Improving the Search Function in Photoshop
September 25, 2008
Once it was Verity. Then it was Lextek International. Now it is Autonomy.’s turn Adobe’s Help system has embraced the Cambridge firm’s IDOL or Integrated Data Operating Layer to bring some relief to Photoshop users who need help with a Photoshop function. I gave up on Adobe products’ Help search feature in Photoshop Version 4.0. When Adobe took over the Framemaker product, I cannot recall hitting F1, entering the function’s name, and launching a Help search. The reason is that Adobe’s writing style, its word choice, and the non existence relevance almost never worked. I bought books or prowled the Internet for answers to my questions.
Autonomy, the $350 million search superstar, will face a tough challenge–Adobe’s word choice and its own almost opaque explanations of how to perform certain operations. Photoshop gurus think nothing of tapping three to 10 keystroke sequences to obtain a particular effect. Add to that Adobe’s word choice and you have a stiff test for almost any search system now in the channel.
You can dig into more details of this deal by clicking here and reading “Autonomy Adds Meaning to Adobe’s Creative Suite 4. When I get my copy, I will exercise the new system with this query: “transparency”. The first hit in my Photoshop CS is a weird explanation of “Mapping colors to transparency”. The Help I wanted * does not appear in the results list *. I will let you know my experiences with IDOL.
The good news is that Adobe is making an effort to improve what is an almost useless Help system. What took so long? Might it be that Adobe was so busy creating a Microsoft Office style application of gargantuan size and complexity that it lost site of a user who wants to know how to perform one simple operation?
Stephen Arnold, September 25, 2008
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