Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Photoshop CS4

OK, so I just installed Photoshop CS4 (aka Photoshop 11, so you're not confused...).
In fact I gave in and installed the whole dang Creative Suite, after all it's only seven gigabytes...
The installation process, this time, could not have been easier. In fact it did not even (this time) ask for the serial number of the earlier version I was upgrading from. I wonder why not. (I just realized: it must have a registration database on my hard disk. The reason Photoshop asked for it when I bought it separately is that it's considered a different product when bought on it's own and so was not included in this database.)

Also the app so far looks nice, and it loads way, way faster than PS CS 2 (which was not Intel processor native), so I'm looking forward to seeing how fast it is.

One big flaw though, which is always the same: It does not import my customized actions from earlier versions? I mean, come on, how basic is this?

Not just that, but it takes specialized knowledge to do it manually. Last time I just couldn't figure it out and had to recreate all my actions by hand. This time I quit the new app, started the old one, and figured out that I could export the old actions, and then find the file from the new app and import them. (I couldn't just copy the file since for some odd reason I could not find it anywhere.)

Apple for example has made tremendous strides in making it easier for users to upgrade software and hardware, but it seems Adobe is not giving it much thought.

1 comment:

Alex said...

Maybe the "customized actions" were in the resource fork of the application. I know Mac programs of old used to be segmented that way.

From recent exposure to VB it's almost like they are adopting that attitude too, embedding settings in the application. Strange thing is, when I install a VB created app, I can't find it on my HDD. The only place it appears is on the start menu! How weird is that?