TOPIC: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
Optimising images for the web and removing unwanted elements in Photoshop
10th February 2026
Adobe Photoshop includes a set of tools that address two of the most common tasks in digital editing. The first is reducing image file sizes for faster loading on websites without sacrificing more quality than necessary, and the second is removing or repositioning unwanted elements within a photograph in a way that blends convincingly with the surrounding content. Both areas have continued to develop considerably, and the current release, Photoshop 2026 (version 27.x), introduces AI-powered approaches that represent a significant step forward from earlier methods.
Preparing Images for the Web
For anyone producing website photos, banner advertisements or other online assets, the balance between image quality and file size is a constant consideration. A large image file slows down a web page, which can harm both the user experience and search engine performance. Photoshop's export tools were built with this trade-off in mind, and the process begins before the export dialogue is even opened.
Resizing Before Export
The recommended first step is to reduce the image to an appropriate size using the Image Size dialogue. After opening the image in Photoshop, this is found under Image > Image Size, with the keyboard shortcut Alt+Ctrl+I on Windows or Command+Option+I on macOS. A new width can be entered, the unit set to pixels, and the change confirmed with OK. This produces a smaller version suited to web use. A very large image can remain unnecessarily heavy even when compressed at export, so cutting the pixel dimensions at this stage reduces the amount of data a browser has to handle from the outset.
Export As and Save for Web (Legacy)
Adobe now recommends File > Export > Export As as the primary route for web graphics in current versions of Photoshop. It handles PNG, JPEG, GIF and SVG formats, supports multiple scale factors for high-density displays, and is built on newer, faster code. The older File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy), accessible via the keyboard shortcut Alt/Option+Command+Shift+S, is still available and retains some advantages: it offers more granular control over compression, provides a live file-size estimate beneath the preview pane and remains the only route for exporting animated GIFs. Adobe describes it as a legacy option maintained for compatibility, noting that it uses more memory and can be slower than Export As on large files.
Whichever route is taken, the Save for Web window presents four viewing tabs: Original, Optimised, 2-Up and 4-Up. These allow the untouched file to be compared with one or more compressed versions side by side, making it easier to judge whether a reduction in file size has produced noticeable visual degradation. The 2-Up view is particularly useful, placing the original and the optimised image next to each other so that quality settings can be adjusted, and the effect observed immediately. Lifewire suggests that a quality setting between 40 and 60 is a reasonable range for JPEG exports, and that preset levels such as JPEG Medium can save time.
File Format and Final Adjustments
Save for Web allows the format to be changed to JPEG, GIF, PNG-8, PNG-24 or WBMP. JPEG suits photographs and images with a broad range of colour, while PNG formats are better suited to graphics requiring transparency or hard edges. The image dimensions can also be adjusted within this window by entering a width or height directly or by scaling by percentage. Clicking the chain link icon changes both dimensions proportionally, while entering width and height independently allows the proportions to be changed.
Lifewire notes that the values shown beneath the image preview include the file type, the file size and how long the image will take to load on a website, all of which update as adjustments are made. Once satisfied with the result, clicking Save prompts for a file name and destination, and the optimised version is stored separately from the original working file.
A Note on Resolution and Colour Mode
Web graphics are often described as requiring a resolution of 72 dpi and RGB colour mode. The RGB colour mode requirement is sound, as screens display in RGB rather than the CMYK mode used for print. The 72 dpi figure is a longstanding convention rather than a technical requirement: browsers render images according to pixel dimensions alone, and the dpi value embedded in a file has no effect on how it appears on the screen. Lifewire presents these as common characteristics of web-ready graphics, and they remain useful shorthand for communicating that an image is intended for screen rather than print.
Removing and Repositioning Elements: AI Tools in Photoshop 2026
The landscape for removing unwanted elements has changed substantially in recent releases. Photoshop 2026 now provides several AI-powered approaches that produce results significantly better than the traditional Content Aware tools in most situations. Understanding which tool to reach for first, and when to fall back on the older methods, saves considerable time.
The Remove Tool
The AI-powered Remove Tool, available since Photoshop version 24.5 and substantially upgraded in Photoshop 2025 and 2026, has become the go-to option for most removal tasks. It is nested under the Spot Healing Brush in the toolbar and works by painting over the area to be removed with a brush. The tool uses machine learning to analyse the surrounding image and reconstruct what should be in place of the removed content, rather than generating entirely new material. This makes it particularly consistent for retouching tasks such as removing blemishes, power lines, stray objects and sensor dust, where predictable results matter.
In Photoshop 2025 and later, the Remove Tool gained a Mode option allowing the user to choose between standard AI processing and generative AI powered by Adobe Firefly. Auto mode lets Photoshop decide, applying generative AI for larger removals where it can create new image detail from scratch and skipping it for smaller, simpler areas where a faster local result is sufficient. Using generative AI requires an internet connection to Adobe's Firefly servers and consumes generative credits. For smaller areas, the non-generative mode is faster and often equally effective.
Generative Fill
Generative Fill operates differently from the Remove Tool. A selection is made around the unwanted element using any selection tool, and the Generative Fill option appears in the Contextual Task Bar beneath the selection. Leaving the text prompt blank instructs Photoshop to fill the selected area using the surrounding pixels, effectively removing the object. Entering a text prompt instead replaces the selected content with newly generated material matching the description. Each generation produces three variations to choose from, and the result is placed on its own layer with a mask, preserving the original image underneath.
In Photoshop 2026, Generative Fill supports multiple AI models. The default Adobe Firefly Fill and Expand model consumes one generative credit per use. Partner models including Gemini 2.5 (Nano Banana), FLUX.1 and FLUX.2 pro are also available for selections requiring a different approach, and these are treated as premium features with their own credit costs. Generative Fill works best when the entire object is included loosely in the selection and the prompt field is left blank for removal. Attempting to type removal instructions into the prompt field tends not to improve results, as the model responds to descriptive prompts about what to generate rather than instructions about what to delete.
The Content Aware Fill Workspace and Patch Tool
The older Content Aware Fill workspace and Patch tool remain available and are still useful in situations where the AI tools produce unsatisfactory results or where generative credits are not available. As Expert Photography notes, Content Aware Fill does not use the Firefly AI model and is not subject to the content guidelines checks that can sometimes block generative operations. It can also be a reliable fallback for extending backgrounds and blending restricted regions where the AI tools struggle.
The Patch tool is reached by selecting J in the toolbar with the Content Aware option enabled in the options bar. A duplicate layer should be created first using Ctrl+J (Windows) or Command+J (macOS) to preserve the original. A loose lasso is drawn around the area to be removed, and the selection is dragged to a nearby area of the image that contains suitable replacement texture. The structure setting (0 to 7) controls how closely Photoshop follows the shapes of the sampled area, while the colour setting (0 to 10) controls how much colour blending is applied. For the Content Aware Fill workspace, reached via Edit > Content Aware Fill, a green overlay shows the sampling area, which can be refined using the Sampling Brush set to minus (to exclude unsuitable areas) or plus (to restore them). By default, the result is saved to a new layer, and further retouching with the Clone Stamp tool is sometimes needed to finish the edit cleanly.
For quick removal where greater control is needed, the Object Selection tool (available in Photoshop version 21.0 and later) with Object Finder enabled can highlight a distinct subject in pink on hover. A right-click then offers the option to send the selection directly to Generative Fill or, for simpler backgrounds, to use Delete and Fill Selection for an immediate result.
Non-Destructive Editing and the Painting Effect
A principle that connects all of these workflows is non-destructive editing, which ensures that the original content is preserved at every stage. Adobe's tutorial on making a photo look like a painting demonstrates this with a straightforward example, recommending that the background layer be converted to a Smart Object before applying the Dry Brush filter from the Filter Gallery. Doing so means that the filter remains editable afterwards, rather than being applied permanently. The tutorial then intensifies colour using a Hue/Saturation adjustment, setting the saturation to +65 in the sample, and notes that both the filter and the adjustment can be revisited at any point from the Layers panel.
That approach connects neatly with the advice to duplicate layers before using older removal tools, and with the way Generative Fill and the Remove Tool both place their results on separate layers by default. Whether the task is exporting an image for the web, removing an unwanted element from a scene or applying a painterly effect, retaining the ability to revise a decision without starting again is one of Photoshop's most valuable working habits to develop.
Closing Thoughts on Photoshop's Export and Content Repair Tools
Taken together, the export tools and the object removal suite represent two of Photoshop's most practical strengths for photographers and designers preparing work for online publication. Export As and Save for Web (Legacy) address efficient output, helping users reduce image dimensions, compare quality settings and select a suitable file format. The Remove Tool, Generative Fill and the Content Aware workspace address image repair and rearrangement, each suited to different levels of complexity. In Photoshop 2026, the AI-powered approaches handle the majority of common removal tasks faster and more convincingly than the earlier methods, though the traditional tools remain valuable as precise fallbacks when needed.
Getting Adobe Lightroom Classic to remember the search filters that you have set
23rd April 2023
With Windows 10 support to end in October 2025 and VirtualBox now offering full support for Windows 11, I have moved onto Windows 11 for personal use while retaining Windows 10 for professional work, at least for now. Of course, a lot could happen before 2025 with rumours of a new Windows version, the moniker Windows 12 has been mooted, but all that is speculation for now.
As part of the changeover, I moved the Adobe apps that I have in an ongoing subscription, Lightroom Classic and Photoshop are the main ones for me, to the new virtual machine. That meant that some settings from the previous one were lost and needed reinstating.
One of those was the persistence of Library Filters, so I had to find out how to get that sorted. If my memory is not fooling me, this seemed to be a default action in the past, and that meant that I was surprised by the change in behaviour.
Nevertheless, I had to go to the File menu, select Library Filters (it is near the bottom of the menu in the current version at the time of writing) and switch on Lock Filters by clicking on it to get a tick mark preceding the text. There is another setting called Remember Each Source's Filters Separately in the same place that can be set in the same manner if so desired, and I am experimenting with that at the moment, even though I have not bothered with this in the past.
Evolving a photo editing workflow to make more use of Adobe Lightroom than before
17th April 2018
Photo editing has been something that I have been doing since my first-ever photo scan in 1998 (I believe it was in June of that year but cannot be completely sure nearly twenty years later). Since then, I have been using various tools for the job and wondered how other photos can look better than my own. What cannot be excluded is my preference for being active in the middle of the day when light is at its bluest, as well as a penchant for using a higher ISO of 400. In other words, what I do when making photos affects how they look afterwards as much as the weather that I had encountered.
My reason for mentioning the above aspects of photographic craft is that they affect what you can do in photo editing afterwards, even with the benefits of technological advancement. My tastes have changed over time, so the appeal of re-editing old photos fades when you realise that you only are going around in circles and there always are new ones to share, so that may be a better way to improve.
When I started, I was a user of Paint Shop Pro but have gone over to Adobe since then. First, it was Photoshop Elements, but an offer in 2011 lured me into having Lightroom and the full version of Photoshop. Nowadays, I am a Creative Cloud photography plan subscriber, so I get to see new developments much sooner than once was the case.
Even though I have had Lightroom for all that time, I never really made full use of it and preferred a Photoshop-based workflow. Lightroom was used to select photos for Photoshop editing, mainly using adjustments for such things as tones, exposure, levels, hue and saturation. Removal of dust spots, resizing and sharpening were other parts of a still minimalist approach.
What changed all this was a day spent pottering about the 2018 Photography Show at the Birmingham NEC during a cold snap in March. That was followed by my checking out the Adobe YouTube Channel afterwards, where there were videos of the talks featured every day of the four-day event. Here are some shortcuts if you want to do some catching up yourself: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4. Be warned though that these videos are long in that they feature the whole day and there are enough gaps that you may wish to fast-forward through them. Even so, there is quite a bit of variety of things to see.
Of particular interest were the talks given by the landscape photographer David Noton who sensibly has a philosophy of doing as little to his images as possible. It helps that his starting points are so good that adjusting black and white points with a little tonal adjustment does most of what he needs. Vibrancy, clarity and sharpening adjustments are kept to a minimum, while some work with graduated filters evens out exposure differences between skies and landscapes. It helps that all this can be done in Lightroom, so that set me thinking about trying it out for size, and the trick of using the backslash () key to switch between raw and processed views is a bonus granted by non-destructive editing. Others may have demonstrated the creation of composite imagery, but simplicity is more like my way of working.
It is confusing that we now have cloud-based Lightroom CC, while the previous desktop version is called Lightroom Classic CC. Although the former offers easy dust spot removal and other features, I prefer the latter because I do not want to upload my entire image library, and I already use Google Drive and Dropbox for off-site backup. The mobile app is interesting since it allows capturing images on mobile devices in Adobe's raw DNG format. My workflow is now more Lightroom-based than before, and I appreciate the new technology, especially as Adobe develops its Sensai artificial intelligence engine. Because Adobe has access to numerous images through Lightroom CC and Adobe Stock (formerly Fotolia), it has abundant data to train this AI system.
Batch conversion of DNG files to other file types with the Linux command line
8th June 2016
At the time of writing, Google Drive is unable to accept DNG files, the Adobe file type for RAW images from digital cameras. While the uploads themselves work fine, the additional processing at the end that, I believe, is needed for Google Photos appears to be failing. Because of this, I thought of other possibilities like uploading them to Dropbox or enclosing them in ZIP archives instead; of these, it is the first that I have been doing and with nothing but success so far. Another idea is to convert the files into an image format that Google Drive can handle, and TIFF came to mind because it keeps all the detail from the original image. In contrast, JPEG files lose some information because of the nature of the compression.
Handily, a one line command does the conversion for all files in a directory once you have all the required software installed:
find -type f | grep -i "DNG" | parallel mogrify -format tiff {}
The find and grep commands are standard, with the first getting you a list of all the files in the current directory and sending (piping) these to the grep command, so the list only retains the names of all DNG files. The last part uses two commands for which I found installation was needed on my Linux Mint machine. The parallel package is the first of these and distributes the heavy workload across all the cores in your processor, and this command will add it to your system:
sudo apt-get install parallel
The mogrify command is part of the ImageMagick suite along with others like convert and this is how you add that to your system:
sudo apt-get install imagemagick
In the command at the top, the parallel command works through all the files in the list provided to it and feeds them to mogrify for conversion. Without the use of parallel, the basic command is like this:
mogrify -format tiff *.DNG
In both cases, the -format switch specifies the output file type, with the tiff portion triggering the creation of TIFF files. The *.DNG portion itself captures all DNG files in a directory, but {} does this in the main command at the top of this post. If you wanted JPEG ones, you would replace tiff with jpg. Should you ever need them, a full list of what file types are supported is produced using the identify command (also part of ImageMagick) as follows:
identify -list format
Tinkering with Textpattern
26th April 2011
While Textpattern 5 may be on the way, that isn't to imply that work on the 4.x branch is completely stopped, though it is less of a priority at the moment. After all, version 4.40 was slipped out not so long ago as a security release, a discovery that I made while giving a section of my outdoors website a spring refresh. During that activity, the TinyMCE plugin started to grate with its issuing of error messages in the form of dialogue boxes needing user input to get rid of them every time an article was opened or saved. Because of that nuisance, the guilty hak_tinymce plugin was ejected, with joh_admin_ckeditor replacing it and bringing CKEditor into use for editing my Textpattern articles. It is working well, even if the narrow editing area is causing the editor toolbars to take up too much vertical space, yet you can resize the editor to solve this, though it would be better if it could be made to remember those size settings.
Another find was atb_editarea, a plugin that colour codes (X)HTML, PHP and CSS by augmenting the standard text editing for pages and stylesheets in the Presentation part of the administration interface. If I had this at the start of my redesign, it would have made doing the needful that bit more user-friendly than the basic editing facilities that Textpattern offers by default. Of course, the tinkering never stops, so there's no such thing as finding something too late in the day for it to be useful.
Textpattern may not be getting the attention that some of its competitors are getting, but it isn't being neglected either; its users and developer community see to that. Saying that, it needs to get better at announcing new versions of the CMS so they don't slip by the likes of me, who isn't looking all the time. With a major change of version number involved, curiosity is aroused as to what is coming next. So far, Textpattern appears to be taking an evolutionary course, and there's a lot to be said for such an approach.
An avalanche of innovation?
23rd September 2010
It seems that, almost despite the uncertain times or maybe because of them, it feels like an era of change on the technology front. Computing is the domain of many of the postings on this website, and a hell of a lot seems to be going mobile at the moment. For a good while, I managed to stay clear of the attractions of smartphones until a change of job convinced me that having a BlackBerry was a good idea. Though the small size of the thing really places limitations on the sort of web surfing experience that you can have with it, you can keep an eye on the weather, news, traffic, bus and train times so long as the website in question is built for mobile browsing. Otherwise, it's more of a nuisance than a patchy phone network (in the U.K., T-Mobile could do better on this score, as I have discovered for myself; thankfully, a merger with the Orange network is coming next month).
Speaking of mobile websites, it almost feels as if a free for all has recurred for web designers. Just when the desktop or laptop computing situation had more or less stabilised, along came a whole pile of mobile phone platforms to make things interesting again. Familiar names like Opera, Safari, Firefox and even Internet Explorer are to be found popping up on handheld devices these days along with less familiar ones like Web 'n' Walk or BOLT. The operating system choices vary too, with iOS, Android, Symbian, Windows and others all competing for attention. It is the sort of flowering of innovation that makes one wonder if a time will come when things begin to consolidate, but it doesn't look like that at the moment.
The transformation of mobile phones into handheld computers isn't the only big change in computing, with the traditional formats of desktop and laptop PC's being flexed in all sorts of ways. First, there's the appearance of netbooks, and I have succumbed to the idea of owning an Asus Eee. Though you realise that these are not full-size laptops, it still didn't hit me how small these were until I owned one. They are undeniably portable, while tablets look even more interesting in the aftermath of Apple's iPad. Though you may call them over-sized mobile photo frames, the idea of making a touchscreen do the work for you has made the concept fly for many. Even so, I cannot say that I'm overly tempted, though I have said that before about other things.
Another area of interest for me is photography, and it is around this time of year that all sorts of innovations are revealed to the public. It's a long way from what, we thought, was the digital photography revolution when digital imaging sensors started to take the place of camera film in otherwise conventional compact and SLR cameras, making the former far more versatile than they used to be. Now, we have SLD cameras from Olympus, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony that eschew the reflex mirror and prism arrangement of an SLR using digital sensor and electronic viewfinders while offering the possibility of lens interchangeability and better quality than might be expected from such small cameras. Lately, Sony has offered SLR-style cameras with translucent mirror technology instead of the conventional mirror that is flipped out of the way when a photographic image is captured. Change doesn't end there, with movie making capabilities being part of the tool set of many a newly launched compact, SLD and SLR camera. The pixel race also seems to have ended though increases still happen as with the Pentax K-5 and Canon EOS 60D (both otherwise conventional offerings that have caught my eye, though so much comes on the market at this time of year that waiting is better for the bank balance).
The mention of digital photography brings to mind the subject of digital image processing and Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 is just announced after Photoshop CS5 appeared earlier this year. It almost feels as if a new version of Photoshop or its consumer cousin is released every year, causing me to skip releases when I don't see the point. Elements 6 and 8 were such versions for me, so I'll be in no hurry to upgrade to 9 yet either, even if the prospect of using content aware filling to eradicate unwanted objects from images is tempting. Nevertheless, that shouldn't stop anyone trying to exclude them in the first place. In fact, I may need to reduce the overall number of images that I collect in favour of coming away with only the better ones. The outstanding question on this is: can I slow down and calm my eagerness to bring at least one good image away from an outing by capturing anything that seems promising at the time? Some experimentation but being a little more choosy can save work later on.
While back on the subject of software, I'll voyage in to the world of the web before bringing these meanderings to a close. It almost feels as if there are web-based applications following web-based applications these days, when Twitter and Facebook nearly have become household names and cloud computing is a phrase that turns up all over the place. In fact, the former seems to have encouraged a whole swathe of applications all of itself. Applications written using technologies well-used on the web must stuff many a mobile phone app store too and that brings me full circle for it is these that put so much functionality on our handsets with Java seemingly powering those I use on my BlackBerry. Then there's the spat between Apple and Adobe regarding the former's support for Flash.
To close this mental amble, there may be technologies that didn't come to mind while I was pondering this piece, but they doubtless enliven the technological landscape too. However, what I have described is enough to take me back more than ten years ago, when desktop computing and the world of the web were a lot more nascent than is the case today. Then, the changes that were ongoing felt a little exciting now that I look back on them, and it does feel as if the same sort of thing is recurring though with things like phones creating the interest in place of new developments in desktop computing such as a new version of Window (though 7 was anticipated after Vista). Web designers may complain about a lack of standardisation, and they're not wrong, yet this may be an era of technological change that in time may be remembered with its own fondness too.
Why the manual step? Upgrading Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements 7
18th January 2010
One of the consequences of buying a new camera is that your current photo processing software may not be fully equipped for the job of handling the images that it creates. This especially manifests itself with raw image files; Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 was unable to completely handle DNG files made with my Pentax K10D until I upgraded to version 7.
As things stood, Elements 7 was unable to import CR2 files from my Canon PowerShot G11 into the Organiser, so it was off to the appropriate page on the Adobe website for a Camera Raw updater. Thus, I picked up the latest release of Camera Raw (5.6 at the time of writing) even though it was found in the Elements 8 category (don't be put by this because release notes address the version compatibility question more extensively).
Strangely, the updater doesn't complete everything because you still need to copy Camera Raw.8bi from the zip archive and backup the original. Quite why this couldn't have been more automated, even with user prompts for file names and locations, is beyond me, yet that is how it is. However, once all was in place, CR2 files were handled by Elements without missing a beat.
An upgrade to Photoshop Elements 8? Not convincing for me...
12th October 2009
It now seems that we have a new version of Photoshop Elements from Adobe for every year, unless you're a Mac user. Version 7 convinced me to splash out and that gained me Camera Raw recognition of my Pentax K10D along with subtly enhanced image processing power that I have been putting to good use to get more pleasing results than I ever got before.
What can be achieved by using levels, curves and the shadow/highlight adjustment tool for exposure correction has amazed me recently. Quick selection functionality has allowed me to treat skies differently from everything else in landscape photos, a flexible graduated filter if you like. It seems to work on Windows 7 along with Vista and XP, so I plan to stick with it for a while yet.
As you may have gathered from this, it would take some convincing to make me upgrade and, for me, version 8 doesn't reach that mark. All in all, it appears that it is a way of giving Mac users a new release with added goodness after having to stay with 6 for so long; yes, there are new features like automatic tagging in the image organiser, but they just don't grab me. Given that they already have Aperture from Apple and Windows users seem to get more releases, it's a wonder that any Mac user would toy with Elements anyway. Maybe, that's Adobe's suspicion, too.
Fixing Alt-Click problems in Ubuntu-hosted VirtualBox Windows guests
24th October 2008
The Alt-Click keyboard-mouse combination is a very common way of working with various flavours of Adobe Photoshop. So, it was with some frustration that I couldn't use it while working in Photoshop Elements (still on version 5, by the way; the temptation of newer versions has not struck) on a Windows XP guest in VirtualBox on my main Ubuntu system.
A quick google later and a proposed solution was for me a surprising one: going to System -> Preferences -> Windows on the host OS and changing the setting of the Movement Key from Alt to Super (Windows key on many keyboards). That was enough to set all in order. It appears that a setting on the host operating system was preventing a piece of software running on the guest from behaving as expected. That's all in the past now that I have got my clone brush functionality back and can work as normal again.
Getting Windows Applications Running on Linux with WINE
25th January 2008
It was the prospect of having Photoshop Elements going on Linux that got me thinking about working with WINE. The cause of that was Elements' inability to edit, create and save files to a VMware shared folder. As it turned out, there was more to my WINE adventures than getting Elements working. Because I was in learning mode, those adventures turned out to be messy ones, with WINE getting uninstalled and reinstalled a number of times. For the last of these, I forced matters by installing from a DEB package rather than going through Ubuntu's normal channels. The openSUSE journey was a bit more orderly, and that VM option remains if I want to go experimenting more.
Along the way, I got the Windows version of Opera going as a test. When trying out WINE in former times, I never tried installing applications into it like I do now. I don't know if this was because I hadn't made an important connection or that it was not the way that things used to be. Flushed with the success of Opera, I went further and discovered that Dreamweaver 8 and Altova's XMLSpy 2007 Professional work without my breaking a sweat. Photoshop Elements was another story and one that I have told before. Apple's iTunes was another thing that I tried without any success, even with a useful guide on Wine Reviews; for some reason, I'm having trouble getting the installation to complete successfully. I think that I'll leave my tinkering at that for now, but my general impression is that WINE works well these days, even if there is the odd crash or inexplicable disappearance of an application window. The latter happened with Dreamweaver and XMLSpy and I needed to log off and back on again to clear the slate for further progress.