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

I just tried it again with Layer Style (double-click a layer, click enter to close). Got over 100 and still no Help pop-up. I haven't closed Photoshop, still have the same file open, so it's been open for over an hour and I've been doing "real" work. Any other suggestions?

This is relevant...:P I cannot locate the post where someone said to try installing the offline help, but I did that last night and then the bug occured today for me just now.

It is a good bandaid because it only opened one iteration of Acrobat, not my browser...thusly nothing crashed on me. Not to say it wont happen, but might be a temporary solution for some folks.

I just tried this little experiment (Windows XP, PSCS6): Open and close the Color Picker about 100 times (I got distracted in my counting around 120). I would just click the Foreground color swatch, then click Enter to close the Window (by activating the OK button). So this work went pretty quick. Photoshop had already been open for over half an hour (I'm not sure the exact time). I was working on creating a collage of several images in which a sequence of action was happening at a single location. So this file includes several layers and mask, I had used Auto-Align and Auto-Blend, the Quick Selection tool, layer opacity, and Refine Edge.

No Help pop-up. I tried it again more than half an hour later and still no Help.

All I can say is this problem as I mentioned has been ongoing for years. For me, it only happens with Layer Styles and color picker. It has happened across multiple computers, at home and at work. It only happens on Windows... never seen it happen on any of our Macs.

It really seems to happen when I have lots of layers using lots of styles.

I wish I could give Adobe a step by step way to replicate it, but it happens randomly and for no reason whatsoever. I am amazed that Adobe has never had this happen in house.

Thanks James, the Twitter link should be fixed now.

Noel, about not being able to reproduce the issue on command: you'd never know if you've gotten the issue fixed. If we gave you a patch and you had no way to force the problem to happen again to verify the fix, you'd never know for sure that it was really gone. It may take months, but it could just be lingering in the background waiting to happen.

Same for us, if we have no way to produce the problem, all the changes in the world to the code for Photoshop will never let us know that we have fixed the issue. We could make a change, but we won't know its fixed anything because we couldn't get the program to produce the problem in the first place. And we're not just going to just dive blindly in and start making random changes, hoping it fixes something we can't even see and then distribute that out to everyone.

We also need to know what triggers it, where in the code is this flaw? What part of Photoshop are we fixing? Is it related to keyboard shortcuts, menu APIs, dialog modules, etc?

As far as making Photoshop more defensive against these kinds of issues: that's not how programming works. You can plug security holes that you know exist, but really the only way to know about the hole is to see the water come streaming in. We can't just give Photoshop the Shield of Defense +5, we need something concrete to work on.

And again, with this web site, we don't code it. You need to take this issue to the folks that deal with that. GetSatisfaction doesn't read these posts, you have to post this kind of problem, at minimum, here: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh.... It may be better to go to http://www.getsatisfaction.com and go to the Contact Us link at the bottom, or something along those lines.

And James, thank you, spot on.

James, I think you may be acting a bit too tolerant toward Adobe!

Regarding experience, I have 35 years experience in software engineering excellence at all levels.

There comes a time when patience runs out.

-Noel

No problem James.

Now I can't get it to do it and I have to leave for the day, I will continue this tomorrow.

For me: bnemecek [AT] adobe [DOT] com

This is a client's website psd, I'll find another, shouldn't be hard as most files do it.
Where to send?