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I recently upgraded from Photoshop CS5 to Photoshop CC and it has been a great improvement overall.  However, I still have my old Canoscan LIDE 25 scanner that uses TWAIN.  If you remember, this involved a bit of tweaking when I went to get it to work with CS5  and CS6.

At any rate, here’s how you get your Canon Canoscan LiDE25 (or other TWAIN scanner) working with Photoshop CC on Windows 7:

1. Install the CanoScan LIDE 25 driver.  You can find that on the Canon download page (or download it here locally if they ever stop updating it)
2. Adobe does not have TWAIN support installed in Photoshop by default anymore.  Instead, you must download their Optional Plugin pack.  It’s important to note that you download the CS6 plugin pack for CS6 or CC editions.  Also note, the TWAIN support only works on the 32-bit version of Photoshop.  It will NOT work on 64-bit versions of Photoshop.
   1. Download the Optional pack
   2. Close Photoshop
   3. Install the option pack by copying it in the right plugin directory for your 32-bit version of Photoshop (see their website for the right directory)
   4. Open Photoshop (32-bit version)
3. So, you installed the scanner driver and Photoshop is updated.  I open Photoshop and go to File->Import->Canoscan LiDE25.  Sadly, I then get this error message: “Could not open the TWAIN source. Make sure there is a valid source for your scanner in the TWAIN Directory found in the Window Directory.”Hmmm, what is going on?  I try running the CanoScan Toolbox and when I copy/PDF and hit the ‘Copy’ or ‘Scan’ button, I get this error message: “Unable to open TWAIN source. Please check connection then re-start Toolbox.” However, if I use a 3rd party tool like VueScan – it is able to capture scans just fine.  So I know the scanner is physically working.
4. I found this badly aged/broken blog entry, but it describes the solution:
   1. Go to your c:Windowstwain_32 directory
   2. You should see a sub-folder with a number/letter combination,  Mine is: C:Windowstwain_32CNQL25
   3. Add that to your system path variable
      1. Right-click on Computer -> Properties -> Advanced system settings -> Advanced -> Environment Variables
      2. In the bottom System variables scroll-box, find the ‘Path’ variable
      3. Click edit and go to the far right of the ‘Variable value:’ field. Enter the directory to the end of the list, separating it from previous entries by a ‘;’.  Google adding a directory to system path in Windows if you need more help.
         i.e. ;C:Windowstwain_32CNQL25
      4. Save and close the system settings
5. Restart Photoshop 32-bit – and you should have success!

Visual Studio 2013 is by-and-large a pretty nice development environment, but there are at least 2 things that REALLY annoy me.

1. Changed all the default hot keys.  I mean – really?  You just change all the standard hot keys that you’ve used for, oh, I don’t know, the last 3 releases for….no good reason at all?  I’ve had to go back and reset a lot of them.  Why?  I can’t think of any good reason to change defaults you’ve used forever.  If people want to change them, let them change them through the keyboard configurations.

2. Automatically switching to Error List when Visual Studio completes compiling.  Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I need to see the Output panel – NOT Error List.

Here’s how to change it back:
1. Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> General
2. uncheck ‘Always show Error List if build finishes with errors

One of the most annoying things about managing files in Windows is managing media files such as photos and videos.  Windows in all it’s ‘helpfulness’ constantly tries to categorize and create thumbnail icons for all your media files.  The irritating part of this is that it’s constantly doing it – even while you’re trying to move the files or folders in question.  In fact, it seems to ALWAYS be doing this even if it’s already gotten icons for it.  Every directory you select immediately triggers Windows to start categorizing the directory.  So when you try to move the folders in question – you get a never-ending stream of ‘File in use’ errors and you can’t get anything done.

Even better is the fact Windows doesn’t tell you WHICH file(s) are in use (thumbs.db), by whom (Windows itself), nor give you any way to figure it out.  One of the cardinal rules of error dialogs is that they must give you enough information to fix the problem – or you’re wasting everyone’s time and have designed something completely useless for the user.  This fails that test miserably.

What would have been infinitely better is if Windows had the smarts to know IT is the one preventing the folder from being moved and stop doing it for the 2 seconds it needs to move the directory and then start over again.  But we don’t get that intelligence at all.

Instead, do this:

Start Menu-> Edit Group Policy

Select:

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer
The setting you want: “Turns off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files.”