Photoshop CS4 has many rough spots

WB
Posted By
William_Burton
Nov 13, 2008
Views
435
Replies
12
Status
Closed
I’ve been through the mill, trying to get CS4 Design Premium to install. I finally managed, with the considerable help of a tier three Support Engineer. Since then I’ve had about a week’s exposure to Photoshop CS4. Here’s a list of things I don’t like and/or those that don’t work:

1) Program always crashes when I try to save a GIF file or try to use any of the new 3D tools.
2) I like two-across tool palette. When I drag workspace to left, it covers up this palette.
3) I like to leave three palettes open on the right, History, Characters and Layers. For no earthly reason that I can fathom the Layers palette has gotten considerably wider, and it cannot be reduced horizontally. Oh yes, I could reduce these three to icons, but then I’d be constantly clicking to open them and clicking to close them.
4) Open palettes have foreground precedence. This means that when I try to enlarge my workspace to the right, the workspace scroll bar disappears underneath the palettes.
5) The essentials button is destructive. I found this out the hard way when I clicked it and it wiped out a newly customized workspace. Now I know to save my customized workspace immediately upon completion.
6) Why did Adobe add the Adjustments button. It just creates an extra step when making adjustments. CS3 was smart enough to pop up the correct controls when adjustments were being made. Example: create New Adjustment Layer > Threshold. On my copy of CS4, I have to click Adjustments before the control shows up.
7) The new toolbar (at top of screen) wastes considerable space and is not deselectable. Hint courtesy of Support: Save your custom workspace with a very short name 2-3 characters; then this toolbar will combine with the menu bar.
8) Scrolling through highly magnified images is abysmally slow – much slower than it was on CS3.
9) The clone brush is less accurate in CS4, and it doesn’t always turn off when one is finished cloning.
10) None of my CS4 files installed with responsive, indexed Help files. Now, every Help request sends me to a sluggish web site where there are no indices, poorly organized information, and in some cases just a message that Help area is under development.
11) I haven’t been able to get the Patch tool to work correctly. 12) When program crashes (not always while attempting to save GIFs or 3D), it does so with generic, uninformative error message. In one week, I have had more Photoshop CS4 crashes than I ever experienced during the lifetime of CS3.
13) Why did the installer leave 34 superfluous language items (ones in anything other than US English in my case) in both the Legal and Lmresources folders? The product is bloated enough without oversights like that.

How many more will I find during the next week? I don’t know, but I’m sure there are more to be found. How many of those that I did notice are due to the dreadful suite installer? I don’t know the answer to that one either, but I suspect the installer may well have played a role.

I’m sure many will disagree, but IMHO Photoshop CS4’s user interface is godawful compared to its predecessors. I can’t find a single thing that can be accomplished with less mouse activity or keystrokes than earlier versions, but I have found quite a few things that demand more.

I was fortunate enough to have my installation issues addressed by one of Adobe’s top support engineers. Had it not been for that, I’m reasonably certain I’d still be trying to install CS4. I’ve been using Photoshop since version 3, and the Creative Suites going back to the first one. This is the first time I’ve ever felt that quality assurance was completely ignored for the sake of meeting a self-imposed release schedule.

As I remarked in one of my earlier email exchanges with Adobe support, "I wish that every software Product Manager would study the reasons why Vista and Office 2007 have gotten such lukewarm receptions." I’m afraid the CS4 team didn’t learn from Microsoft’s mistakes.

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JJ
John Joslin
Nov 13, 2008
While you obviously have some technical problems, I think your negative reaction to the new GUI betrays a typical resistance to change.

They didn’t change the interface just for fun. A lot of thought went into it. I have also been using PS since version 3.0 and have adapted to and revelled in each GUI change.

You may have to change your old habits, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing – on the contrary!
CC
Chris_Cox
Nov 13, 2008
Have you updated your video card drivers? The 3D code is even more brutal on video cards than the GPU image display code.

And I haven’t heard of other crashes saving as GIF.
WB
William_Burton
Nov 14, 2008
I concede some reluctance to change, especially when said change appears to have been made for change’s sake, and I’m especially resistant to change that demands a learning curve for simple operations that had already been mastered. Now if the total experience is enough of an improvement to warrant such change, then none of this would apply. I just feel this isn’t the case with Photoshop CS4.
WB
William_Burton
Nov 14, 2008
To Chris Cox:

I have the very latest drivers for my nVidia card. If my problem with saving GIF files is unique, then I would suspect the installer might have done an incomplete job without reporting it as such. The considerable difficulties I had, over a week’s time, trying to install CS4 Design Premium were by no means an isolated case. Adobe’s own suggestions to address installer issues by creating Desktop installer version from distribution DVDs, installing to another drive or folder or running a cleanup tool are all acknowledgments that the installer had problems. By the way, none of these suggestions, individually or in combination worked for me. I had to dig around and locate a registry key which referred to AdobeCMapsAll. This was a CS3 key that neither the installer nor cleanup tool caught. Deleting this key allowed me to advance (but by no means finish) my installation. The story is a lot longer than this, but the bottom line is that I have good reason to doubt the installer ever did its job properly.
JK
Jerome_Knyszewski
Nov 15, 2008
hated the change from ps7 to cs2, now i used a friend’s ps7 and i was in shock of how medieval that thing is ha ha

should upgrade to cs4 soon so i can whine too!
JJ
John Joslin
Nov 15, 2008
If you don’t use a capital "I" it all goes to Italics. (Part of the forum formatting.)
DM
dave_milbut
Nov 15, 2008
If you don’t use a capital "I" it all goes to Italics

only when you type "i" as in "i am happy" alone at the beginning of the line. here’s the forum formatting tips that explains it…

<http://www.adobeforums.com/Images/help/edithelp.htm#Summary>
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 16, 2008
Installers drive programmers mad. They have a life of their own. 🙁
CC
Chris_Cox
Nov 18, 2008
I wish I could fix the installer for you – but that is outside of my control. But we are trying to make sure things improve.
DS
David_S._Chapman
Nov 26, 2008
I have to agree that this version has changed certain ways of doing things that are detrimental to my work flow. For example, I do a lot of color correction using curves. In the last version I was able to open up the curve palette and run my cursor over the image to quickly analyze the images color range, only choosing to select a point on a curve by using a key command. Now I either have to select the "live selection tool" to pick my points (by hovering), and then switch back to manually move the points; or I can command click the image to view my range, but then I seem to be locked into choosing a point. And what happened to being able to move through the selected points on a curve with short cuts? Since I am working on a good number of images a day, I need a streamlined work flow, not a bloated one.

I’m on a Mac and the UI does seem very PC 2000.
JJ
John Joslin
Nov 26, 2008
I’m on a Mac

That’s your first mistake.

The second one is not familiarising yourself sufficiently with the new UI.

HAVE A NICE EVENING. 🙁
JJ
John Joslin
Nov 26, 2008
What make you think I’m running out of patience with people who are just against change even if it’s for the better?

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