Mal Reynolds
Explorer
Mal Reynolds
Explorer
Activity
‎Sep 05, 2023
09:20 PM
1 Upvote
Or, "How many ways can you screw it up?" Let's look at some of the "enhancements" that Adobe has made from Bridge 2022 in Bridge 2023 (for Windows). Editing the description field. It USED to be that you could type [Ctrl] + [Enter] to commit a change. No more! Adobe has "improved" it by making it seemingly impossible to commit input via the keyboard, and making you move to the mouse (because evewybody likes mousies) and click on the tick icon near the bottom. Clipboard integration. What is going on with that? You can select a description or a set of keywords and bang away on [Ctrl]+[C] until your fingers bleed and it WILL NOT pick the content up into the clipboard. The only way it works is if you select Copy from the right click menu, because once again, evewybody likes mousies and this software wasn't designed, if I can use that word, for adults. This also results in a ridiculous number of visits from the incredibly annoying "Apply Metadata?" dialog, which you can tell Bridge not to show... but the consequences of doing so would not be appealing, since the answer will vary depending on the circumstances. The use of Control+C has only been a feature of Windows for the last 30 years; why should we expect Adobe to follow it when they have so much {beam of light from above and sound of awe} AI code to write? It's not like Adobe should get the basics right first. Doing The Keyword Jump. If you search for a keyword, but the one you're after is later in the list, you hit the [next] button. You find the one that you're after and check it. You are ABOUT to check the relevant sub-keywords underneath it, bit no... someone on the Bridge design team decided that it would be a rooly, rooooooly good idea to have you JUMP BACK TO THE PREVIOUS instance of the keyword as soon as you check the box, because, well, it's just obvious that you must be done, er, isn't it? (Hint: NO, it is NOT. Checking a keyword has one meaning, and one meaning only; I want that keyword added to the image. It does NOT mean "Add it and move to another keyword".) Keyword Wheel Of Fortune. I've just created a keyword. I have checked the keyword. There's the checkbox, completely checked and everything. Does it appear in the list of keywords for the image? It does not. If I click off the photo and back on it, is the new keyword still checked? No it is not. If I RE check the box, is it in the keyword list NOW? Why yes, yes it is. But what sort of quality control (or lack thereof) allows there to be a disconnect between the data that has been input, and the data that has been written? Mystery Multiples: Does anyone at Adobe want to tell me how the State/Province field can be showing "(Multiple Values)"... when I have ONE, and ONLY ONE, image selected? Anybody? Anyone at all? Mystery displays: So... why am I seeing a few pixels of "chequerboard" transparency around the thumbnails of some of my .psds... transparency which does not in fact exist in the images? Persistence? Who Needs It? Oh, this is the "best" one yet. Let's say that you have a tree of sub-keywords that goes "Vessel", under which is "Cruise Liner", under which is "Cruise Ship". Under that you have the keywords for all of the cruise ships in your galleries, neatly ordered. Then you think "You know what? "Cruise LINER is a misnomer. I'll move "Cruise Ship" and all of its sub-keywords to sit right under Vessel. So you drag it. Just like you could in past versions. And every. Single. Sub-Keyword - every SINGLE one of them - turns into that stupid italicised font that indicates a non-persistent keyword. Do an export now, and all of those keywords are GONE. You have to go through and re-mark them as persistent one, by one, by one, because gods forbid that Bridge should allow us to select multiple keywords at the one time. WHO, exactly, on the Bridge design team decided that if we MOVE a keyword, we want to make it and ALL of its sub-keywords non-persistent? And what, exactly, made them think it was a good idea? Here's a concept that works; if I want to remove sub-keywords from my tree I WOULD DELETE THEM. I don't need Adobe to just decide that hey, the next time you move computers and export all of your keywords to ensure that they're saved, I'll just dump a few dozen that you've spent literally years creating a structure for. This unbelievably ridiculous feature doesn't exist in Bridge 2022. There, if you drag the keywords, they stay persistent. Who came up with the brilliant idea of reducing the amount of metadata displayed in Slideshow view to, wait for it... the filename only? No longer can you get metadata and exposure displays. Yes, Adobe, who DOESN'T like feature reduction aside from, well, pretty much everybody? The Good There is one whole thing that has improved. One. Having the Description box more expandable is a positive. Being able to use standard navigation keys to move to the end of it (rather than jumping out of the field as Bridge 2022 did) is a massive positive. But frankly, with 2023 being this much of a mess, I'm going to re-export my updated keywords and go back to 2022. Hopefully I won't lose too many.
... View more
‎Aug 22, 2023
09:12 PM
I had the same problem. I had to do an online support session with Adobe to get it resolved. The problem started for me this morning; opening .psds from Bridge launched PS just fine, but trying to open a raw file just hung it with no ACR dialog appearing. I had not updated PS for quite some time because it causes me problems more often than not (I have automatic update turned off) but I assume that something did update ACR because it seems to be 15.5 that was the problem for me. Also I still use the last version of Bridge 2022 because I don't like some of the feature losses in Bridge 2023, so I don't normally have 2023 installed. The Adobe rep got me to reinstall ACR 15.5 from a separate download; that didn't work, then he downloaded a copy of 14.5. That DID work, and everything is running again. Unfortunately while you can downl;oad past versions of most of the apps from Creative Cloud Desktop, there is no such option for ACR. For reference my current versions are Windows Version 10.0.19045 Build 19045, Bridge 12.0.4, Bridge 13.0.4 (about to be deleted), Photoshop 24.7, and while Creative Cloud desktop says that Camera Raw is 15.5, the dialog itself shows it as 14.5. I plan to avoid 15.5 for the foreseeable future.
... View more
‎Apr 12, 2023
01:04 PM
> Has anyone successfully reverted back to a previous version? How far back do I have to go to get the save funcion back on my actions... what version will work? I went back to 24.2.1. They seem to be working normally in there.
... View more
‎Apr 08, 2023
07:04 PM
Revert to the previous version using the Creative Cloud app Turn off automatic updates for applications in preferences for the Creative Cloud app Thanks for the advice, but I think you may have missed a couple of points in my post. The reason that I upgraded is that Bridge would not do a photo merge unless I "Upgrade to the latest version of Photoshop". Now, a couple of fun additional facts here. First, I was using Bridge 2022 when I got that message. Why? Because in Bridge 2023, Adobe stuffed the Slideshow mode by removing the (already limited) ability to display metadata under the image. I therefore continued to use Bridge 2022 to keep what functionality Bridge had in that regard. So what happened after I upgraded PS to the latest version? I still got the same message. Figuring that Bridge 2022 was simply too stupid to know that the latest version of PS WAS now installed, I opened Bridge 2023 and tried the PhotoMerge from there instead. It... ran. Sort of. Though for some reason the Latest! And! Greatest! version of Photoshop seems to think that a "photomerge" of 4 horizontal images is best done by joining two of them together and putting them at the top of the canvas and then joining the other two together and putting them at the bottom of the canvas with a huge, empty space between the two. So clearly Adobe has made yet ANOTHER "improvement", but that's a separate conversation. I don't need to keep using Bridge 2022 since I now do most metadata management through the vastly superior ACDSee Ultimate, so the error message is no longer relevant. Second point: Yeah, bit I don't HAVE automatic updates on. I intentionally do not have automatic updates turned on. As I said in my post, I manually triggered the update for one reason and one reason alone, that I thought it was the only way to get Bridge to launch a PhotoMerge in Photoshop. As it turned out (a) that was a Bridge issue, specifically a Bridge 2022 issue and (b) it looks like PhotoMerge has been "improved" to the point of complete uselessness. If Adobe screw up, and here they screwed up not for the first time in trashing Actions, they need to issue a fix. Not someday, not next time they get around to it, but rather As Soon As They Have One. The very day.
... View more
‎Apr 08, 2023
04:34 PM
> Hey everyone, wanted to pass on that the team has a fix for this issue and it should be in an upcoming rollout/update. "Should be", or IS? Because until you fix this - and this post was made over 10 days ago now - I don't HAVE a functioning photo editor from you, I have an expensive, pay by the month, slow to start disk hog with a patheticly antiquated scripting "language" which hasn't been updated for 30 years. Do you EVER test your new releases before you put them out there? Because this is at least the THIRD time I can remember my actions (which work poorly and inflexibly enough as it is) being broken by one of your alleged "updates". What particularly infuriates me is that I didn't even WANT this update. Since I have little faith in you not to screw it up, I was perfectly happy (aside from being infuriated by your lack of effort to improve Actions, but that's a chronic thing) puttering along on the earlier release. However last night I tried to do a photo merge out of Bridge. (Which, incidentally, you screwed up in the last release and whose joke of a "Collections" system finally persuaded me to buy ACDSee as my primary DRM. I only use Bridge these days for a limited number of things, like that, now.) I've done this before with that version of PS. It worked. But THIS time I got an inexcusable error message telling me that to proceed I would HAVE to upgrade to the latest version of PS. Not "recommend", no, "HAVE to". So I did. After all, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? Oh, right, because you never bothered to test the update properly, you could bork all of my actions and cripple my workflow, rendering PS effectively unusable for me (again), THAT'S what could go wrong. If you've got a fix for the sloppy coding of 24.3, don't tell us about it, GIVE it to us. > We appreciate your patience. Mine ran out years ago.
... View more
‎Feb 04, 2023
09:51 AM
It IS possible... as long as I keep using Bridge 2022. And frankly there's nothing in 2023 that I'd consider "a great leap forward". Removing a useful feature just strikes me as a very Adobe thing to do. (Also the second screen thing might or might not work at home - it would depend on whether the metadata panel on the second screen syncs with the display on the main screen)... but it's certainly not an option if you're reviewing the shots "in the field" on a notebook.)
... View more
‎Jan 31, 2023
01:41 PM
What about it? I think you may be rather missing my point. I want to review the photos IN FULL SCREEN, navigating and flicking between images for comparison AND, see the key exposure information at the bottom. JUST the core information, not the 348 tonnes of surplus information in the Metadata panel. (Yes, I am aware that you can switch some fields in the Metadata panel off, and I do. This too still isn't the point, though.) You have NEVER been able to do that with the alleged review function because whoever wrote that was too busy creatinh a "gasp-keeeewwwwllll!" carousel effect without bothering to think what the use case for the thing may be. You USED to be able to do something remotely similar to that in the previous Bridge's Slideshow, but someone decided to pull that functionality in Bridge 2023.
... View more
‎Jan 27, 2023
11:31 PM
I cannot speak for all photographers. But for me, the Review mode in Bridge was always a waste of space. Here it is: Can I change the size of the displayed image on screen? No. Can I zoom in on it? Only using the utterly useless loupe to pixel peep. Can I display the exposure information? The ISO? The focal length? ANYTHING other than the filename? No. Thus in version 12 and earlier I used the Slideshow to review my images instead. At least that way I got the whole image on screen AND I got exposure information as well. I didn't get any control over WHAT information was shown, but at least this was more useful than a filename. Now let's look at the same image presented in version 13: Soooo now, you have NO way of reviewing photos and being able to see the exposure information (not to mention any of the other metadata fields which you SHOULD be able to display at your discretion, but hey, it's an Adobe product, so....) Am I missing something or is this yet another Adobe Great! Leap! Forward! in their designers' own minds?
... View more
‎May 28, 2021
06:45 PM
You're right. I screwed up on that. It was late, I had wasted the usual amount of time in downloading a couple of cards of photos, I was over tired and not focused. I was talking about Bridge, of course, something that I realised not long after posting. So I went to edit the post and and fix it, except... there is no edit button. So instead I went to delete it except... there is no delete button. (Not on this forum, anyway, but Adobe has forums scattered hither and yon anyway.) This is of course a reflection of Adobe in a nutshell. Don't worry about giving users core functionality, like that described above, just add in whatever gloss will promote people to sign up and have their wallets strip mined into eternity. You're right about it being "CWOBaT" in the sense that Adobe will NEVER change. I've kicked everything Adobe aside from BR and PS to the kerb in favour of far better and often cheaper alternatives, and I'm only on PS because I haven't trained myself up in Affinity Photo, and on BR because I've yet to find anything else less bad. BR COULD be good, but Adobe will never put the resources to making it so.
... View more
‎May 28, 2021
04:17 AM
Thanks for the vast number of improvements to Camera Raw in 13.2. Truly, a great leap forward.
When I plug in a memory card, it still doesn't remember the last location that I uploaded to, and tries to upload to a default Pictures path rather than a path (to an external device) that I set.
It still opens the import dialog in basic rather than advanced mode no matter how many times I make the change.
It still doesn't remember which metadata template that I ALWAYS apply to imported images.
It still doesn't let me filter my keyword list to display ONLY the keywords that I have used so that I can remove any template-added keywords that may not apply to that specific image.
Nor does it let me add shortcut keys to apply the most common templates.
It still doesn't let me select exif data to display during either slideshow or review mode.
It still doesn't let me create custom panels with just the properties that are relevant to me depending on the type of content.
And of course the scripting language is non-existent. (But hey, it could be worse. It could be Actions.)
And just to top it off, this site is insisting that I select one or more topics to put this post under, none of which apply. "Praise", certainly, does not.
"Substandard features"? Sure, but that's not offered either.
I hear that the Affinity team is working on a D.A.M. application.
Frankly... I. Can't Wait.
... View more
‎Mar 02, 2020
01:10 AM
I have something which is doubtless the same problem. I have an Action which includes this: Pretty basic stuff, right? Just SAVE as a new file type. Even an archaic semi-language which hasn't been updated since the 1990s and whose idea of "editing" is "re-record everything rather than changing properties in the way that you've been able to do in VBA since 1997" should be able to handle it. I suppose that I could use the Export command rather than the Save command but no, wait... the fact that Export has not been effectively usable in Actions has been known for several years now. Adobe really can't rush fixes. I was using the action all through yesterday. Last night up pops the regular 15 minute reminder from Creative Cloud Desktop. "Hey, Photoshop has an update because we write code that just festers with bugs". This was, at a guess, version 21.1. I hit the update button and waited half an eternity, or about the same time that it takes Photoshop to launch these days. I then went back to processing some photos, hit the action which included the above, and... got this: So I have wasted several hours now, before stumbling across this thread in Adobe's many, varied and disjointed support groups. I did in fact raise this with Adobe's chat support, such as it is. "We don't support third party actions", I was told. No, you aren't listening to me, was the gist of my reply. The action worked in the afternoon, the update was done in the early evening, the action failed in the late evening even after re-recording the action and rebooting the computer. Something in your update SCREWED UP THE ACTION. "You can go back to a previous version", I was told, notwithstanding that we know how Adobe arbitrarily pulled some previous versions with dark and unspecified mutterings about copyright infringement. Nonetheless, after reading this thread, I did. I rolled back to 21.0.3. And of course, the action now works again. That means that I'm now in a situation where I am paying Adobe every month for a product that I cannot risk updating again lest it break one of the most critical actions in my workflow. Naturally, Adobe NEVER tells you what they "fix" in their endless incremental releases that rarely add anything of value; every time it's just "This update addresses several high priority issues discovered since the last release". Never, NEVER do they include any details, so you just have to take it on faith that the latest update won't cripple something, and that faith is not well founded. "Be kind and respectful", the community guidelines say. Do you know how much respect I have for a company which takes your money, breaks things, and will take NO ownership of the problem? I have dumped every piece of Adobe software now save for Photoshop, and that's only because I'm not far enough up the learning curve for Affinity Photo. It will be a joyous day when the last ever dollar leaves my account for Adobe's, and I hit the uninstall button on Photoshop. Because frankly, Adobe (if anyone from there bothers to read these threads), I've had it up to here {gestures to throat} with you. And that IS putting it "kindly", compared to what I say to everyone I know about you and your products.
... View more
‎Nov 26, 2013
12:07 AM
Yup, all the more reason that this should be an opt in, if it must be there at all. Make it opt in and the metaphorical 90% of hate over this issue evaporates because no-one will care if the opt in dialog isn't visible. As for John McAfee... while I hate the current incarnation of the software that he spawned (I have no idea what it was like back when he first wrote it), I have to admit that the guy has a sense of humour. He made this video about how to remove the software, quoting a lot of letters written by users who express, in rather coarse terms (caution, for those of dainty sensibilities who are offended by naughty words), what they think of the software: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg In it he does point out that he's had no connection with the software in over 15 years. I read about the alleged murder thing... the whole business, including the investigation, smelt odd. I don't know whether he played any part in it or not but I wouldn't be rushing to conclusions either way based on the frankly bizarre reports relating to that. Regardless of what JM has or hasn't done, I think the overwhelming majority of us can agree that we hate the software and hate the way Adobe is bundling it though.
... View more
‎Nov 20, 2013
09:36 AM
Thumbs up to 3rdFloor who may have discovered why some people are missing this obscene invasion of system integrity. So I'm asking that MikeM's sanctimonious post be ignored as long as Adobe carries on in the anti-customer fashion that it's started to over the last few years. I'd have asked it a lot more quickly had I not just had to go through an incredibly time-sapping and slow (gods was it slow) process of resetting my password because Adobe allowed its servers to be hacked. A process which, incidentally, includes the privacy-invading step of asking for your date of birth. Oh yeah, you're demanding that I reset my password because your servers were hacked Adobe, of course I'll trust you with my DOB. The servers must run on Flash. Or possibly Adobe Air, which also seems to require a daily update but at least doesn't try to sneak defaults-to-yes virus-masquerading-as-antivirus garbage-ware onto your system. The best way of this thread not being "a profanity laced sounding board"? If Adobe does a 180 degree attitude adjustment in many aspects of its customer relations. It can start with the McAfee thing.
... View more
‎Apr 30, 2013
04:47 AM
If you have nothing worthwhile to contribute, "MVP", then it might be better if you contribute nothing at all because that's the value of your contribution in at least three of these threads that I've seen so far. Find me the person who wants this garbage-ware installed, bring him to me. You won't. Aside from your fanboi-ism, nobody, NOBODY in any thread concerning Adobe's underhanded little trick wants the McAfee garbage on their computer. Everyone else has been critical of the way that Adobe has gone about this. Having it on by default means that some people will miss it. I know it, you know it if you get your head out of your fandom for 30 seconds, Adobe knows it, McAfee knows it which is why they pay a few pieces of silver for it to be done that way. Not you of course, as you've pointed out in other threads you are far too savvy and have never in your life clicked past a dialog inadvertently, but you know, mere mortal users without your l33t interwebz skills. The fault here lies entirely with Adobe and McAfee. So yes, it WAS Adobe's fault for deliberately including the malware in a way that it knew from the outset that some people would miss. How is it that everyone else is wrong and only you see the Pure Shining Truth? Enjoy it when Adobe finally hacks off enough customers with this and other recent policies and someone else comes along with comparable or better products. You can sit in here shining your pretty little MVP badge, assuring yourself that when the company finally goes to the wall or becomes a niche player that none of it was Adobe's own fault. I'm sure that the fanbois who could see that Lotus or Word Perfect could do no wrong told themselves the same thing. Oh wait, you haven't hit the "this is a user forum, there's no point complaining here" chorus that you've churned out in some other threads yet, though I'm sure you will. Try, just TRY to fathom this concept. If Adobe is not monitoring these forums, then they would be idiots. And they aren't idiots, because we see staff members, not just fanbois with airs and graces, posting here. And the more posts that are made in the forums about it, the more Adobe might, just possibly, "get" the level of anger that exists about this subject in the wider user base. Which, incidentally, consists of more people than just you.
... View more
‎Apr 23, 2013
12:20 PM
Chris Campbell wrote: I understand how you feel. I've passed this along to our team and will continue to do so. The fact is that these offers help offset the development costs for Flash Player (which is provided for free). I've seen you write this a couple of times now, and while on the one hand I do appreciate the presence of an official Adobe voice in the forums and don't want to slam you since your presence here is great, I would have to say that I was singularly unimpressed by that argument itself. It almost sounds like Adobe is doing people a favour by releasing Flash Player for free. Fact: If you didn't release Flash Player for free, hardly anybody would want it and even fewer would buy it. The installed base of Flash Player would be as close to zero as makes no odds. The number of websites that would deploy Flash would therefore be close to zero, and consequently... your sales of the Adobe Flash development tool would also be zero. Or they would be, were it not that your CS package licencing is so utterly inflexible that we keep getting junk that we don't want just to try to reduce the total cost of purchase on the items that we do want. When I say "junk" I include both "software that is probably OK but which I have neither the interest nor time to invest in its learning curve" such as Adobe Flash, and unmittigated wastes of disk space like the late and very unlamented Adobe Contributor, the purpose of which I was never able to successfully fathom unless it was to clutter our Office toolbars with buttons and menus which had no discernable usefulness. "You want PhotoShop and RoboHelp? Well let's see, you can buy them seperately for $xtortionate plus $xtortionate+, or you can buy them in a CS package with Fireworks and Flash and a whole bunch of cr@p that you don't need or want for somewhat less than $xtortionate plus $xtortionate+." "Hang on, why can't I make a package consisting of only the tools that I want?" "Noooo, we don't do it that way. By the way, we no longer let you switch your upgrade path between single apps and packaged apps either." "That's nice of you." "At Adobe, we like to feel that we have a true partnership with our users. Our hand, in your pocket. Forever. By the way, want to buy a subscription service instead of outright?" So yes, on that basis I concede that you would still sell some copies of Adobe Flash even if Flash Player was not free, but not that many, and not by design. (And I do fully understand your strategy there which is the hope that today's disk clutter might be something that users try and like tomorrow, but it still gives me the screaming irrits that outside of the Master collection (which I am not paying the obscene Australian price for) I can't get a single package which covers only the applications that I actually want.) The second thing is that we the user base are painfully aware that it's free on the basis of "you get what you pay for". I look at the number of critical security updates that I get for Photoshop, which is a very fine tool, or Dreamweaver (the same, in my opinion). They are occasional and rarely vital. Flash and Java, on the other hand... well, given that we seem to have A! New! Update! for both on any day that happens to end in a "Y' one can only say that an article on the Sophos site (http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/23/oracle-please-stop-sneakily-foisting-third-party-toolbars-on-us-with-your-java-updates/) nailed it: If you're installing a critical security update on your computer, caused by the software vendor's sloppy code quality, you probably wouldn't dream that your software vendor is trying to make some money out of the inconvenience. The fact that Adobe sees Flash Player as a cost centre rather than what it really is (which is a necessary driver for a profit centre, specifically sales of Adobe Flash as described above) is well and truly reflected in the number of updates that we get lumbered with because Adobe can't be bothered putting the resources into the thing to prevent it needing updates so frequently in the first place. So believe me, we know it's free. The price shines through in the code quality, every single day. ("Flash Player has crashed! Again! Send crash report!" "It's Tuesday afternoon, time for yet another a Flash Player update to fix more bugs/vulnerabilities that weren't coded correctly in the first place!", etcetera.) It's just an obscenity that Adobe is trying to turn a buck from this sloppiness by trying to sneak unwanted third party software onto our desktop when we do an upgrade. I actually wouldn't care if it was "opt in" but having an "opt out" system means that there will be people who are just so sick of constant updates from code sloppiness that they keep clicking [Next], or who don't understand what is actually on offer, or who are distracted for a moment and bang, it's on their computer and there's another few pieces of silver for Adobe. It's ethically and morally wrong. We know it, Adobe knows it (but will never admit it) and even McAlware probably knows it.
... View more
‎Apr 23, 2013
03:41 AM
My one regret, AnotherAGladys, is that I have but one Yes vote to give you on the Was This Helpful question. You have justifiably excoriated Adobe over this issue with such precision that there is little left to say about it, but I would still encourage people to speak up about how ANGRY they are about this until Adobe finally gets the message that infuriating customers for a few bucks slung their way from McAlware is not a reasonable trade for their long term survival. I just received a prompt to update Flash Player. Now I recall that in days of yore you were notified when an update was available (which it was oh so very often with the unstable bugfest that is Flash Player), you would select the option to update it if you wanted to, and you're away. (I always rejected the "give us the keys to your system and let us do things in the background that you don't know about" option.) But with this one I have to save an install file to do it. That's AFTER I'm asked about installing the McAffee cr@pware, which is on by default. Why the difference? I suppose that the "Yes, yes, yes, I want the McAlware product that I voted with my wallet against using to be installed on my PC in the hope that it will stuff up my existing anti-virus software" dialog is part of it. Of course Adobe isn't the only one pulling this, Oracle and its magical viral Java machine (which I'd turn off completely if it were not for a couple of essential programs that I use needing it) does exactly the same thing every time it does an update (even more frequently than Flash Player and for the same reason) as well. I have no idea how much McAlware is paying these guys, but as I said, angering the user base for a few bucks is hardly a good move strategically. I used to really like Adobe as a company, but between the unconscionable rip-off in Australian software pricing, the disgusting change to their upgrade policy which now reads "buy every version or else", and now the attempt to flick some bloatware that I don't like, need or want onto my system in the event that I'm not paying attention, Adobe is really, really getting up my nose.
... View more
‎Jan 20, 2009
01:41 AM
quote:
Originally posted by:
johndaigle
I've been using RoboHelp since 1992 and this is huge. Not
only is Adobe RoboHelp 8 released, but the entire Adobe Technical
Communication Suite 2 (now with Adobe Photoshop!)
Wow. Maybe now I can get a version of Captivate that will
actually work with Vista instead of complaining that it, and it
alone amongst the TCS applications, doesn't have a valid serial
number.
I'm wondering if the many and varied bugs in Captivate have
been fixed as well.
RH7, on the other hand, I'm more than happy with so while
it's nice to see upgrades coming through the channel, I'm not sure
I'd rate it as "huge" news. I'd be happy to continue on with RH7
for the foreseeable future, though I'll be interested to see what
RH8 has in store.
... View more
‎Dec 05, 2008
03:55 PM
I can't believe that this is an isolated problem; I've got
exactly the same one. My XP Pro notebook's monitor died. Previously
TCS had installed and worked normally on that computer. I hooked it
up to an external monitor, deactivated all of my Adobe software,
and installed TCS and CS3 Web Premium on my new Vista Ultimate
notebook. Everything is fine EXCEPT for naffing Captivate, which
insists that my TCS licence number is invalid. Not, I hasten to
add, that it should be
asking for the licence number anyway since the licence key
was supplied when I activated Framemaker and it, RoboHelp and
Acrobat 3D all seem perfectly happy to use the one I have.
(Of course, that was
AFTER I had to jump through hoops to get rid of the
"Licensing for this product has stopped working" issue (
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb401528).)
I have this problem with Adobe Support (and have had for the
last week), but so far no joy.
I'm not sure if I'd even mind as much if there was some issue
with the program itself not working properly with Vista; at least
they could issue a patch for that. But wasting a week of my life on
installation and licencing issues? Not. Happy.
And of course it
had to be Captivate; I've said it before and I'll say it
again; amongst a pantheon of robust, well built Adobe software,
Captivate stands alone as an irritating bugfest which requires of
its users so many workarounds that they could easily get dizzy.
It's probably too late for the original poster of this
thread, but if I get a solution from Support I'll post it here.
There are a few threads on issues with Vista (a few!
), but this is the closest one to my own
experience.
... View more
‎Aug 23, 2008
12:00 AM
quote:
Originally posted by:
cegrubb
When you adjust the slide length (longer?) I'm guessing that
the audio timeline also increases causing the distortion.
Here's a wild guess...can you use the padlock to lock in the
audio file and then try adjusting the timing of the slide?
I'm a bit befuddled by this. I've been importing audio as
well since I can't really use CP itself to record it due to quality
issues. The two things that I've found are:
(a) You can't shorten the slide to less than the length of
the audio; and
(b) You can't lengthen the audio (other than by editing it to
insert copied blocks or spaces or what have you).
That being the case Rene shouldn't be ABLE to corrupt the
audio by changing the length.
The only thing I can suggest is that I did have problems when
I first tried importing .wav files out of SoundBooth, and found
that all of my problems went away when I changed the SB save format
to .mp3. It's been a while since I used Audacity but I THINK it can
output in .mp3 format; if so it may be worthwhile re-saving the
files as .mp3s and importing them into CP in that format. Worth a
shot...
... View more
‎Aug 22, 2008
11:46 PM
Great post, Joe. I also enjoyed the DIY "recording studio"
posts in this thread; they were very helpful.
quote:
Originally posted by:
retro74
I have tried many experiments with Captivate and it may hurt
the developers feelings to hear this, but Captivate has a noisy
pre-amp module and I have had bad results in most cases. I have a
Samson USB microphone and a Shure Lavalier and they sound bad in
Captivate. I switched recording to Line-In and it was much better
and the hum was 95% gone. Line in made a big difference on the
laptop.
I agree with all of this. If the issue was the microphone
you'd expect it to be a problem in all apps, but it's not.
Captivate is the problem. I had the same experience; I can IMPROVE
the input quality with fiddling, but it's never truly GOOD quality
when recorded in Captivate. Yet the same mic attached to the same
computer can create perfectly clear audio in Soundbooth.
quote:
Originally posted by:
retro74
Then I downloaded and installed the FREE and incredible
Audacity software (GPL license) from SourceForge and WOW was the
sound better with both microphones. Crystal clear!
I've used Audacity before but never really got into it for
some reason. I've grown quite fond of Soundbooth in the time that
I've been using it though; not bad at all for a version 1.0
release, and although it's (obviously!) more expensive than
Audacity, I found the price to be pretty reasonable. (Especially
for the downloadable version.)
quote:
Originally posted by:
retro74
I then switched from my Laptop to my killer speed desktop and
the sound wes better on that machine, even in Captivate. A good
sound card may make the difference for you, but Audacity will knock
your socks off.
The Bad news is that Captivate is so easy to record in on a
per slide basis. Easy to start, stop, delete, edit. But sound
quality matters the most and in my opinion, they blew the code on a
bad pre-amp routine. Audacity does it right for FREE, but you now
need to record in Audacity and then copy the sound bites to your
Captivate presentation and that takes more time. Not much time,
just more time. Well worth the time.
Agreed; the audio is such an important part of the
presentation that you HAVE to spend the time on it. However it's
time that I'd rather not spend. Had the audio capture code in
Captivate been up to scratch, I wouldn't have to. Also (in a way) I
didn't appreciate having to keep throwing money at the problem
(expensive mic, audio recording software), though in my own case I
was able to afford them, able to claim them as a tax deduction, and
able to use them for other things as well so I didn't mind THAT
much. For someone on a tight budget, say a student, it would be
more annoying that they couldn't get decent quality from the start
with minimal equipment.
quote:
Originally posted by:
retro74
I think the Adobe Sound tool is a good idea if you have the
$$$$. But they should have gotten this right to begin with in
Captivate ands they should have patched the problems LONG AGO. The
adobe $$$ SoundBooth tool seems to work for people, and that means
a cleaner pre-amp section of code that should be in Captivate.
Amen. If I had to use one word to describe Captivate, it
would be "disappointing". And I say that in sorrow rather than
anger. It's still a good tool, but it's not (yet) a GREAT tool. The
audio recording code (which, as I said, is a KEY factor for
presentations) is deficient. And there are also too many bugs in
it. To give some random examples:
- Bullet points randomly vanishing in caption text when you
change the caption timing, move the caption, or possibly look at it
the wrong way (you can never be sure which);
- The text capture routine too frequently failing to capture
the last character that you type when you enter text into a browser
address bar or text box (I've gotten into the habit of typing a
trailing space then backspacing just to be safe);
- Timings randomly changing when you edit text;
- The display time for some captions resorting to the
accursed 3 second default when you change the start time, EVEN WHEN
you physically re-enter the correct display time before you close
the properties dialog. Again this seems to be another random thing,
though with the captions in question I simply COULD NOT get them to
stay at the display time that I wanted through the dialog. I had to
do it in the timeline instead, which wastes my time;
- The absence of a way to link between .exe outputs... I
could go on.
Admittedly I've come to have higher expectations with Adobe
software compared to say MS, which seems to find new and exciting
ways of ticking users off with every new release since about Office
XP. PS and DW I regard as software gods, RH can be a bit quirky
(and the HTML editor really needs some work to make it as efficient
as using Word) but it's an excellent product nonetheless, Acrobat
keeps getting better with each release (I found some of the earlier
ones like 5 to be buggy and quirky, but 8 is great), SB I haven't
worked with enough to be definitive about but it's looking good,
very good, so far in my humble non-muso opinion, similarly I'm just
learning FL but I like what I'm seeing even if it's not what I
expected when I only saw Flash movies from the outside. But CP? It
seems... unfinished? Lightweight? Not quite the business? It's hard
to describe, but while it's far from useless it just seems to lack
the professionalism and robustness that I see in products like PS
and DW, or even SB for that matter. Also unlike most of the other
CS products, there seems to have been very little work put into it
between CS2 and CS3. Granted most CS3 products aren't a HUGE leap
over CS2, but most of them had a reasonable number of improvements
in that transition. However CP seems to be almost the same. It's
interesting that Lynda didn't bother commissioning a new series of
training videos for CP CS3, but still have the CS2 one up. That's
the only CS member that that's true of I think, and it's probably
because aside from the start menu it would be hard to tell which
version you're in. CP has incredible potential, but I think it may
need a rewrite from the bottom up. It'd be great to see the
potential realised in CS4.
... View more
‎Aug 19, 2008
03:26 AM
quote:
Originally posted by:
Rene Rose
i changed now to the third pc, to work with captivate 3. on
the first pc, captivate does not detect my microphone, on the
second pc captivate works very slow and it is not possible to
record and edit audio without a lot of bugs and on the third pc,
the recordet audio is full of noise.
now i ask myself, how to work with captivate, to record
professional projects? we have payed about 600 euro for this tool.
now, can anybody tell me, how i can reduce the noise , whenn
using the microphone? i have tried to reduce the inputlevel, to
deactivate or activate the input amplifier, without success.
If you find out, please by all means let me know too. I got
woeful performance with the headset that I use (quite successfully)
to record dictation via Dragon Preferred, so I shelled out for a
Samson USB microphone. I still can't get anything like decent audio
quality in Captivate. What I ended up doing was recording the audio
for the slides in Adobe Soundbooth, saving as .mp3s, and importing
that into Captivate. I'd prefer to record directly in Captivate for
straight dictation (I'd still use Soundbooth for some effects), but
it simply won't record at a high enough quality.
... View more
‎Aug 12, 2008
09:17 PM
quote:
Originally posted by:
Captiv8r
Hi Mal
You should be able to overcome the issues imposed by SWF by
including a Web server on the CD along with the Captivate content.
Fortunately I've outlined the relatively simple process at
the link below:
Click
here to view the thread
Perhaps give it a shot?
Cheers... Rick
Rick,
I have no idea whether Adobe sends you a great big Christmas
present or ten for the help that you supply in this Forum, but if
they don't they ought to.
That's as close as I'm going to get to a solution, and had it
not been for you I'd never have known about it.
I'm still stuffed (to some extent) if someone tries to run
the movies on a screen which has a height of only 800 pixels, but
thankfully they aren't that common any more. Even selecting "Full
Screen" in the Publish options causes it to display inside a
browser, which chews up a lot of vertical space. (The movies
themselves are 680 pixels high, but it's too late to go back and
re-do them.) And I'm still a little annoyed at Adobe for failing to
address the issue of linking .exes, but at least this solution will
serve most purposes. Hmm... I foresee a caption on the first move
advising people to hit F11 if they can't see the play controls at
the bottom...
Many thanks for that.
... View more
‎Aug 12, 2008
04:12 AM
quote:
Originally posted by:
Captiv8r
Hi Mal
You should be able to overcome the issues imposed by SWF by
including a Web server on the CD along with the Captivate content.
Fortunately I've outlined the relatively simple process at
the link below:
Click
here to view the thread
Perhaps give it a shot?
Cheers... Rick
Thanks Rick; I'll take a look at that. If at all possible I'd
rather stick with the .exes, though; I took the liberty of
recording the movies rather tall to show as much of the screen as
possible. This works well in .exe mode on a 1024*768 screen (which
will be the minimum screen that the viewers will be using), but
.swf doesn't work so well because browsers take up a whole chunk
more real estate (via their toolbars, etc) than an .exe does.
(Yeah, I know, full screen mode...)
It's just annoying that but for this ONE issue, .exes would
do everything that I want.
I appreciate the help.
... View more
‎Aug 12, 2008
02:38 AM
Apologies if this question has been addressed before; I did a
search and couldn't find an answer.
I'm just finishing my first set of Captivate training
tutorials; 4 related projects in total. (Alas, it seems to me that
Captivate is... rather buggier than what I've become used to with
Adobe products, though admittedly it lives in the shadow of
legends. (PS and DW in particular.) If I'd had my time over I
probably would have used Camtasia for this project since the
viewers will be passive, though I still hold out hopes of Captivate
being useful for more interactive projects. Unfortunately it's too
late to change now.)
I elected to go for .exes as the output format rather than
.swf's since they'll be distributed on CD-Rom and I'd rather not
have users going through the "OH NO! SOMEONE'S TRYING TO RUN
SOMETHING IN A BROWSER!!! SECURITY!!! SECURITY!!! BLOCKED,
BLOCKED!!!" circus.
In this set of projects I wanted one miserable piece of
interactivity, just one; to create a menu at the end of each movie
linking to the .exes of the other three movies in the series. And
yet, it seems that I can't get it unless some of you fine folks
have an idea that may save my aforementioned bacon. (Which wouldn't
surprise me since, despite watching the Lynda.com training course
for Captivate 2, I'd still rate my own Captivate skills at the
"only slightly less than clueless newbie" stage.)
If you enter a button and tell it to open another project,
you're given the options of files ending in *.cp, *.rd or *.swf;
not *.exe. (Why *.cp I'm not sure, given that you'd hardly want to
open the development project and indeed I don't want to put those
on the disk.) I also tried the "Open URL or File" option, but all
that got me was an open instance of "Internet Explorer" with a
"Gee, I dunno what to do now" message.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
... View more
‎May 28, 2008
02:31 AM
quote:
Originally posted by:
lillibetUK
Hi Everybody,
I'm at a point now where I'm looking to upgrade to RH7. I
also need a copy of Captivate due to some deadlines that have been
set against me.
Unless you have some pre-existing experience with Captivate,
you may find it hard to get all the way up to speed on that product
quickly. You may want to look at subscribing to Lynda.com for a
month and taking their on-line course. It's Captivate 2, but I'm
still finding it useful (as a total Captivate newbie).
quote:
These are the main two products I'm looking at. What I really
want to know is who, on this forum, have upgraded to RH7 as a
separate product and who has delved in to the Tech Comms Suite? Are
there any gotchas?
I already have RH X5, which was an upgrade of an upgrade, and
Framemaker 6.0, which I haven't actually had a reason to use since
I joined the company. However, I was wondering if it's worth
upgrading to the Tech Comms Suite based on the Framemaker 6.0
product.
As with RandiWrite, I upgraded from RoboHelp X5 (alone; I
didn't have any of the other products in the suite though I have
CS3 including Acrobat Pro) to TCS. I called Adobe Support for
confirmation that I was eligible before buying the product, and
they advised that I was. I had no trouble at all installing the
suite.
quote:
What I can't find on the website is how does this upgrade
work? Would I receive a brand new version of RH7, CP3 and Acrobat3D
and an upgrade version of Framemaker 8?
Essentially you just get a full install package with the
whole TC suite on it. I opted for the download from the Adobe store
rather than the boxed version since it was slightly cheaper and I
was impatient to get it. (Also, they don't deliver to PO Boxes
which is the only way I could get delivery since I'm seldom in one
place long enough for a courier to find me.) I think that the
install procedure checks that you have the existing programs on
there, then away it goes and puts the new ones on as well. It
didn't remove X5 on my computer; I could do that myself without,
I'm pretty sure, any untoward effect on version 7; I just haven't
bothered yet.
I seem to recall that when I upgraded to PhotoShop CS3 I had
CS2 on one of my two computers but not the other. (I think it was
on my notebook but not my desktop.) I was able to install CS3 on
the desktop without having to install CS2 first; as I recall, it
asked me for some kind of identifying code first to verify that I
was already a licenced owner of CS2. (Sorry to be so vague, it was
a while ago now.) My point is that Adobe has its act together (in
my experience) at letting you do upgrades from older packages.
HOWEVER, RoboHelp X5wasn't an Adobe product at the time and doing
the upgrade without having the X5 package installed may be more
problematic. This is academic in your case since it IS installed.
quote:
The offer of all these products in one suite seems too good
to be true.
It's true; this isn't Microsoft we're talking about here.
8^>
quote:
What happens when just one product is upgraded?
You pay less, but you get less. But that's ONLY if it's ONE
product. Indeed, I found that it would have been more expensive (in
Australia at least, I don't know about the UK) for me to upgrade to
RH7 and buy Captivate than it was to upgrade to TCS. It's not dumb
marketing on Adobe's part, it's actually rather smart. By giving
you that value, it gets you to use more of their products (and lets
face it, while no software is perfect Adobe's is pretty good), and
consequently hooks you in for future versions. I know that RH has
imperfections, but I do love it. Same with Acrobat Pro.
quote:
What happens if I then decide that I have no use whatsoever
for Framemaker?
I don't, but I don't care. I may play with it at some point,
but the short version is that I still got the products that I DID
want (RH7 and Captivate) cheaper than buying them separately and if
anything else wants to come along for the ride I'll find it a room
on my hard disk.
quote:
Are all the products in the Tech Comms Suite full and proper
versions?
They are indeed. You can take them out in public or to a nice
restaurant and have no fear that they'll cause you embarrassment.
quote:
So many questions... I searched for answers but couldn't find
any other posts relating to this, so if there is a discussion going
on elsewhere then please do point me in that direction.
Can anyone help me make my mind up? Thanks!
Liz
Go for it. You'll love it. 8^>
Mal.
... View more
‎May 20, 2008
12:29 AM
quote:
Originally posted by:
AcolinFlood
Because the GUI of Word is so familiar, using RoboHelp for
Word is tempting. Are there any limitations or benefits of one
RoboHelp version over the other?
I'm going to be the heretic here and say that I avoid
RoboHelp HTML in favour of RoboHelp Word. Some of the things that
irritated me intensely about RoboHelp HTML (in version 5, and these
don't seem to have been changed in Version 7 which I upgraded to
only a couple of weeks back) are:
- You still don't seem to be able to assign shortcut keys to
your preferred styles. This is something that I use extensively in
Word;
- You can't "cascade" styles in the sense that you can in
Word, where you can for example have (say) Body Text defined a
particular way, then (say) Quotation Block defined as Body Text +
other attributes thus allowing you to change the style at the top
of the tree and have the changes flow down. (I'm aware that .css's
work differently to Word templates, but nonetheless it wouldn't be
a bad idea for RoboHelp to implement something like this in the
background.)
- Obviously you don't have VBA to implement automatic
creation of (for example) tables and so on.
- Moving between the two environments is annoying because
RoboHelp HTML style names don't allow spaces (you can't define a
style called "Body Text", for example) while many built-in Word
styles DO use spaces. (I agree that spaces aren't ideal as part of
object names, but it annoys me even more that RoboHelp HTML is
prepared to breach this convention for its own built-in styles of
Heading 1 to Heading 6; it simply won't let YOU define a style with
spaces in its name.)
- There were a few other things that annoyed me about
RoboHelp HTML compared to Word as well, but it's been too long
since I made the choice of Word over HTML for me to recall what
they were just at the minute. However the core of it was that I
just find Word to be a vastly superior editing environment.
However, you have to bear in mind that my intention is to
produce output in multiple formats, not just HTML. If I were to be
producing HTML help files only, I'd probably bite the bullet and
put up with the shortcomings of the HTML environment simply because
it would be the price to pay for getting better quality output.
For example, my Word bullet styles don't work properly when
the output format is HTML. (They appear as the number 1 instead of
as the bullet symbol that I've chosen.) This is a small price to
pay, IMHO. However if I were producing something like the Clownfish
example in RoboHelp 7, I really doubt that it could be done
effectively in Word.
(Not that I would, because many corporate environment
browsers are locked down so tightly these days that it would be a
pain to get something as flashy as that to run. I'm therefore
speaking hypothetically here.)
I'm not saying "Word rox, HTML is for lusers" or any such
fanboi nonsense; simply that both have advantages AND disadvantages
and for me, Word's advantages outweigh HTML's.
... View more
‎May 05, 2008
02:41 PM
quote:
Originally posted by:
azi_us
Is there a quick way to insert variables to be able to
dynamically change text while authoring in Word for RH for Word?
I'm used to FrameMaker and it is a simple process. When I read MS
Word Help I couldn't get a quick answer on how to insert variables.
For example, we want to use variables for company names, product
versions, etc. Any help is appreciated.
- Azi
The way I do it is to use document properties. Assuming that
it's Word 2003 or lower (not sure where it is in 2007) go to File
-> Properties. There are a bunch of built-in properties, or you
can create your own on the Custom tab.
You can then use Insert -> Field. One of the fields that
you can insert is Doc Property, which allows you to add the values
that you've put in as document properties. When you select the
document and hit [F9], the whole thing will update with the new
field values.
... View more
AdChoices