If you want to dig into the details of CS5 features, you might find the product help files useful. You can check out a list of the new features in Photoshop CS5, as well as information about shared CS5 features, like Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw. Note that the content is also downloadable in PDF form. [Via]
I still couldn’t figure out how to integrate Matlab and Photoshop CS5 (64 Bit, Windows 7).
I wish some adobe representative would explain clearly.
I had been planning to skip CS5 for economy. (I’m glad I skipped straight from CS2 to CS4.) But I’m definitely becoming sold on CS5 features, despite myself. And I’ll probably upgrade. Damn it!
But one thing points in the opposite direction. Adobe still can’t write a product manual to save its life.
That leaves plenty of market for third-party books, but from all other points of view it’s a terrible shame.
An example. Try using the Adobe manual to find out what “deep knockout” on a layer does, and how to use it (assuming you don’t already know).
Searching on “deep knockout” is superficially helpful. You get a page entitled “Create a knockout”. We all want to do that! But there is nothing (here or elsewhere) that explains what “knockout” means; there is nothing on this page explaining the dependency between fill opacity and knockout strength (though there is an unexplained instruction in point 5). Equally important, no other page points you here, so you need to *know in advance* that you need the knockout feature, and why, in order to get help on how to use it.
In other words, you must have 90% of the answer, before you can get any help. Apparently zero thought has gone into this, in this example and in the manual in general. (Try a search on “etch”. No results. How about “show through”? Four results; nothing relevant.)
The word for Adobe manuals is: cursory. Not quite useless, but certainly inadequate to the task.
Which is a shame, because if anything is true about Photoshop (for example), it’s that most users find it difficult to make any dent in its true power, or discover anything like a respectable subset of its features.
The manual should help here, but in truth it only the gulf between mooching around and mastery more difficult to cross.
There’s a missing “makes” in the last paragraph of my post. Sorry about that.
I don’t think it is fair to Adobe to expect the help files to provide instruction like a training manual.
The owner’s manual you get with your new car doesn’t tell you how to drive or rebuild the engine.
I’m happy to have a 613 page manual available. I’ll check out Deke and Lynda.com for further details.
I installed trials for multiple programs in the cs5 package on my windows 7 64 bit system, and was appalled to see that not all the help files for all the programs were available locally; as well, they weren’t even listed in the local content/Download preferences sections, of the preferences dialogue.
Massive bug, and no way to fix it… I have un-installed and reinstalled several times. However, although the Adobe Community Help application does not work well on windows 7 it is working on windows vista.
What is going on? Was it just a bad install? is there a way to correct this?
This is great! Thanks to Adobe for making these available ahead of time.
Something that’s still not clear though is how Photoshop Standard and Extended are differentiating themselves, on a feature comparison level. We are looking for a simple feature chart, explicitly showing what extra tools and buttons Extended brings to the table. It’s surprisingly not possible to get this information, even from the Adobe sales force (I’ve tried!). A bonus would be to see what CS4 Extended features were folded into CS5 Standard (I’ve heard float format editing was?)
Any chance you could address this in an upcoming entry? And regardless, thanks for keeping up with this great blog!
I have just installed CS5, and raw works fine, but when I try to open a picture into Photoshop CS5, I have a black screen. The photo label is at top, and the layers come up on the right as though a picture was there, but I cannot see it. What is wrong — what should I do to see my photo?
I’m having the same issue as Eugenia Mills above. I try to open a picture in CS5 and only a black screen appears. The photo label is at the top in a tab, as if it’s opened. I searched the KB and didnt’ find anything…….
Thanks!
Resolved my issue by turning off OpenGL drawing within Photoshop. See step 1 of troubleshooting at:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404898.html
I have one constant annoyance with Photoshop help files and that is all the updates.
I just ran the updater to update several of my Adobe apps including Photoshop. This is good as I can choose when it happens. I just ran the updater and then I opened the help for Photoshop and I still need to update Air and the help files. It seems I have to update Air and the help files every time I use help. Why doesn’t Air and the help files get updated when I update Photoshop? Air updates seem to be designed to cause maximum annoyance.
I seem to have turned off the help option in Photoshop Extended CS5. I don’t know how, but help isn’t working. Click it and nothing happens.
Help please