Last night I was working on an important "rush" job. I had a "senior moment" and forgot how to use the patch tool. So, I went to Photoshop help->index->P and selected patch tool. I got a page showing what can be done with the patch tool but absolutely nothing about how to "make it go". I went back to CS on another system, and used help to find the "patch tool for dummies" instructions. Is this the expected behavior for CS2?? Now, you need to know how to use the tool and help ain’t gonna help? Or, is there something wrong in my installation and this is not the normal help behavior?
Before someone says "it’s in the FAQ" or similar, I did do a quick search of the forum and the FAQ. If I missed this, I’m sorry.
Hope I can join into this thread. I use the healing brush and the patch tool quite a bit. Apart from the spot healing brush, do these tools work any differently in CS2 than they did in CS? There was a subtle but very nice difference in how the patch tool works in CS compared to v7.0.
That’s not the point. There are probably several resources for finding answers like that. The point is, I want the help for the program to actually give me some meaningful help.
My question is: is it normal for the help system in CS2 to just show you what the tool can do without giving an inkling of how to do it?
Yeah, that would be fine. Just enough to jog the "brain". However, I didn’t even find that. Just a series of pictures with (as near as I could see) no keystroke reminders or nothin. When I went back to CS, I found just about what you describe. Enough to remind me of how to make it go.
When I spend ~$800.00 for an upgrade (Creative Suite 2 Pro), I don’t expect them to take away useful functionality, especially in the help system. On top of that, with the Creative Suite, you don’t get any manuals either. I don’t think I should have to resort to Internet tutorials to tell me how to use an expensive software product.
ah. that’s the problem. the suite doesn’t come with manuals. just a user guide. the manuals are in pdfs. if you hit f1 you should have found the same info as i described. or you can buy a set of manuals from the adobe store if you’re more comfortable with that.
I think there has been a paradigm change over the last few years.
The range of functions of professional level software has continued to expand in range and depth and there is rarely a single user who will need all of them. At the same time the number of books has increased and each has become more aligned to the needs of a particular level and specialisation. There is no way that a company like Adobe could provide manuals and tutorials (as they once did) to a depth that is available, in print and on the web, without hiring a lot of expensive authors and teachers consequently boosting the price of the product.
Let the artists get just the assistance they want, the designers that for their needs, the photographers for theirs… and so on.
Amazon lists over 1200 books on Photoshop (I can remember when there were six!) and who knows how many tutorial sites there are out there!
Sorry Smitty, times have changed and we have to change with them.
Somehow I’m not getting my point across. All I want is for the help to give me about 5 lines of what keystrokes I need to make a particular tool go. I’m not asking for a book, a tutorial or anything like it.
In PS-CS it took exactly 5 additional lines to tell me what I needed. I guess I don’t understand what good a help facility is unless it gives you at least enough information to operate a tool.
I can read all the books and all the tutorials there are, (and I have read several). But, when I come to actually use a particular tool that I haven’t needed in awhile (in this case the patch tool), I might need a quick mental jog. I shouldn’t have to go read a book or look for an Internet tutorial for that. If that’s not what help is for, then I don’t understand what good it is.
Maybe I’m the only one here who can’t remember every nuance and detail of how to use everyone of the vast array of available tools in PS. I do understand the "new paradigm". I don’t expect the help to explain why I’d want a tool or what to do with it. I do expect help to remind me about how to make it work.
I’m not at my ps machine (home) so i guess i missed that. i’ve only used the new help a couple of times and found what i needed via search right away. i’ll look again when i get home.
I’m with you on the lack of "To use the Patch Tool" which the other tools all have when you type their name. It could, of course, simply be an oversight.
hmm… from the cs2 help (F1) typed "patch" in the search bar. selected 1st item up.
"The Patch tool The Patch tool lets you repair a selected area with pixels from another area or a pattern. Like the Healing Brush tool, the Patch tool matches the texture, lighting, and shading of the sampled pixels to the source pixels. You can also use the Patch tool to clone isolated areas of an image."
then there’s a nice little couple of graphics SHOWING how to use it. it even has little pointy red arrows to show you HOW to move your mouse. It doesn’t get much clearer than that folks.
Thank you all for the help and comments. I guess I’m just really not too bright cause I couldn’t figure out much from the pictures and pointy arrows, especially what the source and destination check boxes are all about. This is explained very succinctly in the PS-CS help. I still don’t understand why it was dropped. But, then, I can’t stand those stupid road signs with the dopey pictures and no words on them.
As one who makes extensive use of the Help Center, (I have many Senior Moments), I have discovered that the new arrangement of Help topics takes a little getting used to.
The instructions for using the Patch Tool are still there, but on a separate page. If you look up Patch Tool in the index, you will get the simple page you described. But then if you select the Contents tab, you will see the list of additional pages relating to the Patch Tool. The instructions for use are actually on the following TWO pages. Why they split it up like this is not clear to me, but at least the instructions are still there.
There is another issue with the Help Center that initially drove me crazy, but I finally figured out how to deal with it. See my post on the ‘Disappearing Help Center". John Joslin, "Disappearing Help Center" #1, 15 May 2005 2:49 pm </cgi-bin/webx?13/0>
what really steams me about the help center is there’s (apparently?) no way to increase the font size! make’s for a lot of squinting when using the help and you’re at 1280×1024 or better! if anyone knows a way, please post it!
what really steams me about the help center is there’s (apparently?) no way to increase the font size! make’s for a lot of squinting when using the help and you’re at 1280×1024 or better! if anyone knows a way, please post it!
In windows? Just like in IE. Hit control and use the scroll button on your mouse. Big as you want it. 🙂
