How To Fix The Photoshop Clipboard (our analysis)
Sep 5th, 2007 by Chris Thornton
Nathan Weinberg wrote a good article in a blog at Microsoft, about a “fix” for a problem with Adobe Photoshop. You can (and if you use Photoshop, you should) read it here:
How To Fix The Photoshop Clipboard (Sept 5, 2007)
It was an interesting read for me, confirming some things I’ve suspected. I’ve always assumed that Photoshop keeps its own, separate clipboard for internal copy/paste (just call it a “hunch”, after years of support questions…) But it seems that you can get into a bind where Photoshop doesn’t update its internal clipboard when the external one changes. The user copies something from somewhere, and pastes it into Photoshop.. and gets something that he copied WITHIN Photoshop, half an hour ago. Of course, users hate that.
Developers never seem to learn: don’t try to be too cute with the clipboard. When the user wants to paste, go and get the clipboard contents and paste it. Don’t try to monitor the clipboard to see if you like it, or if it has newer data than your internal buffer. If the user wants to paste, just paste from the clipboard. Smoke and mirror tricks will always end badly, when you try to account for anyting and everything that could be happening to the clipboard.
Of course, this is likely due to blind faith in the clipboard notification process. It probably worked great in the lab though!
Finally something to fix this! At last. It’s been driving me nuts!
I had the same suspicion as you, but I didn’t know there was any way to fix it. I was just hoping for a patch from Adobe.
Thank you, this has plagued me forever.
The download link is dead…. :/
Anyway, I’ve posted two solutions on my site. Don’t know if it is the same solution:
Solution 1: Use the Alt+Print Screen combo instead, capturing the active window. This might work for a few.
Solution 2: Run the file AlwaysImportClipbd_ON.reg. You can make this yourself by viewing this site or by downloading it from this site:
http://www.wivestad.no/mgfx/photoshop_resources.php?subaction=showfull&id=1210616225&archive=&start_from=&ucat=18&
Hope this works out for you! I’ve fixed four computers running win Xp sp2 and Win xp media center edition this way.
cheers
Andreas
This can be worked around using an intermediary application, one I use regularly, called Xnview (good wholesome trouble free freeware – http://www.xnview.com/).
Once you’ve got image data in the clipboard open xnview and hit ctrl-shift-V to import the clipboard, then file>open with>Adobe Photoshop (you’ll have to set this up first time round using the same menu path), and the image will open in photoshop.
It is an unnecessary extra step, but does the job when photoshop’s clipboard goes into a coma.
hth
The registry edit did not work for me. (I downloaded and ran the file). I have never had this problem in all my years of using Photoshop. My Computer at work does not do this.
Reading this post and this site is like a breath of fresh air!! I am always driven nuts when a program doesnt adhere to standard user interface behavior and often I feel like these companies must be braindead (there are many worse than adobe). It is a relief to hear someone call it like it is.
“Developers never seem to learn: don’t try to be too cute with the clipboard.” “Smoke and mirror tricks will always end badly”. “Of course, this is likely due to blind faith in the clipboard notification process. It probably worked great in the lab though!”
This is brilliant, clear yet provocative writing. I must read more of what you have written.
I have tried updating registry as suggested (for me its HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Photoshop\12.0), but the problem still exists – once i copy something in photoshop, it locks from the outside paste buffer and works with internal only!