Dan Margulis Applied Color Theory

 Advanced Users and Photoshop CS4
Almost every December, I post to the list a summary of what's happened in ACT classes over the year, particularly  in the advanced classes, which take place in October and November and draw very skilled retouchers. The 2008 classes were exciting not just for the quality of the technique but because of what the students were reporting about the economy, as these classes took place only a month or two after the near-collapse of the U.S. financial system.

The entire report and comments from readers is posted here.
This thread, however, pertains only to one of the items I had reported--what the students thought of Photoshop CS4. My post below, therefore, has been slashed mercilessly. —DM


From the 2008 advanced courses
Posted by: Dan Margulis
Thu Dec 4, 2008 6:11 am (PST)

In October and November I teach advanced courses, open only to those who have already suffered through the three-day ACT course. These are the most valuable classes of the year for me because of the skill level of the students. The first class exposes a lot of of errors in technique. In these advanced classes it's unusual to find students making outright errors, so it's more of a comparison of techniques without introduction of extraneous silliness. There's no better way to get a definitive answer about how to get the best results from a certain image than to assign it to 23 experts to try to correct it with a method of their choosing and compare the results. That's how I've validated a lot of my own techniques over the years--I use them in these classes before the public knows about them, and see whether I'm doing better than all these knowledgeable folk who don't have access to them.

Once the classes they're complete (and the last one was last week) for the past few years I've discussed what was learned both from the standpoint of color correction but in terms of trends in our field. People who are so committed to quality that they suffer through a three-day session with me (and sometimes more; seven of the 23 attendees this year had taken the advanced course in prior years) and still want more are probably worth listening to. Also, a high percentage of the people who took the advanced courses are members of this list and may be interested in hearing an overall wrapup, so I'll go on at a little more length than in past years.

CLASS MAKEUP.
Obviously the main topic of non-color correction discussion was about the economy. Before talking about the disastrous last couple of months, the very makeup of the classes said a lot about trends in the last couple of years. For the first time in memory two groups were totally missing: newspaper production people, and professional photographers-- both, presumably, victims of the economy. Their places have been taken by the growing number of "super-amateurs", people who have all the attributes of professional photographers, including occasionally selling their work, but who are professionally successful in some other field (often medicine or law) and so are not constrained to support themselves with their hobby.

We had six such people in the classes this year. Two others had different legitimate reasons for needing to know how to color-correct but were also ultra-serious photographers, so more than a third of the attendees fell into the category of super-amateur. Understanding that some folk are difficult to classify, I arranged them as follows:

*7 people work in what might somewhat inaccurately be termed an in-house setting. They work with specific types of image for a specific purpose.

*6 super-amateurs, as described above, who AFAIK rarely work on anything but their own photos.

*5 persons who do retouching for a service provider and thus accept jobs from the general public. None were from commercial printers, however.

*4 freelance retouchers.

*One person who falls into a unique category: a bestselling author of cooking books who, not surprisingly, wants the food pictured therein to look appetizing and doesn't trust anybody else to make it happen.

THE ECONOMY.

****************
[LONGSNIP]
****************

THE STATE OF THE FIELD.
Each year I ask a series of questions as to whether things have gotten better or worse in certain areas, with a view to seeing whether there was any consensus. Here's what the advanced class attendees said this year.

*It happened that only three attendees deal with multiple commercial printers. Therefore, one can't draw too much from the responses to my question as to whether printers are today more quality conscious and/or more knowledgeable than they were too years ago, especially since one person answered yes, another said they are worse, and the third said they are about the same.

*A lot of people receive files from photographers, however, and here there *was* a consensus that the quality is considerably higher than it was two years ago. The speculation was that this is largely the impact of better equipment being available to more people.

*A surprise: two retouchers said that a majority of their originals came in in raw format. I had been under the impression that few photographers would agree to this, on the grounds that it makes their work too much of a commodity and takes them out of the creative process. I surmise that the agencies are telling them raw or nothing.

*Those who have purchased Photoshop CS4 have reacted negatively. Everyone notes the speed differential and the new stability of Bridge. This is not seen as compensation for having to relearn adjustment layers, particularly given that the most important adjustment for this group, curves, is considerably less efficient than in previous versions.

*As to clients, the group confirmed most of what has been said by advanced classes in the last three years: expectations for turnaround times continue to decrease. This time, unlike past groups, we did not hear about pressure to reduce prices. OTOH, this group repeated the contention of last year's that clients often have no idea how difficult certain Photoshop maneuvering is and believe that almost anything can be "Photoshopped out" at no charge.

COLOR CORRECTION.

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[LONGSNIP]
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Nevertheless, in advanced courses the pattern is the same: narrowing down the field takes longer, but the final determination is unanimous more often than not. In this field, quality *does* count--as we found out in the second (Washington) class. The Washout Skintone exercise (light, overly yellow professional model with various complexion problems, easy to make the hair too colorful) has been around since 1999 and rates #3 on the votes-per-class scale of approval. We've had, therefore, around 200 different corrected versions of this image submitted over the years. It's a tough technical exercise, and the 2008 classes didn't do expecially well with it, with a couple of exceptions. One of these, stunningly, was better not just than the rest of the class, but than any of the 200 previous versions, including three or four I'd done myself. Again, this qualitative difference is not just my opinion, but that of everyone who looked. Even having seen the version and knowing his basic approach (it depended on a couple of Man from Mars moves with some interesting masking) I couldn't do as well in the third class.

But next year I will, for sure. That's the lasting allure of getting groups as talented as this together, it forces us to keep learning. All good things, however, must end, so I reiterate that the plan is that the November 2009 advanced classes will be the last ones. If you have taken ACT (or have reserved a spot in a 2009 ACT course) and would like the advanced class invitation next month, let me know offline.

Meanwhile, thanks to all who attended for a stimulating experience.

Dan Margulis

Note:About a month after this was written (i.e. January 2009) it was decided not to offer advanced courses in 2009 because of the economic circumstances. The final advanced courses will be held in 2010--DM
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Re: From the 2008 advanced courses
Posted by: "Jim Donovan"
Thu Dec 4, 2008 8:17 am (PST)

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 6:52 AM, Dan Margulis wrote:

Those who have purchased Photoshop CS4 have reacted negatively. Everyone
notes the speed differential and the new stability of Bridge. This is not seen as
compensation for having to relearn adjustment layers, particularly given that the most
important adjustment for this group, curves, is considerably less efficient than in previous
versions.

I hate to even ask this but what did those I have to keep employed by changing things that work just fine minions do to Curves as well as adjustment layers to make them considerably less effecient?????? Please,Please chime in if anyone can explain this disaster that has become a Photoshop routine.Thanx,Jim Donovan
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Re: From the 2008 advanced courses
Posted by: J Walton
Thu Dec 4, 2008 9:05 am (PST)

They changed a few things that kind of bug me, but the most disturbing is my 16-year old habit of hitting Command-# to view the individual channels while making curves. Or the same shortcut to view the channels themselves if no dialog is up.

Because there is no dialog anymore (the curves are in a little adjustment pane that is always there but only active if you are clicked on a layer) you can no longer have the same shortcut for viewing the Red channel and switching to the red in curves. Viewing the red channel is now Command-2, and editing the Red channel in curves is Option-2. Adobe said they had a good reason for this, but I think it is totally lame.

What is lamer is they changed the color correction tools WITHOUT IMPROVING THEM. Anyone who has done a hue/saturation move in Camera RAW can see that Photoshop does not, in fact, have the most advanced color correction tools in the industry. Photoshop doesn't have the most advanced tools among Adobe's lineup. (Note - LAB is a colorspace, not a tool).

As always it is the seemingly insignificant changes that hit hardest. I have a decade-old habit of hitting Command-Tilde out of reflex, which used to be the shortcut to go to the composite channel. It often didn't have any effect, it was just a neutral move, something that I would do to jumpstart the thinking process. But if I was painting a mask or had accidentally click on a layer mask it would be a good thing to do, and never hurt anything. Now it switches between open documents and that drives me crazy.

I'm sure I could change the last one but if I have to relearn keyboard shortcuts I may as well do it all.

J Walton
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Re: From the 2008 advanced courses
Posted by: "Jim Donovan"
Thu Dec 4, 2008 10:55 am (PST)

Thanx for the great reply!!! Are you saying that there is no longer an option to pull up a curves dialog box whenever you want,IE is the option of going adjustments,curves,then doing what ever you want in the curves dialog as a whole or individual channels gone?? Say it aint so!!!!!!! The short cuts don't bother me too much,I consider them an "add on",not vital,but messing with by far the most useful color correction tool's actual function is a totally I need to change things for the sole reason to trying to deceive customers into thinking I am giving them something new. The last few "Upgrades' have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the "Photoshop team" has hit a wall and dose not have anything new. But they need to feed the beast that has become the upgrade monster.They can only continue to do so if we continue to flush money on such garbage,we are the only ones that can insist on customer service. Jim Donovan
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Re: From the 2008 advanced courses
Posted by: "Andrew Webb"
Thu Dec 4, 2008 11:20 am (PST)

This is not the case. Curves works fine.

Why is everybody freaking out over the upgrade? The shortcuts thing was a pain, but a plugin from Adobe restores the old behavior.

If you want to know what works and what doesn't, download the free fully-functioning 30-day trial version and try it yourself. If you hate it, delete it. Why rely on partially-correct answers gleaned from this list? Clogging the list is silly when there are masses of PSCS4 resources all over the web, including videos, shortcut maps, full- length reviews, Adobe's own resources, etc. etc. etc.
You sound like a bunch of worried hens... <smile>

Andrew Webb
www.informationcontraband.com
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PSCS4 keyboard shortcuts WAS: Re: [colortheory] From the 2008 advanc
Posted by: "Andrew Webb"
Thu Dec 4, 2008 11:20 am (PST)

From John Knack's blog:

<http: //blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/10/shortcut_changes_in_cs4.html>

"We have, however, created a solution: you can download a file
containing a plug-in (Mac)/registry entries (Windows) that remap the
channel keys. That is, you give up using Cmd-~ to switch among open
documents, and you lose Cmd-1 for zooming to 100%, but tilde will go
back to selecting the composite channel and 1, 2, 3, etc. will go back
to selecting/targeting the first, second, third, etc. channels. The
Mac plug-in just needs to be dropped into your Photoshop plug-ins
directory, and on Windows you can enable/disable the behavior by
double-clicking the reg entries."

<http: //blogs.adobe.com/jnack/files/Use_Old_Shortcuts.zip>

/andrew
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "photografix1999"
Fri Dec 5, 2008 5:46 am (PST)

I know I'm late in responding to this old thread. But I had to vent. We just bought the upgrade. It's a workflow disaster.

Retouching dozens and dozens of all kinds of images has ground to a near-halt while trying to adjust to the "tossing" Hand Tool madness, channel switching "fix" (cmd to option) and this despicable "Adjustment Panel." The sliders are too small and move too erraticaly. I could go on and on. I really should've downloaded a trial version first. I would've never bought it.

I wouldn't be so disgusted if Adobe allowed us to get our palettes and dialog boxes back in preferences. Same with the new Rotate canvas function--which is tied to the terrible toss Hand Tool function (talk about 1 step forward and 1 step back!). The new Bridge is much better. But that's all that I'm happy with. I'm seriously considering uninstalling or deleting the PSCS4 component from my system.

The lesson: DO NOT buy PCS4 before using a free trial.

Looking at this upgrade and all their acquisitions, Adobe is obviously becoming a overgrown and bloated force in the software world. Undoubtedly it will soon burn itself out if it doesn't start listening to the professionals who buy the software and not their impractically grandiose ideas on how we should work.

Eric Basir
Photo Grafix
http://www.PhotoGrafix.pro
847-673-7043
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Jeremy Schultz"
Fri Dec 5, 2008 8:43 am (PST)

I?m glad someone else doesn?t like the ?tossing? Hand Tool. I live in Iowa and we?re already in winter, so for an apt analogy I?d compare the Hand Tool?s performance to driving a Mustang on icy roads‹you can get where you want to go, but if you stop at your destination you?re likely to slide right by it.

Jeremy Schultz
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Pylant, Brian"
Fri Dec 5, 2008 8:43 am (PST)

Retouching dozens and dozens of all kinds of images has ground to a
near-halt while trying to adjust to the "tossing" Hand Tool madness,

You (might) be pleased to note that you can turn this off -- go into your General prefs and turn off "Flick Panning." Talk about a completely and utterly useless bells-n-whistles feature added only to titilate the masses.

Unfortunately turning off the hideous "Animated Zoom" doesn't actually turn it off. (Ditto on completely and utterly useless.)

Same with the new Rotate canvas
function--which is tied to the terrible toss Hand Tool function (talk
about 1 step forward and 1 step back!).

Are you referring to rotating the view? This doesn't happen to me -- when I rotate the view with Flick Panning turned on it doesn't behave the same way as the hand tool does. (We have a lot of templates that include upside-down panels, so I actually find this feature extremely useful.)

and this despicable
"Adjustment Panel." The sliders are too small and move too erraticaly.
I could go on and on.

The single-worst "improvement" in PS CS4 IMO, a distinct and definitive downgrade to how adjustment layers used to work.

BRIAN PYLANT
Manager, Electronic Prepress

Disc Makers
7905 North Route 130
Pennsauken, NJ 08110
Toll free: 1-800-468-9353 ext. 5539
www.discmakers.com
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Alex Kent"
Fri Dec 5, 2008 8:43 am (PST)

tossing can be turned off in the preferences. keyboard shortcuts can be returned with the plugin.

tools change and evolve. making a tool better for some people will make it worse for others.
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Pylant, Brian"
Fri Dec 5, 2008 9:13 am (PST)

tools change and evolve. making a tool better for some people will
make it worse for others.

Absolutely true, but I think the argument would be: did they actually make anything actually better by anyone's standards or needs? Does Flick Panning actually improve the users' ability to work? Animated zooms? Changing long-standing key commands? Reducing the usability of adjustment dialogs?

Perhaps I'm being a bit close-minded, but I see no validity to any of these. Tools *need* to evolve, but to a purpose or need. None of these qualify IMO.

BRIAN PYLANT
Manager, Electronic Prepress

Disc Makers
7905 North Route 130
Pennsauken, NJ 08110
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Alex Kent"
Fri Dec 5, 2008 11:32 am (PST)

'throw' the image with a click-drag then click again once to stop the slide.

i find this very nice with a wacom, it makes moving around the image a very small movement of the pen.
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Alex Kent"
Fri Dec 5, 2008 11:34 am (PST)

this has been discussed before, so i'll be brief. keyboard shortcuts helps new users. adobe believe that photoshop is overly complex for new users - i teach it, i agree.

new users win, muscle-memory users loose. (from a cynical perspective: muscle-memory users are going to buy upgrades anyway, so features for new users is a net-win for adobe)

i mentioned in a previous message my appreciation for the flick- panning when working with a wacom. i don't particularly like it on my laptop's trackpad. i dislike that it is inconsistent with every other application that i use (i'd like the option of flick-panning in ACR, indesign, hasselblad's phocus, etc.)

imho animated zooms are more questionable, i don't find they inhibit anything i do, but no real benefit either. connected to this, i do really appreciate how much faster CS4 draws big files (1GB+) on my ageing G5.

new adjustments dialog? allows things like: changing adjustment's blending mode without switching in and out of the adjustment. again, modal controls confuse new users. less model controls makes the software easier (think enormous success of Lightroom and design of ACR).

this is straying a little from list topic.

alex kent.
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "photografix1999"
Fri Dec 5, 2008 11:35 am (PST)

Greetings Brian and the group:

I totally agree. Us retouchers use Photoshop so much that Adobe really needs to be careful when they mess with things and make them hard to turn off or revert. We don't have a lot of time to scour every piece of documentation to figure out "new" features. Dan's comments are right on point. They need to hire him to be on their board of directors or something. Because they have gone in the WRONG direction.

Case in point: This flick-toss-pan Hand Tool function took me hours and hours of searching PSCS4's "Help," other websites and this fine list to know that I could turn the d*** thing off!!! All that time I could've been working.  

You're exactly right about comparing driving on an icy road to the Hand Tool flick-flack-pan-toss-whatever function. I switch between Hand Tool and other tools with the Space Bar. So that "flick" thing caused major collisions with my time! Oh, I could go on and on. But the Adjustment Panel is the worst time-waster/workflow-buster for me. Absolute folly. God/Allah/Jesus/Buddah save us all.

The Adjustment Panel shock reminds me of a nightmare I had about being on a bus and the driver was daydreaming and steered off a bridge into a nearby canal and we drowned. We couldn't stop him. The water pressure around the emergency exits blocked us. The Adjustment Panel traps and blocks us with no hope of escape.

Back to work...

Eric Basir
Photo Grafix
http://www.PhotoGrafix.pro
847-673-7043
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "David Lawrence"
Fri Dec 5, 2008 5:03 pm (PST)

And the adjustment panels no longer keep the number in the slider's numeric entry box highlighted. In CS3 Hue/Sat, I constantly used this to reset the slider to 0 with the keyboard. In CS4 I have to highlight the number first or use the backspace key then enter 0. :o(

David L. Lawrence
Graphic Artist
PixelPurfect.com
Indianapolis, Indiana 46278
317-329-5595
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Dennis Dunbar"
Sat Dec 6, 2008 7:51 pm (PST)

The new CS4 version did represent quite a change in many of the ways we work with Photoshop and some of them I find really useful and some took me a long time to get used to. Before someone gives into frustration and declares this the worst ever it could help to realize that the Photoshop world encompasses a wide range of users. What some hate others love and Adobe has to work quite a balancing act to keep everyone happy.

Sometimes they're not as successful at this balancing act as I'd prefer, but that's like being a referee - for just about every call you make someone's gonna hate it.

As part of the beta team I can tell you that just about all of these features got quite a lot of discussion and tweaking during the testing period. I did not agree with some of the calls, but there was a genuine attempt to address user's concerns.

The flick panning is something I started out hating and then once I got used to it I loved it. It does make navigating around an image faster, and it is easily turned off (once you know where to turn it off). The new way the Adjustment panel works sometimes I like and sometimes I hate. When I remember to use the finger tool that allows me to click in the image and then push and pull the curve dynamically it's pretty cool. But that's still a mixed bag for me.

But I absolutely love the drag resizing for the brushes! This saves lots of time for me and I can drag to just the right size, no more wondering how big would a 250 pixel brush be, or do I need a 400?

So what I'm saying is give it a little time before you make a final judgment. Adobe never seems to get it all right, but sometimes they're not as bad as you might think, and sometimes they're really pretty good.

Dennis Dunbar

Blog: http://www.dunbardigital.com/blog/blog.php

Website: http://www.dunbardigital.com
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Re: CS4
Posted by: Dan Margulis
Wed Dec 10, 2008 8:05 pm (PST)

Dennis writes,

The new CS4 version did represent quite a change in many of the ways
we work with Photoshop and some of them I find really useful and some
took me a long time to get used to. Before someone gives into
frustration and declares this the worst ever it could help to realize
that the Photoshop world encompasses a wide range of users.

I haven't seen anyone characterize this as the worst release ever. I believe everyone has agreed on certain strong points. The agreement isn't explicit on the weak points because some are missing the point of the criticism. I think this post is very helpful in explaining why.

But I absolutely love the drag resizing for the brushes! This saves
lots of time for me and I can drag to just the right size, no more
wondering how big would a 250 pixel brush be, or do I need a 400?

That's a perfect example of the way updates *should* work. Somebody had the idea that the feature would be valuable, and it was added. There was no guarantee that you would like it. If you didn't, no sweat, because you can ignore it. As it turns out, you *did* like it, so everybody's happy. Good job by the Photoshop team.

OTOH, while the improvement is welcome, it's an improvement in efficiency, not quality. It does not AFAIK enable any move that wasn't previously possible. That's the perplexing thing about this update. Photoshop is supposed to be an photo-processing program. There are precious few changes that actually let us process images *better*, as opposed to faster.

The flick panning is something I started out hating and then once I
got used to it I loved it. It does make navigating around an image
faster, and it is easily turned off (once you know where to turn it
off).

Same comments apply. Good idea, you may like it and you may not, in which case you can ignore it, and it doesn't help image processing.

The new way the Adjustment panel works sometimes I like and
sometimes I hate. When I remember to use the finger tool that allows
me to click in the image and then push and pull the curve dynamically
it's pretty cool. But that's still a mixed bag for me.

It's hard to understand how this can be a mixed bag. Clicking into that tool and clicking out of it when finished appears to give exactly the same functionality that CS3 provided *without* the two extra clicks. In my workflow, I access these tools on every image, often two and three times. This new configuration would therefore add hundreds of redundant clicks on a typical day.

Similarly, and even worse, the basic curves and adjustment curves dialogs are now substantially different, requiring the operator to make a conscious effort to recall which kind of curve is being applied. In my workflow I commonly apply both types of curves to the same image, and even someone who uses adjustment layers 100% of the time cannot avoid the basic curve dialog for layer masks.

Something like flick panning, I can understand how some people like it and others don't. But scads of extra mouseclicks? Permanent confusion between two previously identical dialogs? What lunatic would like these? And sure, it's not as serious a matter for some as it is for others, but still any rational person must consider this new adjustment curves mess as a major downgrade from the standpoint of productivity.

The question of better or worse, however, is really beside the point, which is: with so many things urgently needing improvement in image processing itself, what on earth is Adobe doing deploying massive development resources to rejigger a long-established interface without adding any new capabilities?

As part of the beta team I can tell you that just about all of these
features got quite a lot of discussion and tweaking during the
testing period. I did not agree with some of the calls, but there was
a genuine attempt to address user's concerns.

I can confirm this in all respects, which is really good news and also really bad news.

The really good news is how open and responsive Adobe personnel have become, particularly John Nack and Bryan O'Neil Hughes, although there are others. These folks are giving us the straight scoop. When they think Adobe has done something wrong, they admit it, when they don't know what's going on they admit that, when they think that what they're doing is right they say so without being patronizing, and they take more ill-mannered abuse from boorish users than they should have to, with equanimity. This is the type of open dialog that will make Photoshop a better product in years to come.

The really bad news is that as Adobe is currently structured, I don't believe that anybody can force the Photoshop engineering team to do anything that the Photoshop engineering team isn't in the mood to do. The consequence is the trivialization of the development process. As you noted, a great deal of the beta team's time was spent trying to get the adjustment layers replacement right. That time would have been far better spent on other things--like making Photoshop's image-processing capabilities stronger. In another thread, Jacob correctly points out that the Unsharp Mask filter has been seriously deficient by modern standards for more than a decade. Same for Hue/Saturation, and there are many other candidates. Nobody should be authorizing reworking of well-established interfaces when the core functionality of Photoshop has so many problems that need addressing.

Online commentary indicates that I'm far from alone in this view. There's general agreement on what's good. I observe a roughly even split in comments between those who dislike those changes that are controversial and those who feel they are not so bad and that one can get used to them. What I do *not* see is even a single comment from a serious independent user saying that ripping the adjustment layer interface apart was a good use of resources.

If that is in fact the consensus, and I believe it is, and if the non-engineering parts of the Photoshop team are listening, which I believe they are and ought to, then users should not be complaining about whether they like or dislike the adjustment layer remake. Instead, they should be saying: we want features, not fluff. We want Photoshop to be the best photo-processing application possible. We want new capabilities that can improve our image quality. We want new tools that can improve our productivity. We do NOT want you to rename, relocate, change the shortcuts for, or radically change the interface of, features that have been stable for five years or more, unless you are adding MAJOR new functionality. Photoshop CS4 is largely a lost upgrade. Let's all hope that CS5 gets back on track.

So what I'm saying is give it a little time before you make a final
judgment. Adobe never seems to get it all right...

How true. Looking back at the five updates in the last ten years, in only one case (Photoshop CS/Macintosh) can the decision to purchase an update honestly be termed a no-brainer. But there's never been anything quite like this. All they had to do was leave well enough alone and not start overhauling interfaces and moving stuff without adding anything of value. It that had been done, updating to CS4 *would* be a no-brainer. As it was originally released, changing the channel keyboard shortcuts into something ergonomically impossible was a complete dealbreaker for me. Ignoring that, the downgrade to the curves dialog would reduce the application's productivity so severely as to rule out making the change.

i've heard that a plugin restores the keyboard shortcuts, but I've also heard that it doesn't work. I've heard also that this new Configurator tool, which sounds very promising, would solve the curves dialog issue. If these two problems are indeed solved, then it's a different story; next time I'm at a site with CS4 installed I'll have a look. For the time being, I am not purchasing the update.

...but sometimes
they're not as bad as you might think, and sometimes they're really
pretty good.

The very fact that we are so protective of the features that we have come to rely on indicates how positively we all feel about Photoshop. The application has relaunched my own career and those of countless others. Its capabilities have laid the foundation for the digital photography revolution. We are all in the debt of the Photoshop team-- and once again, there shouldn't be any disagreement among reasonable people on this point.

Which brings up the final, much sadder, point on which we should all agree. Last week it was announced that several hundred Adobe employees had been or were about to be laid off, cut loose into the worst employment picture of their lifetimes in a state that's harder hit than most.

Having participated in a lot of layoffs, I can tell you that few things are more painful. It is impossible to get them right, impossible to implement them without causing great harm to people who have done little if anything to deserve it. I know a lot of people who work in various areas of Adobe and almost all have a strong commitment to getting their products right and serving their client base. Many of these good people presumably lost their jobs last week or possibly this week.

Hearing this news makes one realize how trivial some of the arguments about Photoshop are. There is not much place right now for anything but a lot of sympathy for those affected, and a hope that somehow this devastated economy will turn around.

Dan Margulis
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "Eric Loots"
Thu Dec 11, 2008 5:36 am (PST)

Hi Dan,

Regarding your comment about hearing that the plugin to restore the shortcuts doesn't work. I can tell that the plugin works on my MacBook Pro (Intel CPU) but *doesn't work* on my PowerMac (G5). Both run exactly the same version of MacOSX.

I posted a comment on John Nack's blog 10 days ago (echoing a similar experience from another person on the blog). Haven't seen a reply yet other than John saying that he hadn't tested the plugin on a G5 machine but will check with the engineer who wrote it. So, no fix and boy, do I hate these new shortcuts...

Blog can be found at
http: //blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/10/shortcut_changes_in_cs4.html

Regards --
Eric Loots
Kouwerheide 1
2610 Wilrijk
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Re: CS4
Posted by: johnmpcny
Thu Dec 11, 2008 6:56 am (PST)

Did you see the news that Adobe has cut workers and blames it in part on slow sales and upgrades of CS4.

"Adobe said demand for Creative Suite 4 was weaker than expected and "the main cause for the shortfall in fourth quarter revenue." Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said the global economic downturn hurt revenue."

I upgraded only one of ours, mostly to learn it but not the other 4 seats.

At this point to more accounts send us work in CS4 will not do them.

John M. Henry

Mitchell Printing & Mailing Inc.

125 East First Street
Oswego, NY 13126
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Re: CS4
Posted by: Brian Pylant
Thu Dec 11, 2008 6:56 am (PST)

Regarding your comment about hearing that the plugin to restore the
shortcuts doesn't work. I can tell that the plugin works on my MacBook Pro
(Intel CPU) but *doesn't work* on my PowerMac (G5). Both run exactly the
same version of MacOSX.

Similar situation here: we tested the plugin on two workstations, and it works on one but not the second. I have not had time to dive in and determine what the specific differences between the workstations might be, but they are both Intel machines of a similar (if not the same) generation.

BRIAN PYLANT
Manager, Electronic Prepress

Disc Makers
7905 North Route 130
Pennsauken, NJ 08110
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Re: CS4
Posted by: Brian Pylant
Thu Dec 11, 2008 7:54 am (PST)

"Adobe said demand for Creative Suite 4 was weaker than expected..."

This doesn't surprise me. Regardless of the current state of the economy (which certainly has had a huge impact on upgrade and new sales alike) I know plenty of people who are tired of the upgrade-every-18-months-for-few-if-any-groundbreaking-new-features cycle. Especially at the price point Adobe has set for their products, which many people feel are too high.

BRIAN PYLANT
Manager, Electronic Prepress

Disc Makers
7905 North Route 130
Pennsauken, NJ 08110
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Re: CS4
Posted by: Ian Craig
Thu Dec 11, 2008 7:54 am (PST)

Brian,

I have installed the plugin on 2 Intel Macs; a Mac Pro (Early 2008) and an iMac (also Early 2008) and no problems. Perhaps a simple oversight might be that the plugin in not installed at the root level of the Plug-ins folder. Worth a quick check...

I. Craig
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Re: CS4
Posted by: Brian Pylant
Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:18 am (PST)

I have installed the plugin on 2 Intel Macs; a Mac Pro (Early 2008)
and an iMac (also Early 2008) and no problems. Perhaps a simple
oversight might be that the plugin in not installed at the root level
of the Plug-ins folder. Worth a quick check...

Agreed, that was the first thing they checked and the plugin was copied to the same location on both machines.

I've heard from a few sources that there have been some seemingly random problems with the plugin not working, but few details have emerged so far.

BRIAN PYLANT
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "RJay Hansen"
Thu Dec 11, 2008 4:22 pm (PST)

We skipped CS3, (bought 1 copy so we could deal w/customer's ID files). We are looking to upgrade all our workstations to CS4 though so we don't get too far behind. A couple of notes regarding this upgrade...

Adobe now wants to punish you for not upgrading to each new release. Upgrading to CS4 Design Standard is US$499. After the end of February '09, upgrading from CS2 will cost $699! I'm not sure when Adobe began this tiered upgrade pricing, but it used to be the same price for upgrades whether you were upgrading from the most recent version or an earlier version.

Addtionally, the minimum Mac machine is a G5. Most of our workstations are G4s, so to get the upgrade without spending an extra $200 per copy, we either need to get new machines at the same time (big expense in a bad economy) or get the upgrades and put them on the shelf until we can get new machines.

On the bright side, it looks like this may finally convince "the powers that be" that we need to upgrade our computers which are getting pretty seriously old for doing prepress work.

And I second Brian's point about new versions every 18 months whether they have any really useful new features or not. I understand Adobe depends on upgrades to keep the cash flow going, but there comes a point when the applications are so mature that it is difficult to come up with useful new features. I'd really like to see the 18 month cycle go away, as it's marketing driven rather than driven by the needs of users.

RJay
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Re: CS4
Posted by: Stephen Marsh
Thu Dec 11, 2008 4:22 pm (PST)

It appears that due to OS differences that Adobe offer two solutions:

MS Win OS: An update to the application via patches, Registry fixes etc. This was also the case for other "corrective measures" such as Ignore EXIF Colour Profile.

Mac OS: A "simple" Photoshop plug-in.

I prefer the less drastic measure of a plug, however with the varied results from Mac users, it would appear that the approach taken in Windows appears to be more "stable".

Stephen Marsh
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Re: CS4
Posted by: "David Creamer"
Sat Dec 13, 2008 9:50 am (PST)

And I second Brian's point about new versions every 18 months whether they
have any really useful new features or not. I understand Adobe depends on
upgrades to keep the cash flow going, but there comes a point when the
applications are so mature that it is difficult to come up with useful new
features. I'd really like to see the 18 month cycle go away, as it's
marketing driven rather than driven by the needs of users.

The biggest problem (in my opinion) is the Suite bundles. The suites require the various packages have _some_ new features regardless of how "ground breaking" they are. Applications have to be ready on the 18-24 month deadline regardless of how many features are almost ready, but not quite finished. These features either go in with possible bugs or are left out until the next version.

For example, if Photoshop was on its own schedule, perhaps the upgrade would have held off until the Mac version was 64-bit. (I realize the delay was the fault of Apple, but Adobe might have waited to release PSCS4 until the re-write was ready (and perhaps added in some more features that were almost ready).

David Creamer
I.D.E.A.S. Training & Consultation
http://www.IDEAStraining.com
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Photoshop CS4 Key Commands Plugin - UPDATED
Posted by: Brian Pylant
Thu Dec 18, 2008 3:14 pm (PST)

http: //blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/12/use_old_shortcu.html

BRIAN PYLANT
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Re: Photoshop CS4 Key Commands Plugin - UPDATED
Posted by: "Eric Loots"
Fri Dec 19, 2008 4:48 am (PST)

Indeed, I had left a message on John Nack's blog entry on this issue a few weeks ago. Yesterday, a Quality Engineer from Adobe sent me an email asking to test another version of the plug-in included in his message.

For sure, this version turned out to work as advertised. Haven't tested this one on my Intel based Mac, but I guess it will work...

Cheers -- Eric