Our first Imaginarium contribution of the year is one for the Designers & Creative Agencies. Here are two quick fixes for the not so helpful ‘improvements’ of the Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 update.
Whether you’re updating an operating system, or a piece of software you use on a daily basis, it’s always worth waiting a month or two before choosing to update, when a newer version becomes available. This time – should usually – allow the developer to fix and patch all the small glitches, faults and bugs that weren’t picked up on during testing, ahead of a big launch.
Here at the Blayney HQ, we started 2019 by updating all of our Adobe Creative Cloud software, which was originally released on the 14th November 2018, to make sure we were well prepared and fully equipped for the year ahead. When doing this, we’ve noticed two pretty radical changes to the standard everyday ‘Transform’ and ‘Step Backward’ tools that we just can’t get used too.
Adobe has marked this annual release with the addition of over 20 new features, and overall I think we can agree the interface seems a lot faster, and more user friendly.
It appears that the developers thought it would be a great idea to change the default undo shortcut.
The standard “opt + cmd + z” (ctrl + alt + z for Windows users) undo shootout has now been updated to be “cmd + z”. Meaning the ‘Step Backward’ is now nowhere to be seen.
From the point of view of someone who uses this function on an hourly basis, it’s become very awkward to get used to, and in all honesty, it seems like an alteration that didn’t need to be made. The logic behind using shortcuts is saving time, building a muscle memory, and being more efficient when using a program. Changing that shortcut doesn’t provide any benefits. Instead, it slows and confuses the users.
The other inconvenient update was on our trusty Free Transform tool. With these new set of default settings, the use of the “SHIFT” key to keep the aspect ratio of the selected object the same, has been inverted. Another needless change that has taken the majority of January to get used to.
If you haven’t had to look it up and make the change yourself already, use our guide below to put these simple core functions back to the way you know:
Reverting To The Normal ‘Transform’ Tool
- (First, save all your work and close Photoshop)
- Open a plain text file via TextEdit (or your preferred equivalent)
- Type “TransformProportionalScale 0”
- Save the file as a .txt file and name it PSUserConfig.txt
- Copy the file to the following folder:
/Users/[User Name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 Settings/
Getting Back The Original ‘Undo’ Shortcut
This is less of a fix, and more of a quick change to your user preferences. Navigate to the ‘Edit’ dropdown within the programmes top toolbar, and open the Keyboard Shortcuts panel. Tick the box for ‘Use Legacy Undo Shortcuts’ and hit OK. You will need to restart Photoshop to see these changes.
