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Photoshop CS3 annoyances. Workarounds?

Hey guys. I switched to cs3 a while back, and there are a few things that are really getting on my nerves. I'm hoping someone knows a way to 'fix' them.

-If I'm working zoomed in and I alt-tab, and alt-tab back to Photoshop, my view will be in the top left corner, no matter where I was before. This is a royal pain, and the only way around it I can find is to go into one of the other windowing modes (whatever they're called, what you get when you press F), which isn't always practical, but a decent workaround I suppose. This is only a problem when you've maximised the window inside of Photoshop, I think.

-Another problem you only run into when you've maximised your window inside of PS is that even only BARELY touching the sides of the window auto-scrolls you to that side, REALLY fast. Not pleasant or practical.

-In a similar vein, if you've hidden your tools (tab), touching the sides of your screen with the cursor makes them pop up, or at least makes the drag-out bar appear. Not the greatest problem, but I'm venting.

-Much as I loved being able to dock palettes under eachother, not having them overlap or have gaps if you resize one, my colour-palette always seems to go back to take up roughly one third of the vertical screen-space if I close and open photoshop, which is far more than what I need. I'll drag the border between the palette and the one under it upwards to where I want it, and it'll just be back to where it was the next time I open PS. Again, nothing terribly annoying, but I'm venting. Join me, it's liberating.

Replies

  • East
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    East polycounter lvl 14
    It's pretty amazing, I've been using Photoshop since.. well, it must be version 3, and I consider myself very good at how things work in there, but I can't for the life of me come up with solutions off the top of my head. It's a bit embarrassing, especially since what you describe are issues that annoy me, but that I've just stuck with and never seriously considered coming to grips with.

    Not very helpful post, I'm afraid, but.. you're not alone :P
  • Eric Chadwick
    About the last one, what if you save the workspace and reload it? Not an answer really.

    I like the F modes a lot actually, since I can pan beyond the image border. Helpful when the Transform gizmo is larger than the image.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    i'll join, no problem - hardcoded interface colors that do not work with dark windows color schemes. can't see sh*t in CS3. needless to say that older versions adapted just fine but now the only color you seem to be able to change is the one for the tool palette titlebar from blue to grey. amazing! thanks! ... not!
  • HarlequiN
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    HarlequiN polycounter lvl 18
    If this only occurs when you maximise your document window, then my workaround suggetion would be to not maximise it, and instead use one of the other screenmodes you cycle through with F. This has the same practical effect of maximising the screen real estate, but without the irritation you cite (maybe). I'm not so sure it's purely a Photoshop issue though, since I just tried it and it didn't move my view of the document at all :/

    I'm not encountering this either. My experience only has the window autoscroll when I have a selection tool (urm) selected - and in those circumstances the speed of scrolling is related to how close the cursor is to the edge of the screen - it starts scroling slowly about 20 pixels out, and speeds up when I'm right at the edge. I used to have th eproblem you mention with older versions of the software, but I haven't had it with CS3.

    Yes, it does pop the menus out if you hit the side, but you need to hold the cursor there for a split second - they don't pop out (or shouldn't) if you just brush against them for a moment while painting .

    As to your last point Pea, have you tried saving the workspace, as Eric suggested, and then *not reloading it? It occurs to me that I've never encountered the problem you speak of (except when PS has not been closed properly - in those instances any UI changes are not recalled as a default), but then I always save my prefered workspace as soon as I can, because PS has always had an issue with spontaniously forgetting all it's interface settings - Thanks to the workspace options I can quickly get back my prefered locations without messing around. So possibly one reason I haven't seen thsi issue and you have is that I have my workspace saved as a seperate file rather than just the default...

    As for thomap's issue, that is indeed a bit crap.

    My own issue? It now takes far longer to open a document window than in any other version of PS (I find that both at home and at work), be it starting a new document, or opening an existing one, or duplication one that's already open - it takes... a while. In fact most operations seem slower, well, *are slower, I checked by writing a script compatable with both CS2 and CS3 that timed certain operations. CS3 was considerably slower in about 50% of the operations I tried.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    As for the long operation time, I simply find it unacceptable. The thing is, when I checked around online forums discussing this issue I read things like 'Oh, ten seconds to open a document? It's not so bad!' , but it is haha.

    Harl, make sure that your default printer is not an online printer. If it is, even the smallest .jpg (or any file for that matter) will always make CS3 freeze for like 5 seconds instead of opening the file instantly. Something that some users might not notice, but when it comes to opening/closing textures dozen times a day it is a real pain.

    You also need do clear the recent documents list to clear that one problem. My solution was to set a bogus xps printer as default, to override network printers (something you are very likely to need to do if this is a work machine on a network). I had to figure out that one myself since the official support guys contacted at work did not provide any solution.

    Hope this helps. Sorry Peapea, I have no solution to your probs, CS3 is a pain for me too espeially the new docking crap. The new shortcuts for layer grouping/ctrl-selecting are nice tho.
  • Valandar
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    Valandar polycounter lvl 18
    So is it a good thing I'm still stuck on Photoshop 7?
  • Michael Knubben
    Actually, the new Curves dialog is awesome.
    And a few other things are really nice as well.
  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    ha thats great. thanks for the tips on the netwrk printer stuff.
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    Valander, I forget if Photoshop 7 has the warp tool, that a very nice tool, and the fibers filter seems cool. I think this was there since CS though. I played with CS 3 briefly and I wasn't impressed, new UI but whatever. wink.gif Did they fix the bs that photoshop cs2 I believe added that doesn't let users overwrite a tga from a psd with layers with an action? Ever since CS2 I have to add and extra step to my update files action? It still pisses me off. wink.gif SOOO stupid. If anyone has a workaround for that it would be great. CS 2 forces you to save a copy of your tga if the psd document has layers when doing a save as with an action. I imagine this happens with other file formats but I only use tga for the most part. Thanks for sharing about the printer, it's something to keep in mind.

    Alex
  • Eric Chadwick
    Still in CS3. I gave you a workaround when you asked this before, did it not work?
    http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=214292&an=&page=0&vc=1
  • Psyk0
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    Psyk0 polycounter lvl 18
    Sometimes i use PSD path unwrapper for uvs, with photoshop 7 the paths remained un-editable while working on layers, is there a way to do the same in cs3? Because everytime i do transforms or delete a layer it works only on the path when it's visible...turning it on/off is annoying after a while.
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    Eric it does it even if there is no alphas. wink.gif I was mostly wondering about if CS3 save things again like in photoshop 7. I'll have to try what you said to see how I like it.

    Alex
  • Eric Chadwick
    Psyk0, you could hotkey an Action to hide it. And hotkey another to unhide it.

    Yeah Sage CS3 doesn't have an option to prevent it, afaik. Happens with layers too. Though it doesn't add Copy if you save in a different folder than the PSD. The history trick is nice, you'll like it.
  • t4paN
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    t4paN polycounter lvl 10
    Sometimes I can't save files (it mostly happens to files I worked on with my wacom, dunno if it's relevant) to jpg. I have no idea why that is, it's really annoying though.

    I always end up printscreening those things as a workaround.
  • Michael Knubben
    Sage:
    step 1 - Get Vtools.
    step 2 - Love Vtools.

    It's as simple as that!
  • HarlequiN
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    HarlequiN polycounter lvl 18
    vTools

    (I really need to finish some of these other scripts I've got half done :/ )
  • East
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    East polycounter lvl 14
    vHexMagnet? That sounds very handy. I've always made them by hand in Photoshop using the Offset plugin. It works, but when you're bad at mathematics it takes a while to visualise the results :P
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