Paul,
Ok thanks Kirk your help is appreciated.
I have now checked on my brand new iMac (2 weeks old) on Lion with a brand new installation of 4.6.8 from scratch with brand new install of CS4.
The same issue arises which never happened in 4.6.6. The image does not come to the foreground on pressing E even though Photoshop does.
Something has changed in PM surely?
So you're saying that Photoshop becomes the foreground application but then never opens the image, or that it comes to the foreground but the image is opened behind some other window?
I checked the checkin logs for the source code in PM that is launching files to external applications and it hasn't changed for a really long time, certainly not significantly in any way since early 2010:
revision 1.16
date: 2010-02-16 09:17:59 -0800; author: kbaker; state: Exp; lines: +12 -4; commitid: BqfOU8ufWcb9EAnu;
Fixed problem launching RAW files that are part of a RAW+JPEG pair but don't reside in the same folder as the JPEG
PM uses a function provided by Apple called LSOpenFromRefSpec() to send files to external apps. Once PM calls this function PM has no bearing on the functionality of the external application that would respond to the system telling it to open a file.
There are two paths through the launching code, one is when you have assigned a specific editor in the preferences dialog (Launching section) and the other is when you let the Finder decide what to application to launch for a given file type.
Have you chosen Photoshop (found the installed application and selected it in a file picker dialog) or are you letting the Finder decide what to launch?
-Kirk