where I depend on dragging one image or layer into the other quite often.
I can think of 3 ways to solve your problem.
1. turn off tabs in prefs.
2. tear the tab away from the window so you have 2 image frames.
3. duplicate the layer and point it to the image you want it in.
Thanks for the suggestions, but
1) It’s off. "File…open" opens a doc without a tab just fine. But if I drag in a photo from an outside app (ThumbsPlus) it opens with a tab even though they’re supposed to be turned off.
2) Didn’t know about the ‘tearing off the tab’ possibility, and I see it does work. While not ideal (I’d rather have no tabs to begin with, being as how I shut them off), it is fairly quick to do.
3) Way too much trouble…having to jump through a bunch of hoops to get where I was before in any earlier version. With multiple images open I can hit ‘v’ and easily drag one photo or layer elsewhere, I’d like to keep it no more involved than that.
I can also go up to the Window menu and turn off the tab, but I don’t think I should have to when they’re shut off in preferences.
I don’t necessarily dislike the tabs idea, but it seems to me if you shut them off, they should be off, not just off in some cases.
Thanks for the suggestions though…#2 seems viable if there’s no real fix.
If you go to Preferences > Interface and uncheck "Open documents as tabs" and "Enable floating document window docking" you should never see a tab again, no matter what.
If you still do, you can try to reset preferences as described in the FAQ on the top of this page.
Are you able to drag a file in and have it open without a tab? It doesn’t work here
You have to drag it on to the work area background, not on to another picture.
I get a tab no matter where I drag it, even if no file is open. You are not seeing the same thing?
"Open documents as tabs" and "Enable floating document window docking" are both unchecked, and trashing prefs didn’t affect this.
I have the same results as Derrick…no matter what I do, I get a tab with a dragged-in document, whether I release it over another photo or the background. Both the ‘tabs’ and ‘floating doc’ are unchecked in preferences, and it’s been restarted.
Out of curiosity I installed it on my laptop and results are the same. Both have Photoshop CS3 installed, in case that affects anything (I know it shouldn’t, but with oddball things like this, who knows).
I dragged it from ThumbsPlus, from Windows Explorer, and from Bridge CS4, same results. Both machines are XPSP3, I haven’t tried it on Vista, though I doubt it has anything to do with that.
I did discover a workaround of sorts that’s better than dragging and trashing the tab…right click on the tab, and choose ‘move to new window’. Still an unnecessary annoyance though.
If you wonder why this is a problem, I sometimes may drag several photos in from my viewer for processing, and may want to have 2 or more side by side for various reasons, and tabs don’t work for that. I can’t seem to find anything (like Window…arrange…cascade) that will stay checked and affect new dragged-in documents.
So do I understand correctly that this doesn’t happen to some? You can drag in a document and not get it tabbed?
It happens on my XP SP3 machine at work and my Vista64 SP1 machine at home. The reason I don’t want the tabs is zooming with the mousewheel is much smoother when the file is untabbed (OpenGL on)
Hmmm. It won’t do it now, but you can double-click in Bridge or Explorer and each opens in a new window.
If you go to Preferences > Interface and uncheck "Open documents as tabs" and "Enable floating document window docking" you should never see a tab again, no matter what.
Nope, that doesn’t work either. Dragging photos into CS4 still reverts to a tab (regardless of whether other photos are present or not).
I’m with the OP on this one … it’s a pain to have to keep tearing the tabbed images away to work on them when tabs are supposedly TURNED OFF.
it’s a pain to have to keep tearing the tabbed images away
Just use the Arrange Documents drop-down.
CS4 still reverts to a tab
You guys need Macs then. B)
BTW how is duplicate the layer and point it to the image you want it in too much trouble? this way has exact placement. you can even have photoshop create a new doc to place the layers in.
It’s not a PC/Mac thing, otherwise the old versions would do the same thing, but I assume the smiley means you’re joking…at least I hope so 8^).
The existence of workarounds doesn’t excuse the problem. I can double click the images in Bridge and they’ll open in PS with no tabs, but I don’t want to have to use Bridge unless I choose to.
Seems simple; tabs turned off, you drag in a photo and there is no tab. I see no reason why file…open results in a windowed image, and drag and drop results in a tabbed one.
Even with keyboard shortcuts, duplicating the layer and getting it to whatever other document I choose is more hassle than simply dragging it there. If I drag two similar photos to PS so I can compare them side by side with some adjustment, it’s extra steps to get rid of the tabs.
Whether this glitch is a real nuisance or a silly thing to whine about depends on your normal work procedures; there’s no ‘right’ way to do many things in PS, but many options instead, and many of us have developed favorite procedures over the years. Giving the choice between tabs or no tabs, then forcing tabs anyway doesn’t make sense, and it IS a nuisance to some of us. I seriously doubt that they intended it that way, it’s probably an oversight, but it’s an annoying one for some of us.
If every time you opened PS, you had to click and point several times to choose your colorspace, CMYK prefs, workspace, user name, and default palettes showing, you’d no doubt get annoyed about it; this is the same principle…while it can be worked around, it’s extra things to do that are unnecessary. Because of the way I work on photos, I want them to open in windows, not tabs, plain and simple.
I don’t want to have to use Bridge unless I choose to.
Then do what I said and click in Windows Explorer.
Incidentally, Bridge used to be a clunky and slow (I hated it) but in its latest incarnation it’s a great tool. Checkout the videos in the on line help community.
Click on the layer you want to drag to another tabbed document, drag it up to the tab you want to drag it too, wait until that image displays (there is a long delay for some reason) then drop it on the new image. Drag and drop works fine for me, except for what seems like a long delay for the tabbed image to come up. However, honestly the tabs for me turned out to be less than a great thing too. Like you I thought it would be great, but really don’t much care for them. I turned them off in the preferences.
Robert
In reply to:
"Then do what I said and click in Windows Explorer. "
If I click an image in Windows Explorer, it opens in Irfanview.
I could change the file type association to Photoshop, but then if I want a quick peek at a jpeg or tiff, I’ve got to wait for PS to open and show it, instead of ‘click’ and it’s open within a second. I could right click and choose send to…Photoshop, but again, that’s a waste of time and extra steps compared to just dragging the doggone file to PS.
I understand there are workarounds, and Bridge is indeed much nicer than it used to be (it didn’t even hijack my card reader this time, thank you Adobe!) But what I was looking for was 1) a missed setting somewhere that was causing the tabs to open for drag’n’drop only when they’re supposed to be shut off, or 2) a way to fix things so when I shut off tabs, they are off. If there’s no fix, at least they know about the odd behavior, which I have to believe wasn’t intentionally done, because it serves no purpose.
In File associations you can add different programs to "Open", Preview", "Print", etc.
found the problem and a workaround. if this is intentional, it’s some pretty bad ui design.
drag images to the menubar of the window, or a palette. not to the empty part of the photoshop window, which is where everyone drags stuff.
it tries to put the new image where you drag to. if you drag to an image subwindow, it’ll put the new image in that subwindow as a tab. if you drag to the empty area in the main photoshop window, it puts it there. if you drag to the title area or anywhere else where it can’t actually put an image, it creates a new window, which is what you want.
this is undiscoverable. if "open in tabs" is turned off, dragging to the main photoshop area should create a new window, unless you drag to the edge like you’re docking a window and the docking highlight comes up so it’s obvious what’s happening.
by the way, i have the zooming problem too, thanks for the workaround, that drove me crazy. another in the long list of serious cs4 bugs, at least this one has a workaround. by the way, the zooming problem happens when images are in the main photoshop window. if you have them in tabs inside a separate window, it doesn’t happen.
Thanks for that, it works!! I just tried dragging a pic to a palette and was pleased to see a window open. Sure beats right-clicking every tabbed image and windowing it manually, especially when you drag several in at a time.
I’ve discovered that I really depend on being able to move images around the work area, something you can’t do if they’re tabbed, so it’s been very frustrating dealing with CS4 in that respect.
While this is a workaround, it is much better than any of the other suggestions, as I’m able to keep the workflow and procedures that I prefer, just changing where I drop the dragged photo.
Thanks to Shawn Mills for the workaround; i could have screamed 46 images into a 300 image job. Using a wacom to zoom caused the same problems noted as above; prefs set to unchecked "open docs as tabs" and checked "allow floating blah" still didn’t work when you drag in your doc from windows explorer; and while some product manager at adobe might feel that’s not a bug, to me it is; i sort my files in WE by date modified; so that the original scans show up first, and the mods i make to them (with a new TS) show up last; a quick drop from WE on one monitor to PS on the other monitor is quick; going through file open or bridge is just a pita. I’d consider this a bug; that it works on the non-open-spaces of PS and not where you’d expect this to is… i think the definition of a bug. From the users perspective. 🙂
While I doubt this really is a "bug" I certainly think they ought to treat it like one (i.e. fix it), but I’ve had enough similar irritations when upgrading to (previous) new versions of Photoshop that I don’t doubt it’s just poor UI design. Not to be a grump or anything.
It sounds like my workflow is similar to that mentioned by a number of previous posters, in that I depend on having multiple images open and visible at once, and frequently drag and drop files from Explorer. Tabs did nothing for me but get in the way and add in extra steps (I’d been dragging each tab into a blank area to make a new window rather than right-clicking, but if I accidentally dropped it on another image it would just move the tab to THAT window, and I was starting to lose my patience).
As far as switching to Mac, as soon as you convince Autodesk to port 3D Studio Max to Mac I’ll start thinking about it… ;P
Thanks Shawn for the tip. My sanity (FWIW) thanks you too.
To the person with the comment about switching to a Mac. I was just on another forum where someone with a Mac was complaining about the same issue. They blamed it on PCs. Funny, I guess getting a Mac doesn’t solve this one.
So it seems whether you’re on a Mac or a PC this new tab docking is a big pain in the butt.
Even with all the options availble in tab mode such as displaying all tabs at once, etc…its still lousy. I hate a lot of things about CS4. I LOVE that no matter what zoom you’re in the image is smooth and is never stair stepped, but other wise the tab feature and the animated zoom is a waste of time and a big annoyance.
Brent
Buko was joking.
Did you read the whole thread?
There is no problem, it is just a matter of adapting to a slightly different way of doing things. I haven’t seen a tab since I turned them off five months ago.
Sometimes progress means being flexible.
And you can’t please all the people all the time.
