Photoshop CS2 Update: keyboard shortcut bug

Jun-1-06, 7:12 pm by Hanford
File under: Adobe, Photoshop

I've done a bit more research on the Photoshop bug I mentioned in an older post, and I'm now sharing it here.

For many versions of Photoshop for Windows, pressing ALT+E,A,V and ALT+E,A,H have been the only way to do keyboard shortcuts for Edit > Transform > Vertical and Horizontal flip. I learned these keystrokes 10 years ago and have been using them ever since. I don't even think about it when I trigger them.

When CS2 was released a new feature was added to the Edit menu called Adobe PDF Presets, and some wisenheimer at Adobe decided that it needed a shortcut and assigned 'A' to it.

This broke the Transform menu shortcuts.

Now I'm assuming that it was an oversight.

I noticed this when CS2 first came out, and I discovered a workaround for it, but I never really used CS2 due to other bugs that finally got fixed one year later with the dot release. Now that I'm using it regularly, I can post more details about it in the hope that it helps other people, and that Adobe fixes it.

The Workaround

The workaround to get ALT-E,A,V and ALT-E,A,H to work is to customize your menu set up and remove the "Adobe PDF Presets ..." menu item from the list. Yes, of course this means you won't be able to activate this menu item when you need it but ... seriously, when do you really need it? Now, the problem is not quite solved, becuase that step alone won't get the underline to appear under the a in Transform. In order to get it to work, you'll need to execute Free Transform at least once every time you boot Photoshop. Yeah, it sucks, doesn't it? It actually doesn't have to be Free Transform, it can be any of the interactive transform tools. You can execute it from the menu or it's shortcut Ctrl-T, but it needs to go into the interactive mode. Having it trigger in an action won't make the shortcut work.

I don't know why Free Transform makes the shortcut appear, but it does.

So, there you have it. Adobe, if you're reading this, please fix it. It's frustrating to have something I've relied on for so long suddenly change for absolutely no reason (and then not have it fixed in the dot release).

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Brian White wrote: Sep-23-07, 9:29 pm

I found a bug in the photoshop lens-correction filter that may be of interest to some people. It seems that using perspective correction will mess up the image.

kavi wrote: Mar-14-07, 11:19 pm

Hi,
I have photoshop cs2 installed. I found when i work on a image (any size) in full screen mode if i use the hand tool the whole image moves along which is very annoying. Is it a bug?.

John Nack wrote: Jun-2-06, 8:58 am

Hey Hanford,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I hadn't heard this complaint before, but I've sent it to our UI folks for discussion.

J.

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