Photoshop CS and the escape key gremlin…
This is a weird feature of photoshop CS (I’m still on CS2 but this still appears in CS3). When photoshop is open it hijacks the escape key functionality – i.e it stops it working for anything else that’s open!
I first saw this when I moved to a new development laptop using vista (it was ok in XP! surprise surprise) and finding that the escape key sporadically stopped working when using gVim. I thought I’d got a corrupted install so went throught the hastle of reinstalling this only to see the problem still there.
A google search later tracked this down to a ‘feature’ in the the revered photoshop program. It’s been speculated that this is due to some PCS plugin daemons though it’s not been tracked down… the gremlin is still at large with many sightings & footprints found, but no real evidence!
There is a workaround! The other escape-like functions still work, e.g. ctrl-[ & ctrl-c. The best workaround though is to use the shift-esc key instead which still works. Go figure!
My workaround is to photoshop when I need to, develop when I want to develop, and ‘naer the twain shall meet’.
