P: CS6 Slow compared to CS5.1 with large files

The code is 99.99% the same between platforms. Unless there's a low level mutex bug in MacOS, this should be the same for both platforms.

OK, so in summary:

You see similar performance to Photoshop CS5 when thunbnails are OFF, and a horrendous slowdown and completely DIFFERENT performance vs. CS5 with them ON.

I see only a modest slowdown with them ON and the same performance both ways from both CS5 and CS6.

So that certainly implies a Mac-specific bug related to the thumbnail processing then. Given that the code is built completely differently for Mac vs. PC I can see how something like an uninitialized pointer could possibly cause something like that.

I guess the layer thumbnail processing is where Adobe (Chris) has been looking, so this is not really a new dicscovery - though I haven't really seen this conclusion definitely stated.

Plus some people have implied they're seeing similar things on PCs as well. I wonder whether in those cases whether it's the same issue (e.g., does the horrendous slowdown follow the setting of the layer thumbnails, or is it just a modest slowdown?).

P.S., I'm making progress in getting to where I can capture a video, if that's still interesting.

-Noel

in CS6 with thumbs on, when moving the white dots group, i don't see any frames. i don't see anything, the object stays where it was and the progress bar shows after a while and that's it!.
it's that slow! i just can't move them, it is unusable! compared to cs5 where moving them with thumbs on is not as much slower as with thumbs off.

turning the thumbs off (CS6) on the other hand is giving me the same speed as cs5. but that is not new to me and i know now, that this is the thumbnail problem.

i'm just amazed by how different two almost equal machines behve. there is definitely something wrong with the mac support?!

I can't get to where I can put Captivate or Camtasia on my machine right away (I had hoped to do it in a VM, but that netted other problems).

But I've redone the testing just to double check...

The speedup when I disable layer thumbnails is from about 4 to 5 frames per second to about 7 or 8 frames per second (I counted pretty carefully). This is consistent across Photoshop CS4, 5, and 6.

Can you estimate the frames/second you're seeing when moving the white or black dots in the various conditions?

I did not see a difference in responsiveness between the versions. That's the key to focus on here I think. The layer thumbnail slowdown doesn't seem to have changed from version to version, so if you're seeing it running much more slowly, the issue has nothing to do with the thumbnails being on or off.

-Noel

Just to be perfectly clear, I'm not seeing any real difference between Photoshop CS5 and CS6 with the test documents.

I do see some improvement in responsiveness between having the Layers panel thumbnails turned off and on, but it's not major. A few frames per second more as I recall. Specifically, with the thumbnails turned on, in both Photoshop CS5 and CS6 I see about a 5 frame per second update rate upon moving the layer. It's not fluid, but I could live with it.

I had View - Snap to Layers disabled during this testing. I don't see that as a big deal.

The key, I think, is that I see no difference between CS5 and CS6 on the task, which leads me to believe there's a problem specific to Macs here.

My Photoshop is presently about 30% through 20 minute deconvolution of an astroimage, so it will be a little while yet... I don't have a direct way to capture a video, but I should be able to come up with something. I've been wanting to evaluate the current version of Camtasia for a while now.

-Noel

Yeah, they don't show the full thread if it gets too long - to avoid some sort of bug in the display code. GetSatisfaction is supposed to be working on it.
(but maybe you should let them know that you don't like it)

I'm glad we've got someone to "catalyze the information flow" on this thread - that's really helpful

hi noel,
im kind of confused about your results with the large file.

you are working on quite the same configuration as mine, also the same year.
mine is mac pro and yours is pc. both are not the latest and the best.

i tried to upgrade as much as possible, ati 5770, ssd, 16gb ram.
almost exactly the same hardware as yours.

now i'm confused! how is this possible that you don't see any slowdown, even with the "thumbs on".

i could not find an older post here because we see only the recent 15 now, but i'm quite sure that there was someone with really maxed out PC, a lot of ram, etc, who also had a major slowdown?

is it possible for you to make a short movie of moving the white dots in the large document i posted with the thumbs on.

if that is true what you are saying, than i'm going to buy this old PC of yours and work on it from now on.
and also finally realize that adobe is not supporting apple anymore:))

a strange thing is this "get satisfaction" forum. how is this possible not to see the older posts????? i don't think this is right, how can we quote something said here???

This is one of the prime reasons I swapped to Mac after having used Windows machines since version 2.0 (before that DOS).

Mac users do no have the flexibility of a lot of hardware choice (unless you start flashing your own VGA cards in which case all bets are off).

Aside from the various hardware flukes that can have an adverse effect on Windows machines I too believe there definitely is an issue that seems to effect Mac machines more.

If only for the fact Mac users are less flexible in their choice of hardware and drivers (which is a good thing in most cases).

I am glad several issues have been found and are being worked on. Hopefully these will be resolved quickly too and if there are any other issues hopefully they will be found soon as well.

As for demanding my money back... this is not an option when you make your money from this software. We just have to make do with what we have.