Photoshop CS Nightmares - Please Help

[Dave Nalle]

I realize that some of these questions may seem naive, but please
understand my situation. 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.

Before people start abusing me, I've been trying to figure these
problems out using the Adobe help, the forums on the Adobe website and
the program manual, and none of these problems is really addressed.
Apparently these aren't problems other people have, but for me they
are totally frustrating.

First and largest problem. 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.

Second problem. Where the hell is the paint bucket? I've seen posts
referring to it, and it's mentioned in the help, but there's no longer
a paint bucket icon in the tools. Where did it go, or does it have a
different icon now? If there's some other quick fill tool now I can't
find it. Someone give me a pointer.

Third and most difficult to solve problem. Plugins. None of them
work anymore. I had hundreds of dollars of plugins which were
compatible with every prior version of Photoshop. Now none of them
work. CS doesn't even recognize them. This includes the driver for
my $1200 scanner and some of the tools I used most frequently like
Alien Skin Drop Shadow and Extensis Phototools. Some of these I can
replace with new versions at considerable expense, but many others
come from companies which no longer exist, or from small programmers
who haven't updated them for the new version of Photoshop. I
particularly miss a great little plugin from Extensis called
PhotoBevel. I'm not sure that it's even included in the new version
of PhotoTools as their website is unclear on this. Is there any
solution, or do I have to spend (by my current calculation) another
$500 or so to get new versions of the plugins I need to most.

Fourth and particularly irritating problem. I can't access all my
fonts. There's a lot of discussion of this on the Adobe forums in
which their old hands abuse people for wanting to use more then 256
fonts at a time. Well, I'm primarily a font designer, and I've
designed or adapted more than 256 fonts in the last 20 years and
strangely enough I'd like to be able to use them. All the people on
the Adobe forums say 'use a font management tool' particularly
FontAgent X. Putting aside that that's another $100 I have to spend
and it's a program I've had bad experiences with in the past, It's
incredibly inconvenient to have to switch fonts in and out of use when
you need to be able to try out a bunch of different fonts in a design
before settling on one. Going through hundreds of fonts in batches
you have to remove and reintroduce with a secondary tool is
ridiculous. All my other applications let me access a reasonable
number of fonts. Why doesn't Photoshop? Is there any solution to
this? Under 9.22 fonts could be buncled in suitcases and you could
get around the system limitation on number of fonts pretty easily. Is
there any way to do this in OSX?

Anyway, I'm continuing to struggle with all this, but could sure use
some help. I'm getting desperate enough that I'm on the verge of
going back to 9.22 and writing off the money I spend on CS, because I
need to be able to actually get my work done.

Dave

[Dave Nalle]

Ok, scratch the paint bucket question. I found it. Still can't find
the line-drawing tool, but I know it has to be there somewhere. I
guess if they're going to add a zillion tools I'll never need they
have to hide the old ones that are actually useful somewhere.

Still looking for help with the other problems though.

Dave

[Dave Nalle]

My oh my, thanks for all the help, fellow Photoshop users.

Dave