Photoshop CS2 Update: first thoughts
I just got the Photoshop CS2 update installed (9.0.1) and so far it seems better than the original. I’m still not decided though because I’ve not really used it on a project yet, but I will soon! I’m now able to catch up with the rest of the civilized world who have been using Photoshop CS2 for over a year now. The original CS2 had an incompatibility with my video card that made the screen refresh unacceptablly slow. I’m glad to see Adobe patch it. but …
EDIT: Wow, it looks like it’s mysteriously working for me now. I have no idea what’s going on, I’m going to have to investigate this further ….
Now for my first official Photoshop CS2 Update complaint (you knew there’d be one!). When CS2 was released, there was a mistake in the Edit Menu for Windows that assigned the ALT A shortcut to both Transform and Adobe PDF Presets, which meant the frequently used ALT+E,A,H and ALT+E,A,V (for flip vertical and horizontal, respectively) didn’t function for me anymore.
These ALT shortcuts have been the only way to trigger those menu items in Photoshop via a keyboard command for many versions. When Adobe added the PDF Presets menu item to CS2, they accidentally assigned the shortcut to it as well. I filed this as a bug on Adobe’s website but I discovered a work around: I could remove the menu item for Adobe PDF Presets using CS2’s menu manager, and that removed the ALT A conflict. ALT+E,A,H worked again. Yay!
Looks like Adobe fixed this bug in the CS2 update, but they fixed it the wrong way! They removed the ALT A shortcut from the Transform option, which had been the standard for as long as I can remember, rather than simply assigning Adobe PDF Presets a new shortcut.
So now it appears I’m going to have to assign new shortcuts to Vertial and Horizontal, and try break my 8 year habit of pressing ALT+E,A,H and ALT+E,A,V for these commands. Note to Photoshop newbies: while most Photoshop keyboard commands are editable, the ALT commands are not. Boo!. I think it’s a shame that Adobe chose to reassign a long-time shortcut that allowed keyboard access to all the items in the Transform menu to a brand new feature.
And a PS here: When trying to assign a new keyboard command to Flip Horizontal I got this message:
Notice it says “Create a duplicate while Transform > Flip Horizontal”. I am aware of using ALT with Transform shortcuts in order make a duplicate, like I use in my spiral tutorial, but I’m not sure what this is referring to. I’ve tried the keyboard command a few times and it didn’t do anything. Weird.
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