Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., Jerry Olson 
<jerryolson@r...> wrote:
> Hi group!
> 
>I was wondering if any of you mac experts could tell me what is 
>going on with photoshop and/or my system? All my plugins for 
>photoshop disappeared yesterday. I had a couple dozen
>third party sets, like all the KTP and Eyecandy, Xenofex, etc 
>filters, and all have disappeared from the filter menu. Not 
>grayed out, just gone. All the filter icons still all show up in the 
>plug ins folder within the photoshop folder. I had been using 
>system 9.2.2, and when I get info on the system now in
>use, it says version 9.2.1. That means that the computer, all by 
>itself started using a different system. I do have 9.2.1 on three 
>other hard drives, but I only had the 9.2.2 on one that I'm now 
>using, and was using when this happened.  Any ideas on
>how to get all the plugins to show up again under the 
>photoshop filter's menu?  I'm using Photoshop 7.0.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jerry

Jerry,

A few things:

- Check to see you have only *one* System Folder on your "main" 
disk; it's not a good idea to have more than one for just this 
reason. (Exception: recent Macs with both OS 9x and OS X).

- Go to Startup Disk under Control Panels in the Apple Menu; you 
should have four options, which makes it really important to 
identify and choose your principal disk for startup.

- Unless you have an awfully good reason for this setup, Having 
a System Folder on *each* of your HDs is a recipe for confusion, 
not to mention overkill. A fault on your regular startup disk will 
have your Mac bouncing to whatever disk will work for booting - a 
sort of  desktop Three-Card Monte.

- Photoshop 5 and 6 (not sure about 7, even though I have a 
yet-to-be-used copy of that someplace) has more than one 
plug-in folder (my choice is the Import/Export subfolder inside 
the "For Photoshop Only" folder) for the benefit of both 
Photoshop and ImageReady. Sometimes just throwing the 
plug-ins into the main plug-in folder will work (goodness knows, 
too many people whose systems I've untangled have done this), 
but I don't recommend it.

- Barrett