isadorah Posted December 4, 2008 Author Share Posted December 4, 2008 Adobe has its issues too, of course. I use at least four different Adobe apps on a regular basis, and I've wanted to pitch each of them out the window on numerous occasions. I use Adobe apps to create help systems/publications, yet their software has some of the worst, most unhelpful help I've ever seen (even worse than Microsoft's, in most cases). They've been trying to improve it, but it's merely gone from utterly useless to completely horrible. The best way to learn an Adobe program (short of immersing yourself in it for a few weeks) is to buy a third-party guide. Really. Wild. I find the help guides to be helpful in the Adobe stuff. When the IT guy originally installed my InDesign he didn't install the Help section. I had to get him to add it because I actually use it. I have heard that the PC Adobe stuff is different from the Mac stuff (and when I have taught Photoshop workshops on a PC I do notice some differences). I haven't ventured beyond InDesign, Acrobat, Photoshop, and Illustrator though. Then again, I know InDesign inside and out and have taken classes where I knew more than the instructor did. My biggest gripe with CS is that in 3 they changed the pallette interface and it bugs the living daylights out of me. Added clicking steps. I had all mystuff nice and tidy in one place in my CS2 set up and can't achieve that type of workflow in 3 and it REALLY slows me down. Something that was once a click is now a click, hold, drag, select. that's 4 seconds of precious time!!!! I know that when they came out with updates in Acrobat they changes some features that shouldn't have been touched. bigshoulders ran into some problems where v7 was not behaving the way v6 did and had to get his software shifted back a version to be able to complete a task. new versions and minor tweaks for the sake of new versions always annoys me. if it aint broke, don't fix it! who knew i was so opinionated about software. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jenbobblehead Posted December 4, 2008 Share Posted December 4, 2008 http://www.puppylinux.org/ I would try downloading this and burning it to a cd. It's a live linux cd so when you start up your computer it will boot from the cd and go into linux. Don't worry, nothing will happen to your hard drive or your windows installation. This will just help us see whether it's an operating system/software issue or a hardware issue.ok i'll try it! Thanks! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
cryptique Posted December 4, 2008 Share Posted December 4, 2008 I haven't ventured beyond InDesign, Acrobat, Photoshop, and Illustrator though. Then again, I know InDesign inside and out and have taken classes where I knew more than the instructor did. Funny ... aside from Acrobat, I use a completely different set of Adobe products: RoboHelp 7, Captivate 3, FrameMaker 8 ... and something else that slips my mind at the moment. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
isadorah Posted December 4, 2008 Author Share Posted December 4, 2008 Funny ... aside from Acrobat, I use a completely different set of Adobe products: RoboHelp 7, Captivate 3, FrameMaker 8 ... and something else that slips my mind at the moment. I haven't even heard of that stuff. I live such a sheltered life! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
cryptique Posted December 4, 2008 Share Posted December 4, 2008 I haven't even heard of that stuff. I live such a sheltered life!It's fairly specific to my particular field. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
okp greg Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Really. Wild. I find the help guides to be helpful in the Adobe stuff. When the IT guy originally installed my InDesign he didn't install the Help section. I had to get him to add it because I actually use it. I have heard that the PC Adobe stuff is different from the Mac stuff (and when I have taught Photoshop workshops on a PC I do notice some differences). I haven't ventured beyond InDesign, Acrobat, Photoshop, and Illustrator though. Then again, I know InDesign inside and out and have taken classes where I knew more than the instructor did. My biggest gripe with CS is that in 3 they changed the pallette interface and it bugs the living daylights out of me. Added clicking steps. I had all mystuff nice and tidy in one place in my CS2 set up and can't achieve that type of workflow in 3 and it REALLY slows me down. Something that was once a click is now a click, hold, drag, select. that's 4 seconds of precious time!!!! I know that when they came out with updates in Acrobat they changes some features that shouldn't have been touched. bigshoulders ran into some problems where v7 was not behaving the way v6 did and had to get his software shifted back a version to be able to complete a task. new versions and minor tweaks for the sake of new versions always annoys me. if it aint broke, don't fix it! who knew i was so opinionated about software. Wait til you try cs4 they moved stuff around again!!! I was so pissed off too. I had my palettes exactly where i wanted them, but the stupid solid sidebar of palettes drives me insane. It's such a waste of space in an application where you need every inch of space you can get. Luckily for the most part I could just hide everything & use the keyboard shortcuts. It's the only thing that's made it bearable. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
isadorah Posted December 5, 2008 Author Share Posted December 5, 2008 Wait til you try cs4 they moved stuff around again!!! I was so pissed off too. I had my palettes exactly where i wanted them, but the stupid solid sidebar of palettes drives me insane. It's such a waste of space in an application where you need every inch of space you can get. Luckily for the most part I could just hide everything & use the keyboard shortcuts. It's the only thing that's made it bearable. even more annoying about the solid sidebar of palettes: i am on a dual monitor setup and want all the palettes on the other screen and you can't simply move the whole lot of them, you gotta drag them one by one over to the other monitor and then tidy them all up and can only stack them with the tabs going across the top which is just dumb because you only need a palette to be so wide. if it gets too wide it covers up the window of whatever else i have open. and then, say i open Flash or Dreamweaver which i rarely use, I'm stuck with those annoying palettes in my way again and have to either customize every single program or be annoyed everytime i have to do webwork. grrrr. CS4 actually pisses me off because we JUST upgraded to 3. and cheeeeezzzz another $1000 upgrade a year later. i think i'm going to be skipping the 4 update. at home i didn't update my 2 to 3. i started to, but ran into some problems and now that i'm working in it, bahhhh. i have a tiny laptop and the side stacked palette is the only way i can function on a laptop and even remotely come close to seeing what i am working on. although, have you tried out the new find/change in InDesign. it is magic! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
cryptique Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 CS doesn't let you save custom work environments? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
isadorah Posted December 5, 2008 Author Share Posted December 5, 2008 CS doesn't let you save custom work environments? it does, but if you restart you have to switch over to the work environment, it doesn't remember which environment you used last. it indeed does not let you change the top tabbed palettes to be side tabbed palettes (which you could do in previous versions, well in CS2). and if you want to keep the palettes tucked like the default palette, but move the whole lot of them to somewhere else, it won't let you do that. it also won't let you tuck and stack palettes into certain parts of the work area (like under the tool bar) which you could do in previous versions. there's a small group of us that have bitched and moaned to adobe. they clearly listened when they worked out CS4. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
mfwahl Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Guess I won't do that update to CS3 I was going to do. Are there benefits to having CS3 over CS2? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
isadorah Posted December 5, 2008 Author Share Posted December 5, 2008 Guess I won't do that update to CS3 I was going to do. Are there benefits to having CS3 over CS2? the find/change feature is HUGE for InDesign! i have a monthly publication that is pretty complex. we use expert numbers which in 2 requires you to search through manually to find each number and change. that can take over an hour to do. with CS3, it takes 5 minutes and a few clicks of the mouse. i'm all about efficiency. the nested styles in InDesign are much improved as well and are like nested styles on steroids now. there are a lot of color correction features and masking features in Photoshop that are very nice. you can now edit and tweak a mask selection after you have created the mask, i think you can do it with feathering too. it is a dialogue box that gives you a preview and all sorts of options on how to adjust the selection. there's a lot more in there to help you create "non-destructive" photoshop files. i should probably actually use that masking feature. i'm still in the habit of doing masks the old way. if you're not on an intel machine, CS3 will be very slow and quirky. that's part of why i took it off my laptop. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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