CS2 Likes/Dislikes & cool things you’ve found. Share em here!

I Like…

The fact that Liquify now works in 16 bit mode, and that the ‘scrubby sliders’ have now found their way into this filter.

The Bridge. Still a lot to discover, but its slider for Thumb sizes and fully customizable views are great. A neat touch is the fact you can choose the shade of the background of the browser’s thumbnail views.

Camera Raw is much improved too. I particularly like the auto facility on exposure etc., and being able to crop at this stage is very handy. Again, it’s early days and lots more to discover.

The progress bar when you do a save. I’m sure it takes just as long but it seems quicker somehow with a progress bar!

The cross hair in brushes

The chamelionic cursor

The smart guides

The fonts preview

I wish…

More filters were available in 16bit mode

Extract doesn’t appear to have been updated. So it’s still a case of making the extraction on an 8 bit dupe and importing the alpha channel.

The filtering facility in Bridge would have been better if the settings were ‘sticky’. Flip to another folder and back and you have to set the filtering option again.

And whilst these filtering options are great, I’m going to miss being able to jot little notes in the ‘Rank’ box. (I used to use this to indicate the print sizes required etc during viewings)

All in all though, I’m well pleased with this new incarnation, and I’m looking forward to discovering more of the undocumented improvements as I go along.

Chris.

I don’t like that I have to wait a bit in order to buy it (but watching this thread to help decide).

Chris,

Bridge has lots of cool features some of which are not immediately obvious (I’ll let you find them yourself… nobody helped the beta testers 🙂 )

<clue> Collections </clue> 😉

BTW: I put together a list of Keyboard Shortcuts for Bridge and Camera Raw (Thomas Knoll provided a lot of help with the latter). You can download them from the following links.

Mac Shortcuts <http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.lyons/mac_kb.pdf>

Windows Shortcuts <http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.lyons/win_kb.pdf>

Hopefully they’ll make the transition from File Browser to Bridge easier for you.

"Extract doesn’t appear to have been updated. So it’s still a case of making the extraction on an 8 bit dupe and importing the alpha channel."

You should go to the features requests sections for that one: one of the advantages of Extract over other methods is that it does color edge decontamination… So using the mask/selection does not use all the power of the filter. Dunno if the calculations wouldn’t be too hard on 16bit…

I put together a list of Keyboard Shortcuts for Bridge and Camera Raw

Ian, you’re a star (as usual). Yes I am going to enjoy discovering the new features in Bridge.

Extract …<snip> …Dunno if the calculations wouldn’t be too hard on 16bit

Pierre,

The way I do it now is to open a duplicate and convert to 8 bit. I do the extract on this file. Then, leaving the 8 bit file open, I go back to the 16 bit version and load the selection.

This works great, so I can see no reason why a similar procedure could not be incorporated into the filter itself rather than rewrite the entire filter for 16 bit.

You’re right. One for the Feature Requests.

Happy CS2-ing

Chris.

Two dislikes come to mind.

ImageReady appears to not have changed at all, other than a new splash screen. It has the older style palette tabs instead of the newer style that all the other CS2 apps have.

Adobe Bridge doesn’t remember its window settings. I’m using it maximized on a second monitor, but it doesn’t always pop up that way when it starts up.

I’m a little disapointed we didn’t get more filters as adjustment layers. I was hoping for at least a couple of the biggies like g-blur and USM as there seemed to be positive momentum in the feature req. forum early on. Maybe it got overlooked. I guess that’ll teach us to bring up a feature again as the next release gets nearer.
still there seem to be quite a few new filters and lots of updates to the old ones. I didn’t get a chance to do much of anything besides look in all the menus and play with the new filters and features a bit. overall i think i’m pleased as punch with this upgrade…

the speed issue i mentioned above, seems to be related to screen redrawing and switching tools. anyone notice a slight cursor lag after swtitching tools in CS? it’s gone in CS2. very snappy!

still need to get into custom menus. i didn’t want to mess with the defualts until i have a little time to make sure i know what i’m doing.

robert, we were told that IR was on it’s way out. Many of the cool IR features have been rolled into photoshop already in this version. I didn’t expect it to be much updated.

Maybe in a future release we’ll see Photoshop CSX shipping with FlashCSX! 🙂

oh and the spot healing tool is nothing short of amazing!

On my PC it works much slower than CS. athlon 2000+, 1 gig of ram, ata133 hdd. Not sure why. If I run CS it’s ok, if I run CS2 I cry.

<drool>

on behalf of the greater majority at the moment

</drool>

Yes, we very much understand the desire for doing certain filters as adjustment layers. It takes a lot more engineering to do it than to say it. But doing *something* with filters non-destructively is very high up on the priority list.

Don’t worry about messing with the menus – there are presets in there to get you back out of trouble.

There are a ton of little things that got done to try and help things be more useful – performance being one of them.

-Scott

wrote:

I’m a little disapointed we didn’t get more filters as adjustment layers.

the speed issue i mentioned above, seems to be related to screen redrawing and switching tools. anyone notice a slight cursor lag after swtitching tools in CS? it’s gone in CS2. very snappy!

still need to get into custom menus. i didn’t want to mess with the defualts until i have a little time to make sure i know what i’m doing.

to Scott: Hail – oh mighy one!

Make sure you check your system memory percentage and check to see what other programs are running. Nothing was changed between Photoshop CS and Photoshop CS2 that would have affected performance in that way.

Try multiple layer select, and you’ll see why link was de-emphasized. It’s still useful, so the functionality is there, just not in as prominent a place in the interface since it no longer needs to be used as a multi-layer select substitute.

Getting rid of the status bar, moving some of it per-document, and putting more info on the *Info* palette helped get better Tablet PC support, better support for dual monitors, and gets you more info on your document available at once. Try it for a bit.

-Scott

better support for dual monitors,

it’s so nice to get the browser (bridge) back on the 2nd monitor! frees up tons of real estate! 🙂

Don’t worry about messing with the menus – there are presets in there to get you back out of trouble.

good to know! i’ll try playing with them tonight!

There are a ton of little things that got done to try and help things be more useful

that’s what i’m seeing. great job!

Dave, now, try this: open levels, put it on the the lower side of the screen, so that just the ok button is showing. Click ok.

Now, set your screen a lower resolution, say 800×600.

CTRL+L 😀 welcome back, levels!

You can thank the engineers!

I too have seen a big performance hit on my laptop. (P3-1000, 512MB) Yeah, I know, not a great computer by current standards, but CS1 ran perfect on it.

It takes up to 7 seconds to change tabs in a pallet. I am wondering if it is because of the new visual elements on the tabs. Is there a way to turn off the shading and depth and make the tabs display more like CS1?

I have checked preferences, but couldn’t find anything obvious. Maybe a registry tweak?

Thanks for any thoughts.

Eric

Pierre,

Tell em about the roll-up, the new palette arrangement, and ….

yes, tell em! tell em! 🙂

love the UI font adjustments!!! now i can actually see the menus again (set to medium) instead of relying on repitition!

and… what’s this?!!

OH DEAR LORD!!!

THE WINDOWS ACCELERATOR KEY FOR FILE> SAVE AS (Alt, F-A) IS BACK TO "SAVE AS" RATHER THAN "OPEN AS"!!!!

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THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

on the downside, i was prompted to reactivate CS right after i installed and activated cs2. didn’t happen again though as i’ve been in and out of both several times while i checked prefrences and saved out custom settings from CS. and when i did reactivate CS it went as quick and painlessly as usual.

Eric – that sounds like you have a serious problem with your video/display driver. And I don’t recall anyone else seeing it that slow.

I am experiencing noticably slower performance with CS2 than CS. Screen redraws are much slower: for example, when an image is being dragged around the MDI winidow. Also, when dragging a dialog box around on top of an image, the image repaints on the screen with noticable lag — this doesn’t happen in CS, just CS2. There is a lag time in switching between tabs in various palettes (like layers | channels | paths). I also notice a lag time using some keyboard shortcuts. Most annoying is ctrl+d to deslect, and it doesn’t take until like the third time I hit the sequence. After it finally takes on the third strike, the next times are instantaneous. But if I close and restart it sometimes(!) (sometimes? why not everytime?) happens again. This keyboard thing has happened with the wand tool, too. Menu pulldowns are a little slower than CS. Blur tool on a layer set to multiply is WAY slower than CS (same settings).

Things that do seem faster: various filters, gaussian blur, usharp mask.

configuration:
Dell 8250
Win XP Pro SP2
P4 3.06 HT enabled
1 GB RIMM (1066 speed) RAM
70% of memory reserved for PS CS2
120 GB 7200 physical system disk
80 GB 7200 physical scratch disk
ATI Radeon 128 9700 TX
1280×1024 @ 75Hz

no other apps running at the same time.

font9a – again, that sounds like a display driver problem.

Check for driver updates.

hey! this is awesome! we can now change opacity via the layer palette while using free transform! whee! thanks guys! 🙂

wow. matter of fact, the opacity, fill AND layer mode dropdown are all active while in free transform. that’s way cool folks!

was tweaking done to many of the filters? i don’t seem to rememeber filter> sketch> photocopy or stamp giving such great results. one click coloring books for the kids! 🙂

OOOH! and look at the font preview in the character palette! is there any way to make that bigger? still very cool even if not!

how about some inside scoop on smart objects and their uses. especially used on rasters. meanwhile, i’m off to read the manual some more…

found one answer…

set the font preview display size in edit> prefrences> type> font preview size. AND (by request, iirc) you can turn off the previews if you want. absolutely perfectly executed feature guys! love it!

YES! love the new cursor handling! never have to hold crtl or space again over neutral gray to see where your cursor is! <golf clap>

tony (yrbkmgr) are you listening?!! are you getting all this coolness? are you drooling yet?!! 🙂 compusa is open til midnight! 😉

Does enybody knows if Photoshop CS2 (and all others) are hyperthread supported?

yes. cs and cs2 definately. i think so for ps7.

Dave,
Please explain “new cursor handling”.

adobe implimented their own cursor handling instead of using the windows stuff (i’ve been led to believe) and because of that there’s a clear distinction when going over neutral gray. you no longer have to invoke the move or hand tool to see where you’re at when making selections or when painting over a neutral gray area.

a picture’s worth a 1000 words so:

< http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pic=1NBaHb5F0SzVfPUl9Sq7tD 2Uh>

🙂 On 1st glance my previous memory issues seem to have been resolved. Operations that previously resulted in an ‘out of memory’ error now work fine 🙂 (P3, Intel 875P Chipset mobo, 2G Ram). This appears to be a ‘bug fix’.

🙁 The crop tool still does NOT allow me to crop to an ‘aspect ratio’ without changing the PPI. I’ll stick to using the ‘Rectangular Marquee Tool’ + ‘fixed aspect ratio’ + Daryl Pritchard’s EXCELLENT adaptation of the now extinct Extensis ‘PhotoTools’. His efforts have kept this GREAT tool alive:

<http://www.jazzdiver.com/photoshop/index.htm>

I simply select ‘the shape’ of my crop and then hit the ‘crop’ custom icon that Extensis ‘PhotoTools’ can add to the toolbar and ‘voila’… very quick indeed. I did half suspected that Adobe would add a customizable toolbar to PS9. Adobe has apparently failed to appreciate it’s advantage..

😐 I’m very anxious to play with the HDR feature

🙂 The noise reduction feature is a VERY welcome addition! 1st pokes have me convinced!

🙁 Property menu texts are frequently corrupted. I have to wonder what systems/videocards Adobe Beta tests with. I’ve got a pretty ‘plain Jane reference type’ platform (Intel+Intel_Matrox550) and a LOT of the menu text is screwed up to the point that I have no idea what the labels are..

Check out these ‘screen-grabs’ to see what mean:

<http://www.r2p2.com/ps9/>

😐 I have yet to appreciate Adobe Bridge. I’ve used ThumbsPlus for years and am very happy with its features. Adobe Bridge seems to be missing the subtle advantages that TP offers if they’ve tried to ‘borrow’ from the competition.

😐 Web Photo Gallery is still pretty limited. I had hoped that Adobe would add more web page creation controls in Ps9’s evolution. But it appears unchanged. There’s still a LOT of redundant code generated if you turn off unwanted default features. I ‘m afraid of what Adobe’s going to do when faced with their new Dreamweaver baby. I’m afraid they’ll miss the point and ignore it’s simplicity.

🙂 Ps9 installed without a hitch :-))

Bottom Line: I really don’t mind paying Adobe to make PS (..for the most part) better!!

Thank you :-))

Russell

Russell,

Are you saying you got PhotoBars to work in PS CS2?? Neither I nor others have observed any success, and I expect PhotoBars is dead for PS CS2. If you have gotten it to work, I’m interested in any details you can share.

Thumbs Plus is a really handy app…I don’t know that anything will ever replace it for me entirely, but there are areas where File Browser still has advantages that I’m sure Bridge has built upon. Nothing wrong with having multiple tools in the toolbox. 🙂

Thanks,

Daryl

Are you saying you got PhotoBars to work in PS CS2?

No… I was looking forward to your update :-((

If it won’t happen then I might well just make CS1 my default workspace and …. sigh… what’s with this crap? Has Adobe thwarted adding a great feature while locking you out? As you know Extensis has abandoned the idea. So much for innovation and moving forward..

Thumbs Plus is a really handy app…I don’t know that anything will ever replace it for me entirely, but there are areas where File Browser still has advantages that I’m sure Bridge has built upon. Nothing wrong with having multiple tools in the toolbox. 🙂

Agreed.

Russell

PS: Now GET BACK TO WORK and help keep Phototools alive!!

For me, CS2 loads faster and runs faster than CS – probably the default % was set better than I had it in CS 😉

I’m losing the bracket shortcut for brush size, on occasions (winxp 1 gig Ram, 2.2mhz). If I resize by the brush dropdown, then the brackets kick in again.

Took over 20 minutes to start Bridge on first initiation (caching all images) but loads quick now… so far. I never used browser in earlier versions, gonna try this out…

All of my plugins worked by copy/pasting without reinstall Focus Magic, NeatImage, Buzz PRo, Virtual Photog, Impressionist plugin.

So far, lovin’ it 🙂

Russell,

I wish I could keep PhotoBars alive. The rest of the plug-ins in the PhotoTools suite appeared to be intact in PS CS2, but I didn’t exercise any of them to see if they worked. Meanwhile, nothing was present to allow the PhotoBars to be accessed. With no means to activate and display the toolbars, I’m afraid we’re out of luck. Although I downloaded the CS2 tryout tonight, I largely expect to remain with CS1 for the benefit of having toolbars available, but maybe CS2 will win me over within 30 days. Time will tell. The new ACR does look much improved and the spot healing brush is enticing. Changes in the GUI which I like are the optional cursor crosshair, dynamic cursor color, and font preview, but the menu customization and colored menus don’t impress me at all. The roll-up background seems more just a cutesy sort of thing than truly useful. Toolbars would have been wonderful, and the loss of use of PhotoBars is quite disappointing.

Daryl

Daryl

Thanx for reply, Scott.
I tried to uninstall PS CS1 and somehow it solved some problems. CS2 works faster now but still there’s lag when using palette bar. All other menues seem to work fine as well as filters.

I remember someone said if you install CS2 on PC without PS CS1 then everything is ok but if you already have CS1 installed then you experience those lags.

The roll-up background seems more just a cutesy sort of thing than truly useful

Daryl. Not found this yet. Can you point me to it?

Cheers

Chris

s’okay. found it! Ian Lyons, "Am I the only one missing the status bar in CS2?" #10, 27 Apr 2005 12:05 pm </cgi-bin/webx?14/9>

The idea is to use the roll up background with Bridge behind Photoshop…

The idea is to use the roll up background with Bridge behind Photoshop…

In CS I just toggle with Ctrl+B in CS2 I can put it on the 2nd monitor.

I wish they had used the effort towards making the menus mappable for PhotoTools!

Who wants to see his desktop when he’s working in Photoshop?

Ex- Maccies I suppose!

Who wants to see his desktop when he’s working in Photoshop?

Hmmm. I can see this being quite handy.

When working on a customer’s order, I need to keep referring to my notes and the order details which I keep in a notepad file. In ‘Maccie mode’ I’ll be able to have this on screen same time as the image.

Screenshot of my dual monitor set up: <http://www.beautyphoto.co.uk/proofs/dualscreen.jpg>

Chris.

I have Activated the Desktop toolbar (Right click on the Taskbar > Toolbars > Desktop) then scrunched it up to the right so I only see the caption " Desktop >> ". Clicking on the ">>" button gives a one-click list of shortcuts to everything on the (hidden) Desktop.

russell,

Check out these ‘screen-grabs’ to see what mean:

turn your font sizes down in the display> advances> dpi to normal. then in ps9 use the new UI font size setting in prefrences.

John said: "I wish they had used the effort towards making the menus mappable for PhotoTools!" but phototools is not any longer sold…

And it was said that it did not comply with the "rules" of a good plug-in.

I don’t think that Adobe should put R&D for a partly incompliant third party plug-in. (Well, they did produce a fix for KPT3 in CS…)

Well, even though the roll-up background seems a non-essential feature to me, Chris’s example does show its usefulness. Obviously one thing that helps too is to make the desktop background a neutral color, although I rather enjoy being welcomed to my PC by a nice photo of Shakira. 🙂

While a natural fall-out of having a roll-up background, I do like that invidual images can be positioned outside the document area. For a dual-monitor setup, I do see overall how this works to one’s
advantage.

Pierre, I agree that Adobe shouldn’t really have made changes to accommodate PhotoBars. Rather, it would have been best to simply incorporate customizable toolbars into the GUI.

Dary

….

*

which reminds me…

&#9689;

…. that’ll teach me not to take a phone call half way through editing a post! <g>

Chris,

Another cool interface feature in CS2 can be found in many of the palettes. BTW: This is one for the folk who like to keep Layers, Channels and Histogram open on their desktop.

Peel the Histogram panel away from Navigator and Info palette

Peel Layers and Channels panels away from Paths

You should now have Histogram, Layers and Channels panels free on your desktop.

Drag the Channels panel to the bottom of the Layers panel on butt it up against the base so that you just see a bold black line. This allows Layers to hang off Channels panel… nothing new there!

Now drag the Histogram panel to the base of the Layers panel and using the method described above hook it onto the base so that it hangs off the base of the Layers palette… again nothing new.

Now expand the Histogram panel to Expanded or All Channels view. You should find that the Layers and Channels panel also expand. Using this arrangement you can toggle the view from Compact to Expanded or All Channel view at will, which is something that couldn’t be done in CS.

This functionality isn’t available to all the panels so play around a bit and find out if there’s any that you like better than others.

does CS2 have any improvement in the image sizing area?
scaling up and down?

are the retail plugins still better at this?

Ian,

Dang it…ya’ go to a new version and learn something about it only to find that something similar you never new existed in a prior version was there all along! I didn’t know you could dock the palettes bottom to top as you described, and I’ve long wished I could move them, size them, etc. as one collective unit. If only I had asked! 🙂

Daryl

Another cool interface feature in CS2 can be found in many of the palettes

Thanks Ian. I’m really enjoying the way CS2 handles. I imagine I’ll be discovering little snippits for some time to come.

Funny though. There are a few things which I thought would have been attended to which haven’t. Most are not of any real consequence. For instance: When making changes to your workspace, you have to type in the name when you save it. Get the name slightly wrong and you end up with two similarly named workspaces. Yet when you Delete a workspace, you get a drop-down list!

One thing I had hoped for was 16 bit support in the Extract filter (although I have got my own work-around for this).

Thanks again for the insight Ian. It’s surprising how much easier it all sinks-in when you glean a bit at a time off other users (and beta testers) compared to being presented with a mind-numbing list all in one go.

Chris.

Congratulations to the team – I guess we’ll never know what didn’t quite make it to CS2 but what has made it is good.

The user interface feels quicker and slicker, the filters I have used seem to run quicker and preview swifter too.

And just as an afterthought onscreen images seem sharper and brighter or is that just me and a distinct lack of tequila?

Anyway – hot diggity! It’s good!

deebs

ps – It looks as if I will have to compromise my skip-one upgrade policy

Dave,
Can you check out something for me? I’ve been reading the help and I have a question about smart objects. Try the following,
create a document and insert a portrait mode photo as a smart object. Rotate the smart object to the left about 45 degrees. Now,
select the smart object and then Layer>Smart Objects>Replace Contents . Replace the smart objects contents with a different
portrait mode photo. Is the replaced photo rotated to the left 45 degrees? This could be an easy way to create templates. If so,
this could be automated using scripting. I hope.

Larry

The new tabs do take a hit on very slow video cards. There is not a way to turn them off, unfortunately. More RAM might help.

-Scott

wrote:

I too have seen a big performance hit on my laptop. (P3-1000, 512MB) Yeah, I know, not a great computer by current standards, but CS1 ran perfect on it.

Check the new Type preferences panel.

-Scott

wrote:

OOOH! and look at the font preview in the character palette! is there any way to make that bigger? still very cool even if not!

Ian forgot to mention that you can now dock the Info palette to the Histogram palette, even in expanded mode.

-Scott

Check the new Type preferences panel.

I don’t see an option on it for turning off the line that appears at the baseline of the text when editing it. It was an annoyance in CS and looks like it’s still an annoyance in CS2. At small point sizes, the line makes it very difficult to see what you’re typing. And please don’t tell me to magnify the screen; I want to see the overall image while I’m entering the text.

I don’t see an option on it for turning off the line that appears at the baseline of the text when editing

To type in, or edit, text without this ‘line’ you have the same option as in CS.

Before starting to type, first click and drag the text tool to create a Text Box.

Now you’ll be able to type without the ‘annoying line’ – PLUS you’ll have the benefit of word wrap and a much easier facility to move and manipulate the position and size of the text within your image.

Hope this helps.

Chris.

Thanks, Chris, but a text box isn’t always appropriate and I get tired of having to resize them. In many cases, just a single line of text is all I want and I don’t want the line or the box in my way. Someone from Adobe, I forget who, said not long after CS was released that it was an oversight. It was apparently overlooked again.

a text box isn’t always appropriate and I get tired of having to resize them

Since I discovered the text box, I wonder how I ever managed without it. As I create it, I set it to the width required and then make it way too deep – even if I end up with just one line of text!

Editing after the event is so much easier – you never accidentally create a new text layer whilst trying to select the existing one.

Chris.

Russell – either your OS font sizing is conflicting with Photoshop’s font preferences, or your video card driver is REALLY buggy.

Larry

I thought I would check out your question to figure out what smart objects actually do. A little tutorial on the NAPP site helped here. Anyway it does what you wanted – you can replace the contents of a smart object with another image. It is scriptable but only through the Listener as far as I can see. Good idea of yours I would think.

Ian forgot to mention

Nah, I wouldn’t do that 😉

playing a bit with the new Filter> Distort> Lens correction.

The vertacle and horizontal perspectives are going to come in real handy with 2 kids who like to play with daddy’s camera. Lots of otherwise good shots taken by a 3 foot tall person are easily fixable! (and the edge fill options are a nice touch!)

turn your font sizes down in the display > advanced > dpi to normal. then in ps9 use the new UI font size setting in preferences.

Thanks Dave, that might be a workaround. But why do I need to make a system wide adjustment that reduce my overall computing enjoyment so that Photoshop can display menus properly when no other app I use has this problem. Looks like a bug to me.

Russell

See the other post you just made. Either way is a system wide adjustment. Either you do it in Advanced Dpi or in display> Appearence.

It’s just that the DPI fix causes problems in some apps. Been that way for a long time. I think I first noticed it when XP came out. I used to do it that way in 98se. Someone here told me about the display> appearences fix. That seems to cause less trouble for applications.

Dave,

tony (yrbkmgr) are you listening?!! are you getting all this coolness? are you drooling yet?!! compusa is open til midnight!

Only got through the first page – been off the boards for a few days.

Yes, I’m listening. I’m sold – it’ll take a couple of weeks before I can do it though.

I honestly think that holding out two full version upgrades would be a mistake for my business and well, for me. So I’m in.

I thought I’d post a follow up to my previous post re: slower performance with CS2 than CS.

I got a new video card today, just for kicks. ATI X850 XT to replace the ATI 9700TX (Dell OEM). Being a 3D card, I didn’t expect a miracle, but I got one. The clock speed and memory speed on the X850 is substantially higher than the 9700 — which may be the main source of improvement. ONE IMPORTANT NOTE: I upgraded to the ATI CATALYST 5.4 Drivers and the whole system ground to a halt, displaying 480×620 @ 4-bit color. I read on the ATI forums that some gamers had experienced similar woes. I reverted back to a Dec. 2004 Driver and am running at 1280×1024 @ 75Hz now, with fine results.

The screen repainting problem is noticibly improve now. I can still see some artifacts when dragging the "Preferences" window over an image, but nothing like before. Switching tabs in the Layers | Channels | Paths palette is instaneous (like CS) again. I can only surmise that the older video card has problems with the new UI. (Which is a shame since the 9700TX is really good at everything else).

A couple of other performance tips for those running WinXP: — If you know what you’re doing you can delete all your Windows "Prefetch" files. These are OS files to improve launch speed of frequently used programs. The OS automatically keeps track of these each time you launch an app. Just cleaning this directory (c:\windows\prefetch\) made a big difference in start up time.
— Clear programs on the "Start List". I don’t know if this has any real bearing on the start up time, but it organizes frequently-used apps better, based on actual usage. Right-click the Task Bar –> Properties –> Start Menu (it’s a tab) –> Customize –> Clear List.
— Transforming (rotating, moving) PS CS2 Smart Objects used to be terribly slow on the old card. The new hardware speeds things up significantly. Maybe something to do with the object linking and vector transformations? Anyhow, the new hardware solved that.
— Adobe Bridge is much faster now that I built "caches" for all my Favorites folders. I reset the cache size to 200MB and manually cached all subfolders. (I notice that it installs a MySQL database… if this is of any interest).
— Note well: Illustrator CS2 did not experience any performance difference c.f. with CS with the new ATI hardware. It has always been wickedly fast.

There is also a good article referenced in the PS CS2 Read Me file that launches right after you install. I can’t find the URL from searching the Adobe site right now, but it’s probably on the install CD (I left mine at work).

Summary: A new $450 video card cured my performance woes. Something MUST have changed with the CS2 UI to make such a huge difference on the display adapter hardware. Is it really worth the price, since the CS UI was quick as a slippery fish with the old card? Hard to say, but Doom3 sure does play faster 😉

Your mileage may vary.

— font9a

dell 8250 3.06/WinXP SP2/1GB RAM/ATI Radeon 256MB X850 XT/120 GB 7.2K System/80 GB 7.2K Scratch

Can you point me to the post regarding CS2 vs. CS performance given whether CS(1) is installed first or not?

many thanks 🙂

— font9a

I don’t see an option on it for turning off the line that appears at the baseline of the text when editing it.

CTRL+H cures it, no?

Not had much time to play yet and there is lot to learn, but I have noticed CS2 appears to run slightly faster than CS (not much difference)

Impressed with the Bridge, especially as a DSLR user shooting in RAW format.

One big disappointment was the handling of the tilt information from a Wacom tablet – it still works the wrong way round with the airbrush and yet again no way of reversing inverting it in the brush pallet (the Adobe engineers should check out the Wacom Pen Tools plug-in to see how it should work (if it still run with CS2 – not had chance to try that yet).

Also had problems with starting the Bridge on its own. Following the tip in the Bridge forum – Selecting the ‘Start Bridge with Photoshop’ option cures the problem of starting the Bridge without any other CS2 apps running.

Had to re-activate a few times (worrying!) but I think it maybe connected with a file CS2 appears to put on the desktop when the Bridge starts – deleting it appears to require re-activation but restoring the file and the problems go away (so far). The re-activations worked ok, also the software did ask to be registered again. Unfortunately I’m not at my home PC now and can not remember exactly what the file was called it is something like Adobe????.lst I think. Perhaps the problem is starting the Bridge from a desktop shortcut rather than from the XP Start Menu – I’m using XP Pro SP 2.

Yes Pierre Ctrl+H cures it on the PC and Cmd+H 0n the Mac. This particular keystroke combination works with a lot of tools e.g toggle selection marque on/off, toggle Slice tool grid on/off, toggle crop marque on/off, etc

Just remember H for "Hide".

Russell – have you tried Clear Type Power Toy from Microsoft?

Ctrl+H cures it

This is a keystroke I use all the time, particularly when working on selections.

Since installing CS2 however, I’m getting a problem which I haven’t seen since PS7. Often – but not always – it takes two hits to get the selection to hide.

Anybody else getting this?

Chris

One more sort of cool thing – I think the way currency images are handled has changed from CS1. It now only appears to block printing from PS, file saving is ok. IIRC CS1 would not let you save a file if it detected the currency protection.

🙂 Before anyone asks I still had the test images around after this was discovered in CS1 – and just though I would see if they were still blocked.

Wow is all I can say at this point.

I was a little apprehensive in seeing some of the machines you people have. Mine is older, with little memory (512) but CS2 launches at the speed of sound now. Can’t believe it is soooo much faster than CS.

Wow!

CTRL+H cures it, no?

Yes, it does, but it should be a user preference setting. The line was introduced in CS and wasn’t in previous versions. I design many interfaces and need dozens of bits of text. Having to toggle the line off or create and resize text boxes for each one is a pain.

I also had very slow performance with my Matrox G550 (slow tool switching, artifacting, and the tab redraws were interminable), but updated drivers fixed it.

Since installing CS2 however, I’m getting a problem which I haven’t seen since PS7. Often – but not always – it takes two hits to get the selection to hide.

Anybody else getting this?

Yes, I’m seeing it too and it’s intermittent. Could be a sticky keyboard, I suppose, but I don’t seem to have any problems typing.

Yes, several things changed in our UI drawing – mostly dealing with transparency and updating a few API calls (now that we’ve dropped older OSes on which they weren’t available).

We have seen a few older video cards with bad drivers that slowed down, but not many – and updating drivers usually fixed the performance (and occasional artifacts).

Well, I like a lot of things about CS2. A lot. But there are some little annoyances that are really getting to me.

For instance, (even though this isn’t a bug according to Chris Cox) the fact that creating smart objects doesn’t honor clipping masks is going to be a major annoyance to me. I use clipping masks all the time, and to have to go back into every smart object and recreate it is a big pain.

Also, I like the Adobe "Save As…" and "Open" dialogs, but I wish the "Save for Web" dialog had the same option to switch over to the Adobe interface. (Especially having access to the "Favorites" from Adobe Bridge.)

And the last thing I’ve run across so far, is that when I open an animated GIF, I still only have access to the first frame. Now that PS has an animation palette (which is pretty cool, btw) I would think that it could separate the frames out into layers or something. Yeah, I know I can open it in IR, but having to use that program to open GIFs, while pretty much anything else about animated GIFs can be done in PS is kind of a pain.

Could be a sticky keyboard

No. Tried another one! I had this problem with PS7 but never with CS. Now it’s happening again in CS2 it’s very annoying.

Ctrl+H is often part of a sequence of keystrokes which I do instinctively now when performing certain repetitive tasks. It’s not even as if I can relearn them to include Ctrl+H+H because the problem is intermittant.

Chris Cox – Any ideas on this?

Chris.

Hmm. To get any further, you’ll probably need to see if you notice any patterns to it – where is the keyboard focus when it happens? What other things are running? Could something be stealing the keystrokes occasionally?

-Scott

wrote:

Chris Cox – Any ideas on this?

(during today’s performance, the part of Chris Cox will be played by Scott Byer 😉

I’m seeing something that’s been mentioned here… about requiring multiple clicks to get something done. Can’t find the thread. 🙁

anyway, using any tool requiring a brush tip. i’m going along, need to change the size, right click in the image, up pops the brushes, same as always. double click the new tip and… hmm… the brush window didn’t close. seems it didn’t recognize my double click. track back to the brush tip double click it again and then it takes. context brush window closes and i’m back painting.

i’m seeing this repeatedly while using any tool that uses a brush tip to apply. it’s like it’s either not registering the double click or maybe is too sensitive and i’m not hitting it correctly (but again, been doing it that way since at least ver. 6).

will something like double click speed in windows control panel have any affect here if i turn that down a bit? any ideas?

Chris Cox wrote:

during today’s performance, the part of Chris Cox will be played by Scott Byer

So which one of you is the understudy? <grin>

Scott Byer wrote:

Hmm. To get any further, you’ll probably need to see if you notice any patterns to it – where is the keyboard focus when it happens? What other things are running? Could something be stealing the keystrokes occasionally?

Steve/Chris.

Nothing else running. This machine is pretty much dedicated to Photoshop (Athlon 64 3200+, 2Gb Kingston RAM, XP Home SP2, dedicated scratch etc.)

I’m using Ctrl+H mostly to hide the marching ants whilst making adjustments.

For example: after drawing an oval marquee to perform a vignette I would typically perform the following keystrokes to feather the selection, invert it, hide the ants, then open Hue/Sat dialogue to lighten/darken the vignette using the lightness slider:

Ctrl+Alt+D, 200 (or whatever), Enter, Ctrl+Shift+I, Ctrl+H, Ctrl+U

I might add that in performing these keystrokes, after hitting enter for the Feather dialogue, my little finger remains on the Ctrl Key, keeping it depressed for the rest of the sequence.

Sequences like this have become pretty much intuitive, and I’ve never come unstuck at the Ctrl+H stage using CS. I do however seem to recall having to hit the H twice using earlier versions.

An observation (from either of you) would be most welcome.

Chris.

Likes:
The noise reduction, smart sharpen, and a ton of stuff I don’t even know about yet because I’m a brand new user to Photoshop. There’s several plugins I won’t need anymore. I love it that they’ve added PE3’s Spot Healing Brush to CS2.

Dislikes:
I got the full boxed version from Adobe Store, but the install program thinks it’s a upgrade version and insists on looking for "previous versions" of PS before it will install. Customer Service agrees that’s not right so I have to wait till Monday to get ahold of tech support and see if they know a workaround.

I’m disappointed that they didn’t add PE3’s Selection Brush to CS2. I’m really gonna miss that…

I’m disappointed that they didn’t add PE3’s Selection Brush to CS2. I’m really gonna miss that…

read and learn about quick mask. it’s your friend! 🙂

not exactly the same, but it works out to the same results in the end.

To elaborate on Dave’s comment, the Photoshop Elements Selection Brush really was designed to be a simplified version of Quick Mask. Although it’s easier to understand the concept of the Selection Brush, it’s not really any faster or easier to use, and it’s not nearly as powerful. For example, with Quick Mask you can use any filter (or even the transform commands) to change the shape of your selection. There’s no way to accomplish that with the Selection Brush.

I just had the honor of being in a five day Julieanne Kost class last week. Words fail me. This lady rocks. Obviously she’s knowledgeable but she is also a naturally outstanding instructor.

She had us install the CS2 trial on day one (4/25), so the whole week was based on CS2. Wow, what lucky timing.

Yes, CS2 also rocks IMHO. But this thread asked about potential problems, so here goes…

On the performance question, I have an 850Mz P3 W2K/Pro and a 3.2GZ P4 Win/XP. In a few unscientific tests I ran I conclude: The P4 is four times faster than the numbers would suggest using CS1 on both. CS2 is 5% slower than CS1 in several batch tests I ran on the P4. But the screen refresh is snappier making it seem more responsive for most interactive tasks. I have not run CS2 on the P3 yet, but this may be where some folks might see different performance results.

The CS2 Bridge does not seem to honor CS1 cache in folders. Thus all folders need to be rebuilt the first time visited. Boo-Hiss Adobe you could have easily provided the transitional compatibility. But wait, there’s more. This means that the 100 archive DVDs I have will not honor cache when used with CS2. And any I create in the future will not be honored by CS1. Real bummer!

Next, the bridge does not allow me to hide non-graphic files as the FB did. I was told that this was “as designed” so that I would not accidentally try to delete a folder that is not empty. If I show graphic files only I see no RAW files except Kodak DCS for some reason. If I show RAW files I see not PSD, JPG, or TIF files. Not cool! Later in the week I did empty a folder. Only the CS1 cache files show. The CS2 cache files are hidden. Of course when I tried to delete the folder I got an error, and not an intuitive one.

The whole FB / Bridge user interface has changed. So some things like applying ACR settings to a selection of files is tricky. It involves opening a selection first though only the first image is opened. Then you need to cut and paste to apply the settings. Your workflow is going to have to be changed.

I still see major differences in the default ACR calibration settings for different cameras. I was not very happy with the default “auto” settings for any images, but that is simply my opinion. I feel that it will still be necessary to change the defaults at least on the basic tabs. The procedure to save these by camera is different and I don’t have a complete handle on it yet. And I don’t see an easy way to import my camera defaults from CS1. There is still no HSB information on the display but the ability to set four eye dropper samples is great.

The biggest problem I saw can be described as “screens not being refreshed” during batch operations. This was also inconstant. It did not fail with Picture Package but it did fail consistently with Contact Sheet II. It was consistent on all student machines, Windows, Mac, single cpu, dual cpu, 1GB, 2GB. The only machine that did not fail was Julienne’s and we could never figure out why. She was running the same Gold CS2 as the rest of us. One could say that this is a pretty anal complaint but there is more to the story. It also fails with a modified version of Tom Fors’ ACR Calibration script. The problem is that the status window never gets updated, so you cannot watch the progress of the script. When it eventually does end, the status window does get refreshed. This may affect other long running batch operations with a large number of images. It will be difficult to monitor progress.

I haven’t had much time to play with 32-bit, but there are some interesting observations. FYI, 32-bit is rather limited support and seems to be target to HDR only. No layers are allowed at all. But there has been some continuing dialogue about 16-bit verses quasi 15-bit arithmetic. Without going into the lengthy debate, there was a test I could perform in CS1 that demonstrated to me (at least) that the Adobe math was inconsistent. If you open a CIE Lab image in 16-bit mode and paint into a selection with 54,0,0 then sampled the color, you would see Lab 54,1,1 and RGB 129,128,128. This does not fail with CS2. I would love to hear from Adobe if anything overt was done to correct this.

There is a lot of learning ahead. CS2 rocks.

Cheers, Rags 🙂
Exposure is all about Zone V

For example, with Quick Mask you can use any filter (or even the transform commands) to change the shape of your selection.

you can also vary the opacity by painting with varying degrees of black or white.

one think i do is to click the quick mask options in the tool bar and change them from "paint on mask" to "paint on selection". that’s more like a selection tool. not being darkroom savvy, the mask was a weird concept for me to get my head around, but painting on a selection – that’s defined as red (rubylith) or whatever color you set up – seems much more natural to me. when you paint on a mask (the default) you need to invert (crtl-i) the mask to get a selection. that steps not necessary when you "paint on a selection".

Next, the bridge does not allow me to hide non-graphic files as the FB did.

sure it does. i just found the option last night and used it.

I know about the Quick Mask, etc., I added Shipley’s tools to PE3. But the Selection Brush was just so handy. No problem, I can live without it.

didn’t someone say that new to cs2 you need to deactivate one in order to use the other, even though you can install on both?

again, wait til monday to find out, but that may be the problem. maybe a beta tester with some experience can chime in on this…

As there’s an Adobe tag team participating, what was the oldest box PSCS2 was tested on? My five year old laptop, 500MHz P3, 512MB RAM is having redraw problems. This wasn’t a problem with PSCS1.

It meets the Adobe system requirements. Updated the video drivers but it only has 8MB VRAM, is that the problem. Will there be a new adjusted refresh or should I try the old one from PSCS1?

a like: cs2 starts up much faster than cs did! same 3rd party plugins and custom settings carried over from cs (actions, styles, brushes and tool presets). and the little lag between seeing the ps desktop and the ability to click on anything (aprox 2-4 seconds in CS) is gone!

didn’t someone say that new to cs2 you need to deactivate one in order to use the other, even though you can install on both?

Nope. I have it installed and activated on my laptop and desktop. I’ll be building a new machine soon enough so I’ll have to deactivate before I can get that third machine running.

FWIW, I just got a new laptop and Acrobat was the test there. I tried to activate on the new laptop and got turned down. Deactivated on the old laptop and then the activation went through immediately on the new one.

This is just some background info to let you know that if everything’s okay, the system is working.

Bob

thanks bob. my advice to the person with the problem stands though, until we get some confirmation that there are people there on the weekend, let it wait until monday.

dave

Rags,

The CS2 Bridge does not seem to honor CS1 cache in folders. Thus all folders need to be rebuilt the first time visited.

It doesn’t honor the cenral cache but it very definitely honors local thumbnail and metadata cache files. It ignores the Preview cache because the default setting for Camera Raw is Auto-Adjustments "On", and since there is no such feature in the previous version it would confuse a lot of users when they open a raw image in CR and see that it looks nothing like the Bridge preview.

It involves opening a selection first though only the first image is opened. Then you need to cut and paste to apply the settings. Your workflow is going to have to be changed.

There is a menu option called Previous conversion. Alternatively you can open multiple images into CR, apply the edits to one, select the rest and choose Synchronize All. Actually there are 2 or there more alternative ways of doing the same and none of them involve Cut and Paste.

Next, the bridge does not allow me to hide non-graphic files as the FB did.

View menu > Show Only Graphics files

There is still no HSB information on the display but the ability to set four eye dropper samples is great.

Actually you can set 9 sample points!

The biggest problem I saw can be described as “screens not being refreshed” during batch operations.

It was designed that way to improve performance. The thinking being… if you run a batch why the heck do you want to see the screen refresh? It takes CPU cycles that can be better used for other purposes. If you really need to see what’s going on go to the Actions Palette, choose Playback Options and set performance to Step by Step.

I found very useful feature in Bridge — I can see color mode and color profile in additional lines of thumbnail metadata (if set). It’s cool!
BTW, It would be wonderful if I could to add any MP3 music when slide-showing under Bridge… Why not? Must be.

BTW, It would be wonderful if I could to add any MP3 music when slide-showing under Bridge… Why not?

Why not… Have Media player open on the task bar, and hit play just before starting the slide show?

OK. ’twas a joke 🙂

not a bad idea, imo.

At the moment I use PixToExe to present portrait proofs to my portrait customers in the viewing room.

If the CS2 browser’s Slide Show had the facility to ‘fade’ from picture to picture rather than snap, then this – together with Media Player – is what I would use.

Chris

Ian Lyons,

Thanks for the comments.

My comment about honoring CS1 cache was simply based on the fact that it took quite some time to re-generate the preview in a folder with two hundred raw files. Yes auto-adjust is new, but most of these files had XMP data already and BTW I had already turned off auto-adjust. One good thing, it seems that CS2 automatically updates folder cache when an image is changed. CS1 did not unless I ran “update folder cache” manually, at least for me. This will not help with an archive CD though. And I doubt that CS1 will be able to read CS2 folder cache.

We did figure out how to apply a single setting to multiple images at a time. But only with help from Julieanne, and that was the cut and past technique. My only point was that the paradigm is different and will take some getting used to. Several of us had some difficulty with this.

My CS2 laptop is not on, so I will try your suggestions about hiding files again later. Show only graphic files did not show (all) RAW files.
Show only RAW files did not show PSD/TIF/JPG image files. Show all files shows graphic and raw as I like, but it also shows TXT and XLS files and CS1 cache. It did not show CS2 files cache though.
I could never show only graphic (image) and raw files. I’ll try again later. The options behaved more to my liking in CS1.

My bad, yes it is 9 RGB sample points. Anything more than one is a big help. I would still like to see an HSB option since the calibrate tab uses hue and saturation sliders. Manual calibration would be so much simpler. Yes I already submitted a feature request last year. No feedback from that post so far.

The screen refresh during batch is real important to me. I’ll try the “Actions Palette, choose Playback Options and set performance to Step by Step” soon. That might explain why Julienne’s machine was the only one that behaved the way I want it to. It is actually a javascript function (not really batch) that is important to me.

Care to comment about the 15-bit math?

Thanks again.
Cheers, Rags 🙂
Exposure is all about Zone V

" BTW, It would be wonderful if I could to add any MP3 music when slide-showing under Bridge…"

Oh, man, if that’s what you wanna do, you’d love how well iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes works together.

Brilliant!

One of my favourite small fixes that end up being a big deal is this:

Phosphor, thanx for advice! You made my day! :-)))
Nevertheless, after playing PS2 during 3 days, I’ve moved to it. And uninstalled PS finally and totally (without reinstalling all my big heaps of plug-ins). That’s good. I’m satisfied. 🙂

Rags,

I stopped being interested in maths 10 years back. Life’s too short to keep gazing at minutia.

Yes, life is congenital disease with lethal outcome…

I was wasting two hours today finding where is there ‘Merge Linked’ layers in menus and everywhere 🙂
It turned out, that this option is now simple ‘Merge layers’ and Ctrl+E shortcut as well. Why shouldn’t add in Layer menu a word ‘Linked’ in case of amalgamating several layers? It would be tiny but pleasing detail…

Long post… Ian Lyons or anyone else from Adobe support, Ian, Thanks again for the useful feedback. But…

Rags, I stopped being interested in maths 10 years back. Life’s too short to keep gazing at minutia.

1) You may not be interested in math (16-bit) but this was not an academic question.

This Adobe math affects my ability to create a color image target for ACR calibration. I was unable to create an image in CIE Lab 16-bit format because all neutral tones wound up with an undesired color shift. It seems to work in CS2 as I would expect. Hence my question. It could be because Adobe has addressed the quasi 15-bit analomies or because Adobe has addressed the CIE Lab conversions only. Just an academic question. But since I have been soundly chastised again I don’t expect anyone else to offer a comment. I guess that if you hand the 7-11 clerk a $20 bill for a $1 coke, four dollars change is just fine. My ignorance again.

Just a comment, but while doing some printer resolution research I discovered that Adobe PSCS 1 would accept an image resolution of 317.5 PPI (Fuji Lightjet). But CS1 will not accept an RGB color value of 127.5 in 8-bit or 16383(.5) in 16-bit mode. It also fails with CIE Lab 50,0,0 in 16-bit mode. It consistently adds a color shift. It seems to work in CS2. There are others that seem to care about numerical accuracy. I guess I’m among those that are just stupid and math anal.

2) I tried the suggestion regarding “Actions: step by step” and it behaved like I wanted.

Thank you very much. I, 30 others, and J Kost missed this. The bottom line is that the failure that impacted me was under JavaScript. The class exercise that duplicated the failure (for all but her machine) was using Contact Sheet II. Neither was had anything to do with any PS actions. Naturally we all should have looked on the Actions pallet. My Bad. I ignorantly assumed it would be an option in some global performance area.

3) I tried the suggestions regarding “Bridge displaying TXT, PSD, RAW files and it was exactly as in my original post.

The confusion is based on the fact that the options are presented as a checkbox selection form. But, they behave as a radio check form. Of course my comment is only based on how Unix:Motif, Net:browers, Cellphone:symbian, Mac:liquid, and Windows:dialogue forms work. Stupid me, I am not privy as to how Adobe:menus work. Adobe treats this as all others would call a radio selection. Of course all the others are obviously wrong. In the end analysis, there is no way to show only (all) the image files that PS recognizes. Thank you Adobe. My thought is that you missed my comment that Kodak DCS is considered graphic or raw while Nikon NEF is only considered as raw. I’m just a dumb user. In either case, it dos not do what I want. My ignorance again.

4) My comments about cache compatibility between CS1 and CS2 are unchanged.

This is simply an Adobe internal and proprietary compatibility issue. But it does affect all my current and future archived image folders. And it does affect my personal archive strategy. CS1 archives will be slow with CS2 and vicea versa, no matter what excuses Adobe might offer. Provide the transition compatibility as Adobe does with PDF or don’t. The choice is yours. This in not my ignorance again.

5) (& new) Adobe would like me (and the world) to convert from RAW to DNG.

DNG is a propriety format (Adobe standard). It is owned by Adobe only. As in PSCS cache compatibility there is no guarantee that archived data will be preserved. An open standard is cooperation between vendors and users defined by a neutral party (ANSI, ISO). An industry standard is defined by an independent leader in a specific industry (IPTC). A defacto standard is propriety standard that has been generally accepted by an industry (Adobe PDF). DNG has not reached this (PDF) designation. PDF is not technically an open standard, it is a simply a format. The free Adobe Reader allows lots of users to read PDF files but if you want to write them you need to license and pay for Adobe products. By any stretch of the imagination, this is not a standard, but a popular, defacto format. RTF and RFT (Rich Text Format, Revisable-Form Text) are good examples of the total confusion that can be propagated. The issue of portability from version to version of a specific format (standard or proprietary) is a separate subject

We tested with P3s, and as many old video cards as possible. Some older video cards do have a problem with the new palette tabs, and the speed on P3s isn’t going to be stellar.

-Scott

wrote:

As there’s an Adobe tag team participating, what was the oldest box PSCS2 was tested on? My five year old laptop, 500MHz P3, 512MB RAM is having redraw problems. This wasn’t a problem with PSCS1.

It’s the screen redraw that’s most noticeable Scott. It’s only 8MB VRAM and redraws can take up to five seconds, built up in 50x50px blocks starting top left, then across the screen and onto the next row. This is on files less than 30MB, it simply does not happen on PSCS1. I updated the video drivers and it has improved it slightly. I remember this effect on old machines using PS3 but nothing since then until PSCS2. Maybe there should be a minimum requirement, but the PSCS2 trial will prove if it’s suitable on users own machines.

It’s time to update my laptop but I wanted to hold on until 64bit chips and blu-ray DVD were available.

The best feature IMO is the spot healing with texture option. 🙂

I haven’t received my copy yet. Tell me, does CS2’s Save As recall the last Saved-As directory and file type?

I haven’t received my copy yet. Tell me, does CS2’s Save As recall the last Saved-As directory and file type?

Just got mine, and yes it does remember last directory and file type and that for each file.

CS2 is definitely a winner. some likes:

Install, activation, and registration was flawless.

My Epson 3170 scanner works just fine with it.

Files can now be tiled either horizonally or vertically.

View > Print Size menu now picks up on the screen ppi setting in Preferences. I use that when I want my screen to reflect the physical size of the document, rulers and all.

Yes, a lot faster than CS. The Bridge does cache thumbnails much faster. For quick and dirty ACDSee will also open CS2 for editing.

According to the timer, my larger files load faster than CS or 7,
3.2s for a 66 MB file as compared to 4.2

I have to work with it some more, but I like it already.

Gene–

Without going back to see if this has been mentioned, here’s a minor dislike: Selecting multiple linked layers apparently now requires two hands to perform, one to hold the Ctrl key while the other clicks on the layer. Or, have I overlooked an easier way? While the idea of having the link icon at the bottom of the palette to define the linking of multiple layers isn’t bad, I found the older style of Layers palette friendlier to use, by simply clicking the link box for each layer desired as part of a layer set.

Daryl

"Just got mine, and yes it does remember last directory and file type and that for each file."

Just to note, no, it does not. I asked about Save As, not Save. man, how I wish they had changed that.

Well, now that there’s a lull in my current contract, I decided to install CS2 (didn’t want to change horses in the middle of the stream, I guess).

I’m really impressed with the lens distortion filter. I now don’t need to go chasing third party plug-ins that may or may not work. Sorry, plugin writers, but it’s so much easier to use it from within the Filters dialogue.

It takes a bit of getting used to. The Bridge is now a seperate application but you can set it to come up when Photoshop does.

I haven’t looked at the Web Photo Gallery yet, and it’s an important way I communicate to my customers. I haven’t shown paper proofs in years. But based on what I see so far, CS2 is a major step forwards.

Selecting multiple linked layers apparently now requires two hands to perform, one to hold the Ctrl key while the other clicks on the layer. Or, have I overlooked an easier way?

Why? Whatever are you doing with your left hand that can’t be stopped for the fraction of a second it takes to Press Ctrl?! <cheeky_grin>

Sorry if I sound flippant. I’m someone who uses the keyboard extensively. The Wacom Pen occupies my right hand, whilst the left habitually hovers over the keyboard ready to pounce on the Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Tab and Space bar – so useful are these modifiers whilst editing in Photoshop.

Chris.

Chris,

Well, I’m sure I’ll get used to the changes, and indeed as useful as it is to be ready to use the modifier keys, the added requirement to now Ctrl+Click is just a petty nuisance. I guess I’m still lamenting the loss of PhotoBars and how that means keyboard use will rise. Of greater concern is how even the keyboard is not as useful as it once was, due to Alt key problems with menu access and now only being able to select the commands with underlined characters.

Daryl

Alt key problems with menu access

I’m hoping Adobe will acknowledge this as a bug and fix it in a dot release.

Dave (I think) mentioned that the menu lag (the period after PS opens where you can’t do anything for about 3 seconds) was gone in CS2.

Nope. Still there for me.

On a positive note, my Alt key works fine.

Nope. Still there for me.

Me, too. But only on the desktop. Laptop is fine.

The desktop just went through a ton of beta testing and it’s time to blow it out.

Bob

Now that I’ve been using it for a couple of days, it’s great! It seems that Adobe must have bought out Dr. Brown’s Image Processor, it comes with Photoshop now.

Being able to find the cursor on a medium gray background is a breath of fresh air. Whoever thought of that is a genius!

You have to get used to the fact that the Bridge is now a separate application. I used to close the File Browser when I was working on a photo, but I’ve only goofed and closed the Bridge a couple of times. I’ve managed to remember to leave it open most of the time. And it’s just been a couple of days!

I’m not sure Adobe needed to buy it out, given that Russell Brown is Adobe’s Creative Director.

funkiness changing opacity while transforming:

anyone else see this? while running a free transform, after running say a scale, you go to change opacity and while you’re moving the slider in the layer palette, the image on the screen (still constrained by transform) suddenly "flashes" to full (original) size while you move the slider. it goes back to your transformed size as soon as you stop adjusting the opacity. this is repeatable.
very annoying. is it a bug? don’t get me wrong, the ability to change opacity in the modal transform is a god-send, but it just seems like this was overlooked…

saw one guy in another thread describe this (funky transparency when in transform) behaviour… anyone else? EVERYone else?

here’s glenn’s account (post #37)

Glenn_UK, "TroubleShooting PS9 Display Slowness" #37, 16 May 2005 10:58 am </cgi-bin/webx?14/36>

I like being able to hit the Ctrl key and scrub the size percent (tiny window) in the lower left hand corner of a document to increase or decrease the zoom. I don’t recall how I discovered this, but it’s pretty neat.

— font9a

scrub the size percent

Wow! When I think of the number of times in the past I’ve tried to match image sizes on screen between two documents.

Thanks to font9a for this one.

Chris.

(funky transparency when in transform) behaviour… anyone else? EVERYone else?

The transform box just goes blank (transparent) on my machine when I use the opacity slider.

For me, the greatest benefit is being able to switch modes during a transform. Great for selecting ‘Difference’ whilst aligning two leyers.

Chris.

Dave: Yep, you gots a bug there. Well, not that bad.

The transform box just goes blank (transparent) on my machine when I use the opacity slider

wow. weird!

font9a, thanks! i’ll be looking for that!

I don’t know if this ihas been mentioneed already (at 137 posts wow! I aint gonna check)

Thing to Like:
the way that tool is displayed if I take it over the image border – it retains toolshape rather than becoming a Windows arrow

For example – a brush

Dave – if it’s of any interest, I see the same thing as you when using the opacity slider during a free transform.

While I’m here I must praise the Transform – Warp. It allowed me to straighten out a building pic in a few minutes which would previously have taken a lot longer and would have been less realisitic with the other transform tools. I’ll never fear converging verticals again.

I like being able to hit the Ctrl key and scrub the size percent (tiny window) in the lower left hand corner of a document to increase or decrease the zoom. I don’t recall how I discovered this, but it’s pretty neat.

font9a: Great!! I’ve been wanting this for a while. Also works in the percentage box of the Navigator palette if you like the Full Screen modes.

Gene–

Hello

Curiously if you use the mouse wheel to increase/decrease the zoom, the numbers change,but the zoom does not, unless you press enter.
Cannot see the point of that, It would make sense if one had to click the mouse. Also the first digit at the bottom of the document window is missing on my screen is missing, but not in the Navigator.Well sometimes. It moves to the left, when highlighted.

I find that the opacity slider is pretty progressive in transform mode, unless one holds down the slider a little longer, than a quick sweep.

By the way, what does the little icon at the bottom mean?

Mike Engles

By the way, what does the little icon at the bottom mean?

If you mean the paper icon on the document status bar, it has to do with Version Cue workgroup management. I dont normally use it, so I turn it off in prefs for a simpler status bar drop down menu.

Gene–

Dave and Chris – yeah, the transform weirdness is probably a bug. I didn’t see that happening during beta, and it shouldn’t be possible – but it sounds like something is going wrong.

Okay, back on track:

One of my cool new "Likes" is the "clip thumbnails to layer bounds" option in Layers. it makes it so much easier for dealing with layers with small elements in them (web design; UI design) since I can now see what’s in every layer …

~Hanford

Hanford,

"clip thumbnails to layer bounds"

I could have gone YEARS without finding that! Thanks!

P.S. Are you south of Fresno?

Frank

I have to say I hate the way they’ve changed around the status bar!!! Having the wide bars around my frame looks bad to me, almost feels like PS took a step back. Plus the progress meter that pops up now, pops up over my twain acquire and many other plugins and makes one other thing I have to constantly click on and move so I can work, big, BIG step backwards Adobe!!! Please fix soon in a 9.0.1 release.
-james darknell

Seconded – and hitting "F" is not the remedy!

While I’m not fond of the status bar change either, and dislike the progress bar even more, one thing to keep in mind is how those were formerly part of the main document window but that window could not be rolled up, as it can now. So, for those who like rolling up the window to expose some usable desktop space, that means the old status/progress bars would potentially be obscured by the active image window. It just all seems to be a matter of tradeoffs and I’m sure I’ll eventually get used to having the status bar where it is. Still, it would be nice if the progress bar could be docked into some unobtrusive area.

Daryl

nevermind

The noise filter in CS2 seems to be pretty good (IMHO)

From this < http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pic=1SdqInnkKDhRDf79lBtQws NSLFDWk0> to this < http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pic=11sEKXHT0mc4e5j9xubWah NLF8ybSl1> seems quite reasonable bearing in mind I still have a great deal to learn

< http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pic=1SdqInnkKDhRDf79lBtQws NSLFDWk0>

< http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pic=11sEKXHT0mc4e5j9xubWah NLF8ybSl1>

yup… try out the film grain too… i think it’s in the artistic set in the filter browser.

For any experts out there – please accept my apologies if the final image does not look too good in an aesthetic sense.

I was caught up in removing the noise if at all possible and was very impressed with the effect of variables in the noise removing filter.

If my enthusiasm spills over and above final image quality I offer apologies in advance.

6 days to go 🙁 on Tryout deadline 🙁

I really will find the return to CS quite a drop 🙁