You know how there are days when you should just stay in bed? I think yesterday (Tuesday, Nov 6) was just such a day for noted Palm Beach Post staff photographer Bill Ingram.
Bill agreed to do a demo of Adobe Photoshop at the monthly meeting of the Palm Beach Macintosh User Group, in particular showing what he does to prepare photos for publication in a true production environment at the Post. He brought in his MacBook Pro and that’s when the trouble began. Several members had MacBooks and had their special mini-DVI to SVGA video adapters. Problem is, the MacBook Pro uses a full-sized DVI connector (at least the one Bill brought in did), and Bill forgot his adapter cable.
After going through several different scenarios, and requests for use of any laptops in the room that had Photoshop, I jumped in, but with yet another slight hitch… I had Photoshop CS2 on my MacBook, but it wasn’t working (long story), but the good news was that I did have a workable copy of Photoshop CS2, on a Windows XP Pro partition running under Parallels.
You could actually see the sweat rolling off of Bill’s forehead. He had never used a Windows machine before, and it took many reassurances to convince him that, with a few really minor differences, Photoshop CS2 on a Windows box plays virtually the same as Photoshop CS2 on a Macintosh. He moved some files to my MacBook with a jump drive, I plugged my MacBook into the video projector, launched Parallels and Photoshop, and it was off to the races. Nervous as he was, he did a wonderful job, only stumbling between using the Control vs the Command keys to perform shortcut operations.
So, for a change, and for the lack of a cable, Windows XP saved the day, but it still took a Macintosh to make it happen!
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