I'm not able to reproduce the issue you describe. ctrl + tab cycles left to right through tabs and ctrl + shift + tab cycles right to left through tabs:
I see the old "Avoid the Issue" solution, but I will pass. Take a moment to review your programs and the "Getting Started & FAQ" for making better applications. Sorry I don't have a link - it doesn't exist. How to reproduce this issue for n00bs:
1. Open a new document*
2. Open another new document*
3. Open another (a third) new document*
4. Press ctrl+tab a few times and ctrl+shift+tab a few times to navigate between open tabs. This is the proper tab order
5. Drag "Untitled-3" one tab left of its current position (at the far right) of your tab group
6. Press ctrl+tab. It switches to "Untitled-1" despite now being to the left (left == before. Are you having trouble because you're reading this from right to left?) of "Untitled-2"
7. Fix the problem.
Solution 1: Don't allow tabs or windows if you don't know how to implement them.
Solution 2: Update your tab indexes as the tabs are rearranged by the user for proper tabbing.
This problem came to my attention because of another failure of Photoshop: if many documents are open in tabs, it should be possible to access all of them. Often I wish to drag an element from one document to another via the Move Tool. If tabs are inaccessible at the top of the screen because of lack of real-estate, it becomes impossible to drop one element into another without rearranging your tabs. This is because of certain tabbing methodology where if you go to the next tab, the tab view is switched too far to either direction so one or the other document becomes inaccessible, which inspires the user to rearrange their tabs in order to share elements from one to the other. Fix this too. And don't suggest that I open new windows with respective tab groups - windows don't function correctly. Just because I OPENED a window recently doesn't mean I want it to have focus every time I switch back to Photoshop. How about you update that too - keep my most recent window in focus.
*No need to name docs. Name assumed to be "Untitled-[n]".
Thanks for providing better steps to repro. We'll take a look. Please stop with the insults. It doesn't add to the spirit of communication and the purpose of this site. Thanks.
I can confirm this bug. It appears that Photoshop has two indices associated with each tab. One index is the order in which the tab appears in the GUI. The other index is the order the tab appears as you cycle through via Cntrl-Tab. This makes it difficult both to navigate properly, as well as to quickly set up before-after comparisons between different PSDs.
Hi, when I have multiple tabs open in Photoshop CC 2014, if I re-order them (by say, sliding the last tab to somewhere around the middle of 10 open files), I can't follow sequence if I use Command + ~ to cycle through them on my iMac. Photoshop still cycles through the images, but follows the original order instead. (So image 10 would still appear last rather than somewhere in the middle between 5 and 6.)
Signing up for the forums just to express frustration about this as well.
I have the exact issue as described as Ull Troyo and Sudodeez.
I open files, and tabbing works as expected. But if I drag the tabs around, Cmd+Tab and Cmd+Shift+Tab don't go left-to-right and back, but rather, bounce around the tabs based on the original order in which I opened the files. Super annoying "feature".
It works just as it should if you open documents 1, 2, & 3 and work on only 1, 2, & 3 without closing any of them or without opening any other documents. Soon as one is closed or another is introduced, the tab placement doesnt matter. It goes by the order the document was opened.
And can I just add some feedback?
This is without a doubt the worst age Photoshop has ever been in, all starting with the introduction of your CC implementation. It is so over ridden with novice, amateur features - bodering on crap you get with PowerPoint that people who don't know any better think is amazing - and the usless, mandatory, permanently on, sharing silliness.
Photoshop used to be the flagship of this company, and you know what Adobe, not everything Apple is doing today is worth following. Making inferior desktop software is really not as cool as they make it seem.
This is interesting. The tab order is honored when I first open the files. It's also honored if I tile the files, then use Consolidate all to here with a file that changes the original tab order. So when Adobe creates the order, either on open or with Consolidate All, it knows what the proper tab order is. But if I drag a tab manually to a different location (don't know why I would with my workflow, but I'm sure people find reasons to), then Adobe doesn't know about it. It remembers the former tab order, so adopts it. Hence Ctrl-Tab can move to the left, while Ctrl-Shift-Tab might move to the right.
Obviously, under these circumstances, Adobe is keeping us flexible and able to swap kbsc at a moment's notice.<G>
I'm surprised they didn't fix this within the first week or less of OP explaining how to replicate the issue. Cause from each post from what i see here... its gone from CS to CC with the same bug issue.
What's worse is that the person named Jeffrey cared more about OP saying "noobs", then actually caring about the issue at hand. I say this because... half or more of each of Jeffrey post is complaining about OP saying "noobs" once on each of OP post... NOBODY CARES JEFFREY. So if that isn't avoiding the issue, then I don't know what is.
If there is a update download link to fix this issue then please can someone post said link. If there is no update link cause they haven't fix it yet. Then here is a easy solution for you, so easy that it should take less then a day to fix.
Set up the code / equation so that every time you move the tab around it records / updates its list order, that way once you use ctrl tab or ctrl ~ it will work properly because it'll grab the new info from the updated list. Congrats now you have a solution and you have no excuses. Fix it.
Yes, the original poster was rude here, but 7 years?
I work with image sequences and when the order's wrong it means I can't see what I'm doing.
It's rarely an issue on MacOS as they usually come up in alphabetical order anyway (though it's frustrating when they don't), and I number my sequences with leading zeros, but now I'm on Windows the images appear in unpredictable orders. I thought I'd be able to work around that by rearranging the tabs, but rearranging the tabs doesn't seem to affect the cycling order.
It's hard to see how this is anything other than a bug. If it doesn't affect the cycling order does the ability to rearrange tabs serve any function at all?
Just ran into this issue as well. When using Actions, this is especially annoying as well because "Select Next Document" now is worthless because of this bug.
I found out this feature was added in CS4 more than 10 years ago. But here today in the year 2019, this most basic bug still exists, at least in the Windows. Make 3 documents. Rearrange any of their tabs around. Try Ctrl+Tab to cycle through them and watch as you jump around the order the tabs were in before and left to right as one would expect. In all my years working with Photoshop, I have always avoided rearranging tabs because of this bug. Because I know that unlike in any other program that features tabs you can cycle through, if I try to tab to the next open document, it's not going to go to the one to the right of the one I have selected, it's going to move to some random one I may have moved hours or days ago and it gets confusing. In fact, InDesign also has this peculiar behavior! Only Illustrator gets it right, which only makes this more confusing and not worth using outside of the most basic scenarios.
I hope this feature can finally get fixed. It's probably ruined a generation of designers trained to work around this bug.
Actually that was 8 years ago and they never did take a look because ... lol, like I had mentioned it went from CS all the way to CC. Kind of funny if you think about it, developers were so lazy that they still couldn't fix it even in CC... even though other programs don't have this issue 😉
Assuming Mr. Tranberry has other things to do rather than facilitate the fixing of this rather egregious bug, then one can't help but wonder why no one else with the power to do so hasn't had a go at it at some point over the last decade. Working around this "quirk" has consumed dozens of hours of my time over the last number of years, and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Understanding there are likely countless others who endure the same benefit-less waste of significant time for years on end, I can only imagine it due to some stubborn dysfunction brought out by the their response to the OP's tone when they first became aware of the issue. If this post is received in a similar manner, & if it is received at all, then so be it. It's beyond unfortunate that this issue still persists, and a downright shame that they've cast a blind eye to those who depend upon their expertise and accountability.
I'm using Photoshop CC 2021 (22.3.0) in Windows 10 Pro.
As the title suggests, I'd like for Photoshop to switch tabs in the way they are visually arranged - instead of by the order in which the tabs were originally created/opened, before I moved them into the order of my choosing.
To reproduce:
<Preferences/Workspace/"Open Documents as Tabs" is enabled>
In Photoshop -> Create four new images that will appear as tabs -> if I hit CTRL + TAB the selected/active tab will cycle towards the right - like I would expect - and if I hit CTRL + SHIFT + TAB, it will cycle towards the left. Perfect!
Now I select the fourth tab (in my case it is called Untitled-4) and drag it to the spot between the first and second tab (Untitled-1 and Untitled-3). Now, when I hit CTRL + TAB, it will cycle in this order: Tab 1, Tab 3, Tab 4, Tab 2 - and then back to Tab 1. This is not what I want. I expect the CTRL + TAB cycle to switch to the immediate tab to the right of the currently active tab - not cycle through the order in which I opened the documents - nor the order in which I created the documents/tabs.
TLDR: Please make CTRL + TAB switch to the immediate tab to its right and CTRL + SHIFT + TAB switch to the immediate tab to its left. Just like in a browser.
29
Replies
AdChoices