To give you the context, I do a lot of simple image editing and
modification and need to work very quickly, essentially in a 'quick
and dirty' mode. Until I upgraded to OSX
Panther recently my preferred version of Photoshop was my old copy of
3.05. I owned newer versions, but used 3.05 because it was the most
practical for the kind of work I do. I had to stop using 3.05 and
upgrade to CS/8.0 because my cursor would no longer work in 3.05 under
Panther. Here's the problem. I've been working on a simple graphic
now for 3 days which would have taken me about 3 minutes using 3.05
because of a myriad of problems.

First and foremost, I just cannot work with layers. The complexity
which they add is completely impractical for the kind of work I do. I
need a PAINT program, not some sort of super-fancy graphics
manipulation program. I need to be able to select part of an
image, manipulate it on the spot, duplicate it, flip it, distort it
and then reapply it to the original image without creating a billion
layers in the process. CS just won't let me do this. There seems to
be no way to stay in a single layer all the time, plus there's no way
to flip or rotate a selection without rotating the entire layer. I
have to constantly flatten layers, take selections out and put them in
new windows to manipulate them and then import them back into the
original document. It takes forever and has turned simple image
editing into a total nightmare. Is there a way to turn layers off in
CS the way that there was back in good old 3.05? Is there a way to
rotate or flip selections in a layer without flipping the entire
canvas? The ideal solution would be to just be able to turn layers
off and work entirely in the background. Can that be done?

Dave