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Garconis
Known Participant
July 7, 2011

P: "Adobe Community Help" keeps popping open (Windows)

  • July 7, 2011
  • 437 replies
  • 11657 views

Adobe Community Help keeps popping open when working within Adobe Photoshop CS5. I'm not sure if I'm doing some sort of shortcut that causes it to open, but sometimes (maybe once instance, during a 40hr week) Adobe Community Help will open in a Window while I am doing stuff in Adobe Photoshop CS5.

I'm not sure what causes it, but I'll close the Community Help window, and then continue working in Photoshop, and it will open again. Only way to keep it from opening back up again is to close and restart Photoshop. This has happened to me on my home PC as well, and in previous versions of Photoshop, if I remember correctly. I am using Windows 7 now, but I think I've had this happen on XP too.

Is it because there are updates available? Is it because I'm doing some sort of weird shortcut that I don't know about?

An example: I was transforming an object (using the mouse, clicking, using shift button while moving the cursor, using the space bar while panning, etc.) It just opened again. Guess it's time to restart Photoshop...

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437 replies

Garconis
GarconisAuthor
Known Participant
September 7, 2012
CS6 now usually crashes as a result. Other versions did not. At least for me.
Brett N
Adobe Employee
Adobe Employee
September 7, 2012
1) We don't know, we really just don't see it on the vast majority of computers. Yes, there are a lot of you encountering this problem, but of all Photoshop users it's really a tiny fraction, probably less than 1%. I'm not trying to mitigate the severity of the issue, just putting things in perspective. If we knew what was causing it we would either fix it in the application or tell you what you need to change about your system to get rid of it. We simply don't have any actionable information. All we really know is that it happens with Photoshop, and for those people that have it happen to them, it happens with multiple versions on the same computer. All evidence points to some third-party factor, whether a piece of hardware or software in common, or both. Or a specific version of one of the above. I think it might be like the Joker's evil plot from the original (Keaton/Burton) Batman movie, if you use certain products in combination then you get this bad behavior. In other words, there are multiple, different causes, but each cause itself is the result of multiple factors. E.g. you have a specific video card, with a specific driver version, with a specific OS update installed/uninstalled, and brand-x third-party software. This probably means that a/multiple shared DLL file(s) has/have been modified and causes a misinterpretation of a call from Photoshop for these dialog windows. If you think about it in these terms, the amount of work to simply discover the cause is monumental and will take a great deal of time, but more importantly it will take a great deal of useful information from those that encounter it.

2) By worse, do you mean it happens more often? More browser windows open? It crashes now but didn't before?
Inspiring
September 6, 2012
The same issue that James Smith just posted just happened to me. I had the adobe help forum popup many times in CS5, and have now had the same thing happen in CS6 a few times. I was using the color picker, all the sudden adobe help launches about 20 browser windows and Photoshop tells me an error occured and I have no other option but for it to close.

I know this sort of thing happened in CS5, I've seen it documented various places on the web. Why is it 1) still happening 2) worse than before?
Noel Carboni
Legend
August 28, 2012
You really ought to qualify your statements...

>CS6 is the buggiest yet

Perhaps you could consider adding "for me" or "for what I do".

I actually find it to be one of the most stable versions yet. I never could ferret out an ongoing problem with Photoshop CS5 crashing on exit, and I was only ever able to make Photoshop CS4 work reliably enough to be useful in Basic GPU mode. I'm not going to lie: Photoshop CS6 has crashed on me on a few occasions, but for what I do (primarily raw photo editing for publication online or print) it's working quite well.

This Help pop-up bug has only happened to me about 3 times since release. Days go by with heavy use all day, including even some experimentation, without faults. I am pretty happy with it (though am still looking forward to 13.0.1 as there are a number of documented non-crash bugs).

Your post really doesn't even belong in this thread, but since you've put it here, allow me to make a suggestion: Assuming you're running Windows, one thing that can often make a huge difference in how well Photoshop runs is to update your display driver. Probably the most prudent thing to do if you do find a display driver update online (at the web site of your video card maker) is to completely remove the current version then install the new one. Display driver writers apparently think differently than installer writers, and their installers are traditionally quirky.

Good luck.

-Noel
Garconis
GarconisAuthor
Known Participant
August 27, 2012
CS6... no Adobe Help pop-up this time. I was tranforming a smart object (reducing the scale) and all of a sudden Photoshop starts checking for a solution to an error and then it tells me I have to close Photoshop. Force close again. Lovely. CS6 is the buggiest yet. At least with CS5 there was no force closing. I guess I'll have to resort to using CS5 until Adobe can release a stable version of CS6...
Lynda-S
Known Participant
August 27, 2012
Here is an error message I saw when I double clicked a layer to open Layer Styles, I doubt it will help but here it is:



Despite the error I had several Help Tabs open.

One other note: Is there no way to run a system console (or debugger or whatever you call it) that would catch errors as they happen? I would happily let that run in the background if it would help and possibly nail down this error. If NDA's or other legal agreements are required to do this I do not mind.
annd63484057
Participating Frequently
August 24, 2012
Well this hasn't happened to me for at least 3 months. Last time this was happening when I tried to zoom in with ctrl+space.

This time it was the color picker. Selected the text then color picked popped open about 2 dozen windows, weeee! (Not layer style related at all but I see a lot of people are color picker related as well)
Inspiring
August 15, 2012
As a professional photographer, I'm used to refine the corrections of my photographs, use the "Variant" which joins with this function, the photographer's approach laboratory to simultaneously view multiple proposals and combine several actions before committing, having always the original image for comparison.

No other function offers the ease and effectiveness.

For me, the disappearance of this module in Photoshop CS6 for Mac is prohibitive.

Without it, I finally gave up any updated my version CS5 CS6. His absence is a real regression Photoshop. Withdrawal is incomprehensible.

So I ask you to reintroduce this feature.

Kind Regards
B. Pugin

--

En tant que photographe professionnel, j’ai l’habitude pour affiner les corrections de mes photographies, d’utiliser la fonction « Variante » qui rejoint, avec cette fonction, la démarche du photographe de laboratoire en permettant de visualiser simultanément plusieurs propositions et de combiner plusieurs actions avant de les valider, en ayant en permanence l’image initiale en comparatif.

Aucune autre fonction n’offre cette facilité et cette efficacité.

Pour moi, la disparition de ce module dans Photoshop CS6 pour Mac est rédhibitoire.

Sans elle, je renonce définitivement à toute mise à jour de ma version CS5 en CS6. Son absence est une véritable régression de Photoshop. Son retrait est incompréhensible.

Je vous demande donc de réintroduire cette fonction.

Cordiales Salutations
B. Pugin
Brett N
Adobe Employee
Adobe Employee
August 14, 2012
As I mentioned, a group of Styles saved as a preset is generally referred to as an Effect. But technically, it's still just a Style Preset.
Noel Carboni
Legend
August 14, 2012
Therein lies the problem. Someone, somewhere, has styles and effects kind of mixed up. Note the options when one right clicks on a preset...


Image is not available



-Noel