vista and phe5...nothing but problems

[jann1033]

ok last week the thing wouldn't let me open a photo in the editor and according to the troubleshooting, my user account was corrupted and i had to make another, ok did that( literally wasted an entire day messing with it but whose counting)...now this week i can open, edit but when it saves it it looks like a tin foil bas relief instead of a photo( silver with parts that look raised but no color details except a few rainbows..pretty but not what i planned on ) i have once again reloaded, repaired, on way to do the new preference thing now but this is crazy...anyone else have any of these problems( no help from the adobe forums and hp won't touch it either)?

i would just ditch the program if i could use the alien skin stuff as stand alone but i think it has to be plugged in to photo shop. anyone know? could i plug them into corel painter x, light room 2 or i just got another freebie corel photoimage thing with my tablet? don't know if the 5 is to old to use with vista? hate to spend $80 bucks for a program i barely use but i guess if i have to i will...

any ideas why this could be doing this?

I have downloaded the patch for vista, i am guessing it would auto download to where ever it has to be( think it goes to my documents but not sure) any ideas if it could be extracting to the wrong place or where it should go to?

all my other software is working fine, just not elements so no matter what abode says i find it hard to believe it's something else messing up elements...and i don't want to have it corrupt my account and have to make all that over again...

HELP!!!!!PLEASE!!!!ANYONE!!!!

 

[drcandon]

Vista is a bit harder OS to understand then XP, a lot of folks just abandon it and run for XP cover..personally I find it better..I have studied the various Vista books a bit so I have a few suggestions..

1. Most adobe programs do not work well in the "user" context..they either need to be in Admin group or at least the power users group to access all video driver full functions...yea..I know MS and others will disagree with me and say then what is the point of having a "users" group with no rights..well the user context/container is fine for simple to moderate editing where no access to high end processor functions is necessary, but inadequate for other stuff...so if you are the only user and do heavy duty graphic manipulation then stuff your user in the admin group..you will still have to answer the annoying Vista "allow to run" questions but it will work better..leave your kids or other users in the lower powered group.

2. Video drivers...adobe programs and most high end graphics manipulators are tied directly into the processing power of the video card and the proc itself. You might have done the Alien skin plug in correctly but to display the results the video driver and/or resolution might be the issue. Make sure you have the latest and greatest driver for the video card and have the resolution up to match the resulting output ie at least 16 bit preferably 32 bit.

3. If your user account was corrupted??? and you had to "recreate" to get it to work then it is possible that the "userdata" directories and program data dirs that store the information on how the program interacts with the user account also got "corrupted". I would simply suggest unistalling the program using control panel applets ( not the unistall.exe that is included with most progs) and then reinstalling using you new account that is now in the admin group.

 

[jann1033]

Vista is a bit harder OS to understand then XP, a lot of folks just abandon it and run for XP cover..personally I find it better..I have studied the various Vista books a bit so I have a few suggestions..

1. Most adobe programs do not work well in the "user" context..they either need to be in Admin group or at least the power users group to access all video driver full functions...yea..I know MS and others will disagree with me and say then what is the point of having a "users" group with no rights..well the user context/container is fine for simple to moderate editing where no access to high end processor functions is necessary, but inadequate for other stuff...so if you are the only user and do heavy duty graphic manipulation then stuff your user in the admin group..you will still have to answer the annoying Vista "allow to run" questions but it will work better..leave your kids or other users in the lower powered group.

2. Video drivers...adobe programs and most high end graphics manipulators are tied directly into the processing power of the video card and the proc itself. You might have done the Alien skin plug in correctly but to display the results the video driver and/or resolution might be the issue. Make sure you have the latest and greatest driver for the video card and have the resolution up to match the resulting output ie at least 16 bit preferably 32 bit.

3. If your user account was corrupted??? and you had to "recreate" to get it to work then it is possible that the "userdata" directories and program data dirs that store the information on how the program interacts with the user account also got "corrupted". I would simply suggest unistalling the program using control panel applets ( not the unistall.exe that is included with most progs) and then reinstalling using you new account that is now in the admin group.

i am running in admin., i did unistall/reinstall via the add remove( guessing that is what you mean, if not no clue how to do it) i'll check the resolution and i think the driver is up to date although hp techs told me to no do the auto updates since it messes things up( they told me this at the beginning of the saga) so i'll make sure..

have you ever heard of problems with microsoft office causing something like this? i had downloaded a trial that came with the computer a few days before the first episode but then uninstalled it ( via add/remove) but somehow it's back?????? so i uninstalled it again but still have powerpoint installed ..not sure if that was part of the office or is part of works or even what it is good for...i couldn't get anything to open with the office trial, almost all was grayed out, not sure if that trials just stink or if it wasn't working right
i'm going to see if i can install alien skin into corel and if so by-by elements. i think i can do everything else in other programs i have

 

[annnewjerz]

Not sure if you knew or not, but Amazon.com right now has PE6 for $70something with a $20 rebate, in case you are considering upgrading.

I just purchased my first dSLR and wanted to get some photo editing software to go with it. Someone had recommended PE5 because it was cheaper than 6, but once I saw it wasn't compatible with Vista and you would need the patch, I decided spending the extra few dollars was the way to go, rather than dealing with that headache.

Good luck!

 

[alan]

Are you sure you're saving them as JPGs?

I have seen exactly the problem that you describe when you save the picture as ZIP-compressed TIF files. Explorer tries to draw the pictures for you, but doesn't know how to handle the TIF format properly.

So, it might be worth checking that you are indeed saving as JPG?

regards,
/alan

 

[jann1033]

Are you sure you're saving them as JPGs?

I have seen exactly the problem that you describe when you save the picture as ZIP-compressed TIF files. Explorer tries to draw the pictures for you, but doesn't know how to handle the TIF format properly.

So, it might be worth checking that you are indeed saving as JPG?

regards,
/alan

i deleted them all so i can't check but i know i was saving them as jpg, now if pse5 was deciding to ignore what i wanted and save them as something else i don't know it would be interesting to see though..maybe i'll edit something and see what it saves it as.
i was able to download all my plug ins to painter x and that seems to be working fine....i think i have everything elements would have plus more in painter....if not i'll think about about buying the new elements after it's been out a while and gotten rid of the bugs...i can't get lightroom 2.1 to download today either so i figure if i can't get the download page to work, maybe i should wait to download it

 

[drcandon]

Hey..

Elements - by default does not store manipulated files in PSD format which is the native format of Photoshop - elements big brother. PSD format might open up in other formats but the output would be all over the place. Somewhat as you descibed, but I still do not think that is the problem...

As far as the trial of Office is concerned - you will never get the stupid thing out of there - unless you hand remove all the .dll files and replace them with the correct versions of them. The best you can do is two things..either load or reload SP1 for Vista or if you have SP1 then install the real version of Office ..personally I would give a shot at uninstalling every little bit of Office left ( if any) including anything in the \users\appdata folder ( this is a hidden folder so you will have to adjust your view folder options to see it) and program data folders that even remotely looks like Office.

MS does not produce very good beta's - I always avoid them unless I have to try them for work or I have an extra computer laying around doing nothing to try them on.

As far as Elements not running on Vista, I have PE5 right now on - with no patches and it runs just fine.

As far as lightroom goes, well , unless you are willing to work in RAW format then lightroom is not worth the bother for beginners or intemediate users. If you are an advanced user AND store all you photos on the camera and computer in RAW format then yep ,it is worth it.

PE5 or 6 is just as competant at handling jpg's as Lightroom (in most cases better) and has almost all of the same tools and capabilities as Photoshop CS3 with the added bonus of a great catalogue program

 

[Groucho]

i would just ditch the program if i could use the alien skin stuff as stand alone but i think it has to be plugged in to photo shop. anyone know? could i plug them into corel painter x, light room 2 or i just got another freebie corel photoimage thing with my tablet? don't know if the 5 is to old to use with vista? hate to spend $80 bucks for a program i barely use but i guess if i have to i will...

If you're mainly interested in using Photoshop plugins, you can use them in the free Irfanview (you will need to also download and install the plugins.) Just hit Ctrl-K (or the Images dropdown, Effects, Adobe 8BF filters if you want to use the menu) and from there, you can add any Photoshop filters (that use the normal 8bf format) you have installed on your PC. Just browse to where they're installed (usually under Programs on Vista, or Programs\Adobe\Photoshop\Plugins or something similar), and then they'll be available and will work just like they do in Photoshop. I generally run plugins from Irfanview as it's so much faster and easier than Photoshop.