Photoshop and Blackboard

Question

Computer OS involved: XP and Windows 7
Photoshop 11.0 and 11.0.2
Blackboard 9.1
An instructor (using Windows XP) came to us with the question of why she could not open psd files from Blackboard that students have uploaded for grading. I went over and watched the process. She hits up her grading area, selects a student and it gives her a list of the files they uploaded. Most of them have 1-2 psd files attached. She clicks the link for the file, Photoshop opens, but the file does not. I had her try several more to make sure they weren't corrupt files. We uploaded a psd of our own and she still couldn't open it. Our Blackboard admin was able to open all of these files just fine on her computer as herself and the instructor in question. I had the instructor try the files in one of our labs that was recently setup on Windows 7. She had the exact same problem. This seemed very odd to us.
Then our Blackboard admin pointed out that she was using Photoshop from CS4 Web, while the instructor was using Photoshop for CS4 Design. We couldn't see why this mattered, but to test the theory, we headed to a lab that uses Web instead of Design. Oddly enough, the problem did not occur. So, we compared the versions on each computer. Our Design lab had been updated to 11.0.2 while the Web lab had not and was running 11.0.. So I updated one of the computers in the Web lab to 11.0.2 and the problem started.
So, it appears that something in the update to 11.0.2 is killing the opening of files from Blackboard. Does anyone know of a setting that might be blocking this that we can disable so our instructor can work? While she does have the option of simply saving the files to her computer and then opening them, she does not want to have to do this since they are all named the same and she would have to rename them and she does not want a ton of files on her computer when she should be able to simply open them from Blackboard. If there's not a setting, can someone tell me how to roll back a patch without having to do a full reinstall?

Answer 1

Integration between two applications never meant to work together can be tricky.  It might work better on a newer version of Windows.
I know of no "setting" in Photoshop that would block it from opening a file, assuming a file was actually provided to it.
The instructor will likely need to just save the files from the Blackboard app into a temporary folder on the hard drive, then open them in Photoshop.  It shouldn't be hard to keep them organized...  Teach her about making subfolders.
-Noel