I can't sleep, I can't dream

[venta]

Well, tonight on my "nice quiet evening sitting doing nothing", I have:

Been to Tesco
Roasted some vegetables, and made roasted vegetable and feta pasties.
Fried lots of pig, and made bacon and sausage meat pasties.
Eaten my tea.
Tidied up the bombsite I'd made of the kitchen.
Installed Potatoshop on my laptop.

Now Potatoshop, my old enemy, and I are about to sit down to try and do what an experienced graphics-package user called "fifteen minutes work".

Start the clock :)

21:51 - Score so far: Photoshop 2, Windows 1, Venta 0

Photoshop: Ctrl-Z doesn't undo in a chain, it toggles between the last undo state and the current state. So, having munged it up, I had to close it and start again.
Windows: Complete, no-warning crash.
Photoshop: The brush tool draws grey, even though it says white is the selected colour. And it now won't use the brush tool at all, or save, because "the scratch pads are full".

?? Off to read the help :(

22:10 - Score so far: Photoshop 3, Windows 2, Venta 1

Photoshop: Descended into disk thrashing, refused to respond, and I wasn't even trying to do anything :(
Windows: Crashed again. My machine hasn't crashed in ages, so I reckon Photoshop encouraged it.
Venta: Have actually successfully edited something! I wouldn't say I'm cooking on classical gas yet, but I am at least in the same room as the stove.

23:20 - Stop the clock!

A plausible finished version. It's not perfect, but I think it's as good as me, my lack of co-ordinated sinistry and dexterity, and my strokey-mouse are going to get it.

Comments

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Ctrl-Z doesn't undo in a chain

Gah. I hate Adobe. They must read a lot of usability guides, because they somehow manage to break every single convention they get their grubby little paws on.

e.g. I fire up Adobe Acrobat Reader to do nothing more complex than read a pdf file, and my cursor turns into a cute little hand that clasps shut when I left click. To quote from the performing arts, "What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fucking fucking fuck?".

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it's not just me. I've never understood the little hand.

Last night, I was mouse-hovering over the Photoshop buttons, to see whay they did. "Brush tool", yup. "Cut tool", yup can probably work that out. "Dodge tool", er, no idea, but the GIMP has one too, so it's probably just a graphics term I don't know. "Hand tool", er... I guess it hands, then.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I've never understood the little hand.

I think it's supposed to indicate that by left-clicking you can then drag up or down to scroll. Because what we really need in this world is for each application to decide its own scrolling semantics. Oh yes.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that non-stolen copies of Photoshop come with a huge, fat manual which is quite helpful.

(I'm not prepared to similarly defend the built-in help, which is inexcusably poor.)