggrevation.

Honestly, I have never understood why so many people are so afraid to learn new things. Let me make a bet with you: I bet you the contents of my wallet right now that if you spend the two or three days it will take you to learn a page-layout or illustration tool like Illustrator or InDesign to assemble photos and add text, your life will be so much better, faster, and easier that you’ll want to kick yourself for wasting so much time using a screwdriver to hammer nails.

Seriously. What you’re doing is using Photoshop as a blunt instrument to do a job it was not designed to do. Use the right tool for the job. Your life will be easier, I promise.


Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
DD
David Dyer-Bennet
Oct 22, 2004
(Tacit) writes:

Problem starts way before text line length reaches 2000 pixels.
[snip]
Might be the wrong tool for most folks but we prefer what works for us. Saves time, effort and aggravation.

Well, considering you’re having problems, it obviously DOESN’T save you time, effort, and aggrevation.

Honestly, I have never understood why so many people are so afraid to learn new things. Let me make a bet with you: I bet you the contents of my wallet right now that if you spend the two or three days it will take you to learn a page-layout or illustration tool like Illustrator or InDesign to assemble photos and add text, your life will be so much better, faster, and easier that you’ll want to kick yourself for wasting so much time using a screwdriver to hammer nails.

Or Corel Draw, if you’re on a PC (the original article isn’t on the news server I use, so I can’t check what’s not quoted here).

Seriously. What you’re doing is using Photoshop as a blunt instrument to do a job it was not designed to do. Use the right tool for the job. Your life will be easier, I promise.

Yes. Photoshop is good for munging bitmap images. It’s not good for building up complex pages with different kinds of materials. —
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
H
Hecate
Oct 23, 2004
On 22 Oct 2004 15:00:31 GMT, (Tacit) wrote:

Problem starts way before text line length reaches 2000 pixels.
[snip]
Might be the wrong tool for most folks but we prefer what works for us. Saves time, effort and aggravation.

Well, considering you’re having problems, it obviously DOESN’T save you time, effort, and aggrevation.

Honestly, I have never understood why so many people are so afraid to learn new things. Let me make a bet with you: I bet you the contents of my wallet right now that if you spend the two or three days it will take you to learn a page-layout or illustration tool like Illustrator or InDesign to assemble photos and add text, your life will be so much better, faster, and easier that you’ll want to kick yourself for wasting so much time using a screwdriver to hammer nails.

Seriously. What you’re doing is using Photoshop as a blunt instrument to do a job it was not designed to do. Use the right tool for the job. Your life will be easier, I promise.

Yes. WI used to use Pagemaker until Eric Gill pout me onto InDesign. After a couple of days just playing with it (even without reading the manual) I was getting work done. ID is really easy to learn to get going, then you can study the manual, read books to improve your knowledge as you go along.



Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui
S
Stuart
Oct 25, 2004
Hecate wrote:
Yes. WI used to use Pagemaker until Eric Gill pout me onto InDesign. After a couple of days just playing with it (even without reading the manual) I was getting work done. ID is really easy to learn to get going, then you can study the manual, read books to improve your knowledge as you go along.



Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Not everyone is prepared to play around with a piece of software they don’t know about, I think they are afraid they might break it 🙂

I was up and running with Illustrator in a couple of days with the help of a book I bought. I have been teaching it on a one to one basis since and now, two and a half years later, I am teaching a classroom full of people how to use it too.

Stuart
W
WharfRat
Oct 25, 2004
in article cligag$tkg$
wrote on 10/25/04 2:15 AM:

Hecate wrote:
Yes. WI used to use Pagemaker until Eric Gill pout me onto InDesign. After a couple of days just playing with it (even without reading the manual) I was getting work done. ID is really easy to learn to get going, then you can study the manual, read books to improve your knowledge as you go along.



Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Not everyone is prepared to play around with a piece of software they don’t know about, I think they are afraid they might break it 🙂
I was up and running with Illustrator in a couple of days with the help of a book I bought. I have been teaching it on a one to one basis since and now, two and a half years later, I am teaching a classroom full of people how to use it too.

Stuart

If you are teaching people to do page layout maneuvers with Illustrator you are doing them, and your prepress friends, a great dis-service.

MSD
JG
Jim Gizzi
Oct 25, 2004
Cut me some slack here folks! This thread has nothing to do with the question that I asked. PS should render on screen text correctly as all of the previous versions before it have, at least back to version 3. Using a different tool would not solve the problem that we are having with PS.

In regards to our marketing pieces and how we go about laying them out, PS should be able to handle laying out three images across a black background with 2 lines of text in order to make a simple postcard. If you prefer to use a different tool then that is your perogative. I, however, choose differently.

Jim

"Tacit" wrote in message
Problem starts way before text line length reaches 2000 pixels.
[snip]
Might be the wrong tool for most folks but we prefer what works for us. Saves time, effort and aggravation.

Well, considering you’re having problems, it obviously DOESN’T save you time,
effort, and aggrevation.

Honestly, I have never understood why so many people are so afraid to learn new
things. Let me make a bet with you: I bet you the contents of my wallet right
now that if you spend the two or three days it will take you to learn a page-layout or illustration tool like Illustrator or InDesign to assemble photos and add text, your life will be so much better, faster, and easier that
you’ll want to kick yourself for wasting so much time using a screwdriver to
hammer nails.

Seriously. What you’re doing is using Photoshop as a blunt instrument to do a
job it was not designed to do. Use the right tool for the job. Your life will
be easier, I promise.


Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
JG
Jim Gizzi
Oct 25, 2004
Andrew,

Great questions, thank you for staying on topic with me on this.

I can only answer a couple right now but will research the rest through out the day.

They do not all have the same video card but, duhhh, I never thought about upgrading the drivers. I’ll try it and see what happens. The PC’s are 2.53 GHz P4’s with a gig of RAM, shouldn’t be underpowered. Hadn’t tried waiting but will and see what happens.
I will have to try several fonts and see when it occurs. This is a possibility as we have changed fonts for this years pieces. Hadn’t looked at disk activity but will, first suspicion is that, no, there is not much disk activity.
Will have to try turning off anti aliasing.
This seems to happen with any size text.

Thanks, you have given me some directions to pursue. It is appreciated.

Jim

"Andrew Morton" wrote in message
Jim Gizzi wrote:
We have 3 machines running CS, all have the same problem. Windows XP Pro, Windows XP Home and XP SP2 are the installed OS’s and all exhibit the same pain in the butt problem…

Do they all happen to have the same model of video card? I imagine that the drivers would be different between XP and 2000, but they may share the same core which is getting something wrong; an updated driver may be available.
Are the computers underpowered for the job: if you give PS a longer time to react to the typing, do the letters appear? Is there much disk drive activity while you’re typing the text?
Does this only happen with one font?
If you switch off the anti-aliasing while you’re entering the text, does that improve the situation?
Are you using a large size for the text?

Andrew
S
Stuart
Oct 25, 2004
WharfRat wrote:

If you are teaching people to do page layout maneuvers with Illustrator you are doing them, and your prepress friends, a great dis-service.
MSD

I am using Illustrator as intended, nothing to do with page layout. I was just giving an example of how quickly the software can be picked up with the aid of a good book.

Stuart

Master Retouching Hair

Learn how to rescue details, remove flyaways, add volume, and enhance the definition of hair in any photo. We break down every tool and technique in Photoshop to get picture-perfect hair, every time.

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections