Awesome Photoshop Fridge Magnets via ThinkGeek

Having heard about the potential problems with running CS3 on Mac OS X Leopard. I decided to wait before installing it. So I’m still running Tiger on my G5 just so that I can continue with any photoshop work without running into any problems.

It’s a little annoying actually as I really wanna put Leopard on there now, thankfully Adobe and Apple are working hard to fix the problem. The following message from Kirsten Harris (Abode Support Manager for Photoshop) has been posted on the Adobe Forums:

Changing values for type, brush, crop, lasso etc tools broken on Leopard

Kirsten Harris – 08:58pm Nov 15, 2007 Pacific

Adobe and Apple are working closely to provide a fix to a known issue running Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended on Mac OS X Leopard (v10.5.1). Currently, when you enter values in numerical fields to set sizes for the brush, crop, marquee, lasso, type, and other Photoshop CS3 tools, those values revert to previously entered values when you try to apply them.

While we have identified workarounds for some of the affected tools, this issue prevents people from working as precisely and intuitively as they expect. Providing a fix to customers is a top priority. Please note the following:

The fix will be provided through an update to Mac OS X Leopard. Consequently, it is not part of the Photoshop CS3 (10.0.1) update.

Apple is collaborating closely with us to get this fix incorporated into a Mac OS X Leopard update. No public schedule is available at this time, but both companies understand the urgency of this fix.
As soon as the appropriate update to Mac OS X Leopard is available, we will immediately alert our Photoshop users.

Affected Photoshop CS3 tools: Art History tool, Blur tool, Brush tool, Burn tool, Color Replacement tool, Clone tools (all), Crop tool, Dodge tool, Eraser tools (all), Gradient tool, Healing tools (all), History tool, Lasso tools (all), Line tool, Magic Wand tool, Marquee tools (all), Paint Bucket tool, Pencil tool, Polygon tool, Quick Selection tool, Red Eye tool, Rounded Rectangle tool, Sharpen tool, Smudge tool, Sponge tool, Slice tool, Type tool

Workaround for tools with sliders: Instead of typing in a number, use the sliders to change the value.

Workaround for tools with pop-up menus: Enter a value for the size but don’t press Return/Enter to apply the value. Instead, choose it from the top of the Size pop-up menu to commit it.

Workaround for tools which do not have sliders or pop-up menus: For certain tools, such as the Line tool, you may want to set up presets that you can load to set common sizes. Alternatively, you can restart Photoshop CS3 to clear the problem. You will then be able to enter values again. However, the issue typically re-surfaces quickly.

I’m talking about things like using the B key to select the Brush tool, M for the Marquee tool, S for the Stamp tool. These make sense, right? Well don’t expect them to all be this easy.

The rate at which you learn this stuff should develop naturally over time, you can’t be expected to remember all of them at once. As you use them more and more, eventually shortcuts will become second nature and you won’t even think about it.

More advanced stuff like using the command, option and shift keys to act as modifier keys for whichever tool you have selected, is probably the most useful aspect of keyboard shortcuts and will speed up your workflow considerably.

But if you only ever learn one shortcut make it this one.

SAVING you work frequently is something you should get in the habit of doing as early as possible. But we’re all human and we forget. It’s only when you’re busy doing something that you tend to forget to save as often as you should, and without warning Photoshop will throw a fit and close.

It can be demoralising to have this screen pop up when you haven’t saved for a while. It’s popped up and ruined my life one too many times and I just had to do something about it. I now have a little application running called PS SAVE whevever I’m working in photoshop.

Every 10 minutes a dialogue box will pop up saying:

Just click yes and everything is taken care of. That way, when photoshop throws a hissy fit (again) at least you’ll only lose 10 minutes of hard graft. Worth having eh? Oh hell yeah, it is trust me.
Why this hasn’t been integrated into photoshop yet I have no idea. It’s only when you’ve lost a good 2 or 3 hours of work that you’ll start to looking for a solutions like this.

Download PS SAVE

Saying you can spot something that’s been ‘photoshopped’ seems to imply some sort of failure with the program, when in fact the outcome of an image is actually wholly dependent upon the person using the program.

Adobe Photoshop is after all, just a program. An amazingly versatile, professional, industry standard program, no doubt. But a program just the same. It doesn’t actually do anything by itself. There’s no magic involved. Just a lot of hard work, passion and talent. Photoshop is just a tool. Much the same way that a paintbrush is just a tool. It can make a huge difference who’s wielding it. 
A bad painting doesn’t imply a bad paintbrush does it?

Of course the most successful work produced using photoshop will usually go unnoticed, but I guess that’s the true indication of success. That’s when you know you must be doing something right. My goal is to use photoshop to the extent of it’s abilities, or at least the extent of mine and create a little magic along the way.