A few terrific Photoshop tips

Adobe blogger John Nack recently offered a number of Photoshop CS4 tips aimed at the installer, command keys, and help. The posts also provide a peek at the way Photoshop will handle these features in the future. The installer tip came in two parts: the first was about whether an upgrade required users to install previous versions on a new computer; the second part was a useful tip about handling the long strings of numbers that Adobe uses in its serial numbers.

One other tip, as long as I'm boring you with minutiae: You can paste your serial number into the installer. That might not be obvious as the serial number field is comprised of several small text fields, but the installer is smart enough to spread digits across the fields when pasted. Therefore when getting a new version, I take a moment to type the serial first into a text document, after which I copy it & paste it into the installer. The extra steps may be worthwhile later in case you need to re-install, etc.

Another interesting tip was about Adobe's development philosophy for command key shortcuts. He said it's a "tricky situation" to change these shortcuts, both for Photoshop users and workflows that parse the shorcuts. Also, there are differences between the Mac and Windows standard shortcut combos.

In Photoshop CS4 we changed Cmd-` (Cmd-~) to cycle among open documents, matching the standard Mac convention (while continuing to honor the Windows-standard convention, Ctrl-Tab, as well). As expected, it's been a painful move for some customers, but sometimes that's necessary. With regard to Cmd-H, Photoshop's keyboard shortcut editor has long made it possible to assign Cmd-H to hiding the app. Doing so takes just a few seconds, yet many people are unaware of this or unwilling to invest the time. Therefore our plan is that in the future, the dialog you see above will pop up once (on Mac only) the first time you hit Cmd-H, asking which behavior you prefer.

So, we are now prepared for that dialog whenever it comes along in some future update. Finally, Nack said that users can download a PDF copy of the Photoshop CS4 Help file (or that of any other Adobe app) by clicking the View Help PDF link in the top-left corner of the app help page. Nack also said that users will be able to find "help content" in a forthcoming Adobe desktop help application that is currently available for testing via Adobe Labs. As far as I can see, this is called Community Help.