August 10, 2005
Photoshop makes me feel stupid
For an application more ubiquitous than sand in the desert, I find it amazing how useless Photoshop is without additional training or reading material. For years Photoshop has successfully defended the honor of being the only program that makes me feel stupid every time I'm trying to use it.
There is nothing intuitive whatsoever about how to do foo in Photoshop. Want to see a layer and its mask at the same time? Hold ALT + Shift and left-click on the mask thumbnail. I'm embarrased to admit that I've yet to figure out how to draw a stroked pixel rectangle that's not filled, and yes, I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to.
How multi-step "undo" works in Photoshop is an experience of its own and should be personally lived through as such.
One of the most fascinating things about Photoshop is how a gazillon different (but essential) tool palettes are reliably blocking the exact spot you need to work on, with no way to dock them. You don't scroll in Photoshop, you move palettes. If you ever wondered why your designer keeps asking for a dual monitor setup, now you know. I also find it cute how Photoshop keeps denying the existence of my second mouse button, but maybe there's a chance this might change with Apple's recent step forward into 1987.
I had plans to write about the epic amounts of creativity the Photoshop team put into creating even more customly behaved UI widgets, but that's enough material for its own entry. Or its own book as far as I'm concerned.
Of course I'll keep using Photoshop because it's getting me such sharp results. At the price of my self-confidence and emotional stability of course, but sharp nonetheless.
P.S.: I've embedded a highly sophisticated text-virus into this entry which will blow up the computer of the first commenter mentioning "The GIMP". You've been warned.
Comments
Photoshop is like being in a relationship - it's about putting the time in to get the results out. You learn early on to live with the quirks, until they become either endearing or forgotten.
I've been using it since version 3.0 in 1993 - I consider myself an expert in it, even among other design professionals - but like the human brain, I'm pretty sure I only use about 26% of it's capabilities, and almost every day I learn something new about it or realize what something does... it's a constant process of improvement through interaction with the program.
I love Photoshop dearly; it's a big part of my life and my livelyhood, i use it at work and at home. I don't think I've ever NOT been able to achieve whatever effect or result I was trying to achieve, given sufficient time and effort. And whatever features i've wished it had that it didn't usually appeared in the very next version. What I guess I'm saying is that no, it's not perfect, but it's organic and expansive and evolving, not so much an application as an environment, and once you're comfortable there - which may, granted, take years - it's really an amazing, amazing thing.
I'm completely convinced that Photoshop is a weapon of mass destruction under an experienced operator. I do however wonder how a tool that so openly disregards any UI expectations users bring to it has become so immensely popular. Popular as in "synonym for image processing software".
My only explanation is that, all things considered, other applications always sucked more than Photoshop did.
Posted by
Henning Koch ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.netalive.org/swsu/nav-commenters.gif)
(#)
I always preferred Paintshop Pro when I was using Windows. It was affordable and it didn’t make me feel stupid.
And I’ll take the risk to mention that while Gimp was indeed painful at 1.x (much less so since the 2.x GUI overhaul), it has never made me feel stupid.
I never understood why people like Photoshop. Granted, I never do anything overly interesting, and maybe that’s why I don’t appreciate Photoshop as I am supposed to and why I like Gimp more than I’m supposed to. But I get the things done that I want to get done, so, whatever.
Posted by Aristotle Pagaltzis (#)
Heh, when I need to push pixels on Windows, I still use an ages old Paintshop Pro 6. It's one of the last tools that doesn't even begin to pretend that your raster image has any sort of physical dimensions.
Last time I checked, the company behind Paintshop Pro was bought by Corel, where I suppose it is being laid to rest, given Corel's track record in this sort of thing.
Posted by
Henning Koch
(#)
> I'm embarrased to admit that I've yet to figure
> out how to draw a stroked pixel rectangle that's
> not filled, and yes, I couldn't make this stuff
> up if I wanted to.
Step one: Draw rectangle.
1) Select Rectangular Marquee Tool (press M)
2) Click-Drag a rectangle.
Step two: Stroke rectangle
1) Right click on rectangle
2) Select "Stroke..." from the menu
3) Click OK
There are lots of other ways to do this. One option would be to draw a rectangle with the Rectangle Tool (U key) using the "Paths" setting (tiny little icon on the left of the options bar when you have the Rectange tool selected) and then right click and select "Stroke Path...". This way you can use the brush tool to do the stroking to get different effects.
If you want to stroke a path to make it look like stroking a selection (as described above) what you want to do is draw your path as a shape layer (select the "shape layers" option for the Rectange Tool), go into blending options, and set "Fill Opacity" under "Advanced Blending" to zero, and on the left check "Stroke" on the bottom left. I think you must have gotten half way to this one when you say one "that's not filled". You can also get at the "Fill Opacity" setting from the layers pallet, just underneath the master "Opacity" setting.
Anyway, have a good one,
Douglas
Thanks a lot Douglas :)
Posted by
Henning Koch
(#)
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