With the release of CS3 I am convinced they gave all UI and some of the programming to Macromedia people (most counter-intuitive software ever produced is from them). Why else would Adobe make their most perfect product so ass-backwards?!?!
I’ve used PS CS3 for less than one hour before I became increasingly annoyed. then had to stop and go vent. When that wasn’t enough I had to vent here and hope there are people that feel the same. Never before a version change was so irritating.
– Where did ImageReady go? Do I have to buy Fireworks? Fireworks is horrible. I know people who swear by it, but I and many others hate it. It’s simply not intuitive and a total cow for simple things.
– I can’t manipulate animated GIFs. I can create them, but can’t open them. What gives?
– I can’t print. period. Any printer – any document I print is stretched, disproportioned and doesn’t fit on the page. Any changes to the "print dialog" cause "can’t perform whatever because of a program error". it’s NOT the drivers, I have 3 different printers, all 3 have latest drivers, all 3 give me problems.
– I can’t take my Character/Paragraph (or any other for that matter) properties and put them in the top menu. My workspace is mangled.
– Why does everything look over-designed? Menus are too light, interfere with what I’m doing visually; icons dictate style; everything is just too pretty! It feels like I’m working with some knock-off for housewives and not professional software. (Sorry housewives! Nothing against you.)
All this and MUCH more (I am just too irritated to write without cursing about all other things) made me feel like Adobe crapped in my soul. They took my most valuable tool and completely mangled it. I was so eager to move to the next version expecting a better tool and I found that I can’t work. I thought that it was simply a matter of getting used to, but there a things I don’t want to get used to because they are bad.
Please forgive me if I misled you and made you read this against your will. But if you agree with anything or can add anything, please post and help others cope with the disaster. (Perhaps too harshly put, but this is my state of mind right now) Ciao!
With the release of CS3 I am convinced they gave all UI and some of the programming to Macromedia people (most counter-intuitive software ever produced is from them). Why else would Adobe make their most perfect product so ass-backwards?!?!
I’ve used PS CS3 for less than one hour before I became increasingly annoyed. then had to stop and go vent. When that wasn’t enough I had to vent here and hope there are people that feel the same. Never before a version change was so irritating.
– Where did ImageReady go? Do I have to buy Fireworks? Fireworks is horrible. I know people who swear by it, but I and many others hate it. It’s simply not intuitive and a total cow for simple things.
– I can’t manipulate animated GIFs. I can create them, but can’t open them. What gives? – I can’t print. period. Any printer – any document I print is stretched, disproportioned and doesn’t fit on the page. Any changes to the "print dialog" cause "can’t perform whatever because of a program error". it’s NOT the drivers, I have 3 different printers, all 3 have latest drivers, all 3 give me problems.
– I can’t take my Character/Paragraph (or any other for that matter) properties and put them in the top menu. My workspace is mangled.
– Why does everything look over-designed? Menus are too light, interfere with what I’m doing visually; icons dictate style; everything is just too pretty! It feels like I’m working with some knock-off for housewives and not professional software. (Sorry housewives! Nothing against you.)
All this and MUCH more (I am just too irritated to write without cursing about all other things) made me feel like Adobe crapped in my soul. They took my most valuable tool and completely mangled it. I was so eager to move to the next version expecting a better tool and I found that I can’t work. I thought that it was simply a matter of getting used to, but there a things I don’t want to get used to because they are bad.
Please forgive me if I misled you and made you read this against your will. But if you agree with anything or can add anything, please post and help others cope with the disaster. (Perhaps too harshly put, but this is my state of mind right now) Ciao!
"I’ve used PS CS3 for less than one hour before I became increasingly annoyed."
So, after an hour with a totally new version of Photoshop, you’re all set to condemn it? Maybe you should A) learn how to use it and B) figure out why you can’t?
1. Imageready is gone. Much of it was obsolete (no CSS) and serious web developers mostly use other products. Many of its other features, but not all, were incorporated into other parts of PsCS3. Some were eliminated (editing animated GIFs). That’s life.
2. Animated GIFs can be exported but not opened. Bad decision, in my view. A workaround is to save animated files as PSDs and export as GIFs; you can then edit the PSD and re-export. If you have a previous version of Ps, you can open the GIF and save as PSD to use it in PsCS3.
3. Many users have experienced printing issues. I’m certain this will be addressed in a dot release. I have experienced only minor problems regarding margins (Epson 2200), as well as the lack of "stickiness" to settings within a Ps session.
4. Not sure what you mean about character/paragraph settings in the top menu. They have never been there. They were available from the "well" and are available in the new equivalent of it, or you can dock them in the right-hand column. The most common settings are available in the options bar.
5. I like the new layout, and I’m no housewife or Macromedia-lover. the new system avoids the problem I’ve always had of the image automatically expanding under the palettes even though I’ve selected the option not to do so. I must admit, I’ve never been a fan of the "well".
Michael, if you had more than one printer hooked up you would be a lot less tolerant of the way CS3 handles printing – like here where the CS3 print dialog box clearly shows R2400 as selected printer after a print is done and a new print job set up in page setup, but hitting print causes the 7800 (default printer) print dialog to open instead of the 2400 dialog.
The only way to get the 2400 up then is to select 7800 in the CS3 dialog (still showing R2400), apply, then select the 2400 again. Needless to say under the "new, improved" printing protocol, the 2400 is then reset to default everything and you have to set up the whole print job again. PITA.
Jeff, nothing to learn in this one – compared with CS2 printing is inexplicably and unnecessarily broken. That there were complaints during the beta period and the thing still wasn’t fixed before final release is inexcusable IMO.
Most of coming from previous versions of Photoshop have had few problems with the changes to the interface. Being that you can still make the palettes palets inside of small strips or buttons is a good thing in my opinion. I suggest you stop complaining and start learning. Photoshop is the worlds best editor for a reason and I doubt 1 hour is enough time for you to come even close to learning it.
BTW 80% if ImageReady is in Photoshop now. The 20% that didn’t make it was because it was for things that are rarly done on web sites today. Given that you have used it for only an hour I wouldn’t be surprised that you didn’t find the "missing" ImageReady features. I suggest you spend some more time with CS3 or find another program.
Everyone should be able to print easily from the application they are using but the discontinuing of obsolete technology from an already over-bloated package can only be a good thing.
All I’m pointing out is that something as basic as printing being immeasurably better in CS2 than in the new and supposedly better CS3 does not auger well for the intent behind all this.
Having been involved in these forums since Ps 5.5 days, it seems that problems happen at every upgrade to some degree, but this time it is by far and away worse than any time previously. And that’s after a public beta was released to allegedly iron out any problems for the final release.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I was under the impression that an upgrade was supposed to be an improvement in all aspects of that which came before. This certainly is not the case with CS3, and the suggestion that it’s OK for CS2 be used to do stuff that CS3 can no longer do or is broken with is patently absurd IMO.
And I have a feeling it has more to do with many of the reported CS3 problems than anything else.
Hind sight is 20-20 but having done the beta thing the last couple of InDesign/InCopy cycles I can tell you that it takes its toll on the operating system.
I had feared the beta may have messed with the OS, so I ran the CS3Clean utility on both the desktop and the laptop prior to installation hoping that would get rid of any beta sludge left over.
What I’d like is to hear from someone who didn’t install the beta and who doesn’t have any of the printing problems being so widely discussed with CS3.
Alternately it would be good if Adobe would outright confirm or deny the problems as being real with CS3. The silence in itself tends to be somewhat incriminating.
I dread the thought of a reformat and re-install of everything on both machines, but if it is confirmed that having the beta was the cause there’d be no option. However I’m not about to do that if it’s only guesswork that this might be the root of the problem.
. The silence in itself tends to be somewhat incriminating.
in the past, silence from the engineers who’ve frequented here mean they’re very busy. either close to release or in this case probably working on patches. would be nice to hear "yea we’re working on it" though.
I hope it’s not a trend developing – both Adobe (CS3) and Microsoft (Vista) seem to have droped the ball with their last major software release.
Fred, I agree that at least some sort of acknowledgment from Adobe would be good.
In sharp contrast I also upgraded to Genuine Fractals 5.0 from OnOne Software, I imideatley found a bug, on starting the plugin an error dialog always presented itself. I reported it to OnOne, they responded back to me very quickley, and within 48 hours they had a fix and emailed me a notification that the fix was available.
This is the way a business should respond to their customers.
I never had any Betas installed on any of my machines, tried on clean "OS-only" machines and I was one of the first to report the printing problem. It’s reproducible in all computers here – laptops, desktops, different printers etc.
Intel: Even larger, and I would consider the simultaneous release of many versions of duo and quads, both for PC and Mac, at the same scale, and with greater majesty than Adobe’s. Remember also, they (Intel) are pushing the physical state of the art as well. That might be asid of Adobe also, as the programs make greater demands on the hardware, but hardware is where the rubber hits the road.
Fred wrote: "compared with CS2 printing is inexplicably and unnecessarily broken"
To be accurate, printing from CS3 is not broken, it’s different…and the argument can be made that it’s now "correct" behavior instead of incorrect behavior.
In CS2, printing was considered on a per app basis and Adobe is moving to a per doc basis. What this means is that the current behavior with regards to printing is to respect the system level default set printer. So, by default, every timer you go to print, the preselected printer is the default printer. I would argue that "default" should mean DEFAULT…that’s why there is a default setting in the system. For an app to ignore that is, well, arguably, incorrect behavior.
Some people are also complaining that print centering is broken…well, no, it’s different. In CS2 if you clicked "Center" Photoshop would try to force the margins in the print driver to "Maximum", meaning that ink-jet printers whose actual margins are unequal would be forced to maximum-thereby allowing Photoshop to print in the center. Well, that works with print drivers under XP but not Vista since in Vista, margin settings are treated asa read only data set. An application can’t alter them.
Those two behaviors-which are indeed different than CS2-are not bugs…they are alterations of behaviors that arguably were incorrect in CS2 and before.
You can argue that you and other users don’t like them. I understand that…but I don’t think your gonna get too far by claiming the behaviors are "broken" cause they aren’t.
small is beautiful, the bigger they are, the harder hey fall (eventually) the bigger they are, the greater the distance to their customers, the closer they are to their investors. …
small is beautiful, the bigger they are, the harder hey fall (eventually) the bigger they are, the greater the distance to their customers, the closer they are to their investors.
I love clichés!
— Dierk (sometimes known as Evo2Me) [DH² Publishing] www.DH2Publishing.info Writing and Imaging
Isn’t he the guy that hates PS so he set his process to not be at all familiar to a PS user.<
When you try to print with CS3, you’ll run screaming to Qimage. Or back to the "arguably incorrect", but completely sensible CS2.
A combination of CS3’s new Print interface, and CS2’s "per session" printer settings would be heaven, IMO. As it stands, everything you gain in efficiency from the new interface is completely lost with this "Return to Default" behavior.
If this is not broken because it’s working as designed, then I would argue that the design is broken.
First, thanks for all that you do, I cannot beging to comprehend how you get everything done and STILL have a life. You and a select few others make our profession doable these days.
Second, though I understand the rationale behind using ‘the’ default printer, I wish CS3 would allow the user to set IT’S default printer.
At most of our workstations, the employees who sit there print more jobs to the bw laser printer than anything else, invoices and such like.
So, it makes the laser printer the natural default printer, really system wide.
But we NEVER send photoshop output to that printer. So it makes no sense whatever for CS3 to use that printer as the default.
I recently journeyed from Las Vegas to Portland, OR to assist my brother in setting up a new computer, new scanner (Epson V750-M Pro), new Printer (Epson Stylus Pro 4800 Professional), PhotoShop CS3 Extended.
This 72 year old fellow three months ago couldn’t attach an image to an email.
Now, he is beginning to scan and print outstanding 16" X 20" color photos. He is not burdened with the process of "unlearning."
He has some 15,000 35mm, 6cm X 6cm and 4"x5" transparencies.
I spend many hours each month on many forums and newsgroups gathering ideas for my Q&A article for the Club’s newsletter, but it wasn’t until now that I realized the problems with CS3 and Windows Vista are that users must "unlearn" or forget so that they can learn the new.
Jeff, thanks for that explanation, however I fail to see how there is any way that the following intensely irritating and time consuming CS3 behavior can be seen to be "correct" in practical use:
Same open file. Send to printer, then immediately after the first print is made, send to the printer again (say after making a slight colour balance adjustment, or when using cut sheets on an Epson 7800/9800), and in this "correct" protocol the whole print job has to be set up again, instead of the same printer using the same settings as before just going ahead and printing the #^@%!*& thing as would have happened with CS2 and before.
As I’ve indicated, I have three physical printers hooked up. Additional to that my print paper sizes on the 7800 are frequently "user defined" when using roll paper, and I often have two printers (2400 & 7800) printing at the same time, both in B&W and colour, using variously three different media. In this light it is very difficult to have a one-size-fits-all DEFAULT setting.
While I can see that setting up a new print for a new file might be logical, to have to set up the printer from scratch with every additional print from the same open file is dead stupid behavior in this light, no matter how "correct" it may be to some industry "standard".
When dealing with a printer such as the 7800 where sheet paper has to be loaded individually (so it is not possible to order more than one print at a time in the print dialog when not using roll paper), each subsequent print has to be sent separately – which now means repetitively banging through a series of setup dialogs every time.
CS2 worked, and CS3 doesn’t in the real world professional application of Photo shop printing photographs to industry standard Epson pro printers. If something that worked no longer does, then that fits my definition of being broken.
Dumbing it down so that equates to printing in MS Word on a home A4 printer because that is arguably "correct" does not make it sensible, right or relevant to the real world use of this unique software.
There is also the case of the print dialog display which really is broken – when printing in the above scenario, the last printer used appears in the setup box, and any settings then made refer to that printer – but it is the default printer dialog that opens when the job is sent. You have to manually select the default printer, then manually select the desired printer in order to set the job up for that printer in the print setup dialog. In other words, Ps does not give you the DEFAULT printer as it is supposed to under this new protocol in the setup page unless you manually set it, but will always open the DEFAULT printer control dialog once you have set up the job (unless you go through the additional steps above).
As John said, there should at least be an option available as to default printing prefs behavior. I can’t see how that would have been too difficult.
The "solution" of using CS2 or Qimage shouldn’t be necessary, nor should this be dismissed as being a problem that doesn’t exist.
…but it wasn’t until now that I realized the problems with CS3 and Windows Vista are that users must "unlearn" or forget so that they can learn the new.
I’m more than willing to "learn the new", but if it proves to be more troublesome and less efficient than "the old", then I would suggest that the problem is not that I should forget about how well it used to work.
I’d imagine that it would work fine if you’re using one printer that has a page feeder (the 7800 does not) and only send your prints to the printer once, Larry.
It seems to me that the designers of this new "correct" printing protocol never entertained the idea that more than one printer may be hooked up and used alongside the default printer at the same time, nor did they contemplate anything other than printing on one size of standard sheet paper with a constant profile, media and ink setup.
Furthermore the fact that CS2 works well under either scenario whereas CS3 does not doesn’t seem to have occurred to them as being perhaps not the best thing to have happen in the new program.
I wonder how it (CS3) behaves with only one printer, which will always be default by definition.
If you’re using only one printer, it may be a little easier to deal with. CS3 will, of course, default to your only printer. But because of the new "Per Document" behavior, it will also return your print settings to the default settings of the printer driver each time you print a new file.
So if you want to print a batch of images on a "non-default" paper size, say 11×17, you’ll have to reset the printer driver for each image. CS2 would remember these settings until you either changed them or closed the program.
Fred seems to be having some issues that I haven’t run into. But I haven’t really had a chance to run any prints on my other printer, an Epson 3800.
I’m trying to think of a way to make this work, given the new constraints. But the "default behavior" makes it pretty hard to deal with.
Rick, all the above was a result of me re-visiting CS3 printing for an afternoon after comment was made elsewhere that perhaps not enough chance was given to CS3 by the time I gave up the first time around. I didn’t actually entrust paper and ink to CS3 this time, just ran through a series of typical printing scenarios several times to make sure I wasn’t missing something.
I wasn’t.
For me CS3 is a complete dog to print from as it stands, and being that Jeff has indicated this is deliberate and won’t be changed, I can’t see me going back there again. It will mean some changes in my working patterns, but I’ll be printing from CS2 because it works properly (maybe not "correctly", but properly ). I might even take a look at Qimage later.
If it wasn’t for the vastly improved Bridge and ACR4, I wouldn’t bother with CS3 at all, but CS2 loses some ACR4 adjustments made to NEF files if they’re opened directly into ACR3.7/CS2, so it is quicker to open direct to CS3 and continue to work in there until time comes for final save and print.
Fred, I’d advise you to stick with CS2 rather than messing with Qimage. I downloaded the Qimage trial and it took me several days to figure out their convoluted interface. After getting advice from several places and finally getting it to print something, I uninstalled the trial before it ran out.
I know, there are those who will say that Qimage’s interpolation scheme is better than PS, but I never saw it.
Like you, I’m pissed about the CS3 printing set up. I’m using a 2200 and a 3800, primarily, but I also have an HP office laser and an Epson R300 (for printing CDs and DVDs for clients). It’s just a pain in the ass, bug or not.
(I haven’t even tried printing from CS3 to the laser or the Epson R300. I’ve been afraid that smoke might come out…)
I ran through the setup several times, and as I said, I have but one printer.
So far as I am concerned, (for the moment!) CS3 is better than previous versions. What I did was to set up the printing as I wished it, said "Done" and exited the printing. I exited PS, opened it up again selected the print, went to print and the only thing I had to do was to set up the printer itself, as I have always needed to do (paper size, Color Management, orientation). On these matters PS does default to the printer’s default, which is fine with me.
Next i ran the program to final print stage, but then cancelled. In earlier systems after either cancelling or printing, I could resume with settings intact. This is also true of CS3. I can exit printing altogether, hit Ctrl-P and all settings are intact, including Page setup.
So with but one printer (Canon i9900) I see no workflow disruptions not instigated by moi. When I get the 3800, that may change things as I will have two printers.
Fred, I am quite familiar with the roll versions of the big Epsons, and in any case, printing with sheet paper is a real pain in the ass! Multiple prints require manual labor on each print. But printing from the rolls results in prints with curl. So, for up to 16×20 approx, the 3800 will have to do.
Any monkey wrench tossed in by an apps workflow only decreases the gumption factor by levels approaching an order of magnitude.
You do know what I mean by "Gumption" Jeff, I presume. Has anyone at Adobe even given it a thought?
I can consult (for a modest fee) on Gumption Factors with the Adobe folks. They appear to need a good dose.
Probably no gumption to even try gumption testing, I suspect.:D
Larry, did you actually send the re-opened canceled job to the printer? Or did you just open the print setup dialog to find all your settings still there?
That was one of the things I was on about – it looks for all intents and purposes that the print will go to the printer fine, but when it does it will be reset to default settings – as I found out when it printed the indicated A3+ colour print as a B&W A4 hanging off the top corner of a sheet of A3+ Hahnemeuhle Photo Rag paper. Re-opening page setup then revealed everything back to default.
In my case with the Epson’s you cannot believe what Page Setup shows you always.
Fred, I did send it to the printer but with a stop for a final check, which Canon provides as a selection. A look-see at the final arrangements. Cancelling there is exactly the same as running the print in the past, so far as setup is concerned. With the CS3 dialog, I will most likely not need that final step, as the information, including a soft proof (Nice!) is presented.
This morning, I opened another image, went to "Print" and the color management is as for the first print. I have only to set the Page setup correctly. In fact, the image is about 7×10, and fits the default settings nicely.
That dialog on the Epson 9600 and I assume, the 7600 is fussy. I have found myself at loose ends with it and have had to be vigilant every re-print on CS, more so than on the i9900. Sizing the page length and the cut point has always been less than optimum on the 9600.
Which is why I asked, Larry – maybe there is something amiss between CS3 and Epson (all my printers are Epsons).
What I do know is that CS3 never remembers previous print settings here, even from one print to the next. Everything is always default (which is currently 7800, Advanced B&W printing, IS7800HPR profile).
I am disappointed to hear of all these printing woes with CS3. I print intermediate proofs for my photography business from Photoshop. But, since I can’t get CS3 to install, I guess for me it’s a moot point. CS2 works fine, once I figured out which settings to use for my purposes. Oh, well, what’s another $200?
Opening to the last known profile is always the way the Epson behaved. You need to change it with each paper. If you are printing with a Matt profile, it will come up that profile until you tell it different.
So, if I had my i9900 set up and switched to say, a 2400, I would expect to see the i9900 values still displayed in the print dialog until I change it to a suitable 2400 version. And, visa-versa.
Are you saying, Fred, that PS both defaults to the default printer and changing the color management settings from the last used?
To make sure I’ll run through it again today in actual working conditions as I have some colour canvas panos to print on the 7800 – I’ll attempt the first couple on CS3, but first sign of confusion, mis-placed colour management or counter-intuitive workflow and I’m back on CS2.
The inks and canvas are too expensive to mess about with.
I don’t have Epson, I have Canon printer (one and only one), and I was reporting the "default" issue from day one. Another machine have multiple network printers – Lexmark, Dell, Epson etc. CS2 remembers the last settings, CS3 reverts to all-default in all machines, no matter what. Do they expect us to believe this is the correct behaviour?
Like I said, my Canon i9900 doesn’t do that. Set your settings for color management and hit "Done". You will have to reset pagesizing, but it’s alwasys been that way.
I tried hitting Done, Remember etc. And I am not alone, many people report the same issue with reverting to default. And – no, it’s never been that way. In CS2 it remembers your settings (color management, page size, paper profile, orientation) on a "per session" basis vs. "per document" in CS3.
As Jeff has related, Adobe has decreed that this dumb-ass way is the "correct" way. And stuff what their customers might think.
They’ve only got to write the software, they don’t have to use it. One more time – "If it ain’t broke, don’t F^@%!*& fix it!"
I’ve been following this thread all the way through, and I can’t help but wonder, is there anyone out there who finds this new "feature" helpful in their workflow? That is, does anyone make use of it, and are they glad that Adobe changed it?
This isn’t an Epson only problem. I have an Epson 7600 and two A4 laser printers, both different, a B/W Brother and a colour Konica Minolta. The B/W Brother laser printer is the Windows default printer.
If I want to print to the B/W Printer it works fine, presumably because its default is to print at 600x600dpi – there appears to be something special about that resolution with this problem.
However, if I want to print the same image in the same session to my colour laser, it screws up in the manner we all have found out about, unless I set the resolution to the magic 600x600dpi – then it prints okay. However, load up another image to print, and you have to go through the same hoop of changing printers, changing resolution, changing page orientation etc etc, which is a complete pain.
Like Fred, I don’t care whether printing from CS2 was technically "correct" or not. What I care about is that it worked perfectly, and now printing from CS3 does not work perfectly.
What I would like to suggest is a compromise where in the user preferences one can select whether one wants "correct" per-document printing, or per-application printing. This has happened before when there was an outcry back when the new CS2 was launched, where the Window|Arrange|Tile menu only gave the new horizontal tile, when we were all used to a vertical tile. Set which one you want, is that a good idea? Then Adobe can say the application prints corrrectly and save face, and we can all go away and turn it off and have it print "properly"!
For printing to my Epson 7600, whether sheets or rolls,I export an EPS file to another PC on my network and print that through a RIP. That way I get the RIP to scale, rotate etc and it gets on with printing the pictures whilst my main PC is free to do more PhotoShop-ing. Also, having saved the eps on another machine means I have a backup of the actual file that prints, and reprints are a piece of cake, because they are identical every time – just load it up and print…
Yes this a duplicate post, I’m mainly here to counter #24…
Start frustrated Monday AM rant-
Why is printing from CS3 soooo screwed up?! Jeesh, all I want to do is crank out a screen grab of windows explorer to our networked HP laser to pass along file location information to the next department – something that I’ve done in PhotoshopXX for YEARS. I used to select ‘scale to fit ‘ and ‘center’ bing, done.
Now what do I get? scale to fit and center – I get a 1 inch square image in the upper left of the page. Center the page, NO ‘fit image’ and I get a huge chunk of the bottom quarter of the image in the upper left of the page. Oh, and the ctrl-p dialog preview looks just fine(?) I try a bunch of these at different settings, all crap and wasted time – I challenge someone to help me fix this! Do I have to manually enter a scale for every one these mundane print jobs?
Damn, it works without thinking in CS2, with no intervention on my part. I have a ton of problems with CS3 & my Minolta 2430DL @ home too. Simply unuseable.
Printing in CS3 is broken, somebody screwed up and devoted (and intelligent) users are getting angry. I’m getting closer to sending CS3 back and waiting for a functional application release…
I stand corrected. Kross is right. Whatever is setup pre CS3 is on a session basis.
The problem hasn’t changed for me, however. Instead of referring to the session setup, which changes each time, I now have to contend with the default each time. I also get perfect centering, which I never got in previous Photoshops.
What is different is the way the Epson is handled vs Canon. I repeat: So long as the image is open, CS3 retains the settings completely so all I have to do after testing is push print and let it run.
For people using certain kinds of elementary automated workflow to print, CS3 is a disaster. I’m not interested in what is "correct" or "incorrect" – that is an *irrelevant* red herring. The only thing that matters is what works most efficiently for the user, and if CS2 did the job more efficiently it is preferable in that respect.
In CS2, as long as I have the program open the correct printer remains selected and the Epson driver settings remain as preset in the Epson driver, including print centering which works fine. This allows me to automate resizing, output sharpening and spooling to the printer with one touch of a function key. A 150 MB file takes 8 seconds to run through this routine and start printing a centered print. Such an Action cannot be created in CS3 no matter whether I have the Epson set to default, and no matter how I try to coax the Epson Driver to remain set on "maximum" printable area to keep the print centered. I’ve given-up trying, because I’ve tried everything that I know of which can be tried, systematically. Between operations in the Print Module that have now become necessary and can’t be scripted in an Action and the behaviour of either the Photoshop Print Module or the Epson Driver in this environment, I have found no configurable Action that works.
The fact that Adobe failed to issue documentation advising users of the changes to the Print Module and how best to cope with them is unfortunate, to put it mildly. They are very good at advertising new features, so it is not for lack of ability to communicate program changes.
If Adobe is having problems with the contradictory requirements of Vista and XP, it would seem that this could have been resolved with configurable program options so that previous functionality for the large number of users on Windows XP and Epson X600/X800 (pre 3800) printers was maintained. Instead, it would appear that compromise decisions were made, most likely for commercial reasons.
In my case this strategy has back-fired because I’m now treating Adobe like I treat Microsoft: don’t buy anything until long enough after the more serious issues relating to core functionality are worked out. I can go on printing efficiently in CS2, use CS3 for all the great images processing advances it contains, and by the way, open images from Bridge 1, because unlike Bridge 2 it doesn’t do things to prevent itself from being re-opened unless I reboot the computer (unfortunate because Bridge 2 has some real neat features not in Bridge 1. I am discerning enough to sort-out minor from major annoyances with computer software, and in the case of CS3, we are dealing with several major ones.
Looked at from the outside, it is becoming increasingly tempting to surmise that the balance of Adobe’s corporate policy objectives – regardless of the brilliant and dedicated people working there at a technical level – is incrementally shifting at the margin from technical excellence to short-run commercial expediency where the two may clash in terms of development costs and the timing of cash flow.
Larry, as I posted in the "forgetting settings" thread, this failure to remember settings between prints of the same file happens when using a non-default printer.
By changing the 7800 to default and turning off the other printers, the print dialog remembered the settings between prints, just as you found with your Canon.
Use a non-default printer, and everything is toast immediately you’ve sent the job to the printer. Ctrl+P then opens the default printer settings for the next print of the same continuously open file.
This is inconsistent to say the least.
I don’t want to have to change my default printer all the time to suit Adobe’s dumb whims to avoid this. And I’m not getting Vista to justify this equally dumb behavior. XP SP2 is working just fine here.
