Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

Nick - yeah, you'd think we'd have the pull. But they need to hear from real customers, not corporations saying "this happens in our lab". We are working with the GPU makers, and reporting bugs, helping them narrow down causes, etc. But, they don't get the whole picture from us.
It's very different when they hear details from customers, especially when those customers aren't just playing games.

Chris,

>The GPU makers need to be informed when you find bugs like that, so they can get additional information to reproduce the problems in-house (and hopefully fix them).

As I've mentioned before in this thread (or maybe it was some other one, I can't remember), I have tried, tried and tried again to make ATI aware of these problems. As an individual, they don't care one bit about my problems, especially since my problems don't relate to gaming.

As a corporation, I would think that you guys have a lot more pull in this regard, especially since it concerns making your software run correctly. Myself, I'm done spending time trying to deal with ATI.

Thank you, though, for your response.

There is always the free ATI tray tool replacement instead of using CCC.

Nick: Only thoughts and ideas but when I wanted to get rid of CCC and the old ATI driver, I used a program called DriverSweeper, which cleans everything out. I then rebooted and of course the OS used the native driver. Then I downloaded and installed the ATI 9.1driver - without downloading CCC at all, rebooted and all worked well; but of course with only one monitor as discussed above.

Anthony.

It could well be 2 monitors versus 1. We do have a few problems in the Photoshop code related to that (sigh), but we've also seen a lot of driver issues related to multiple displays, multiple GPUs, and working on a non-main display. The GPU makers need to be informed when you find bugs like that, so they can get additional information to reproduce the problems in-house (and hopefully fix them).

As for CCC messing up your calibration - please inform ATI. We've already been round and round with them about that (over more years than I care to think about).

Anthony, I wish I could get the new (9.1) driver to work without CCC. CCC tends to mess with my monitor's profile at odd times, and it seems that the only way I can get back to the correct calibration is to reboot the computer.

@Nick #700: Just to confirm, I am only using one monitor A NEC Spectraview 2690 on my setup. Maybe the difference is with two monitors versus one monitor? Glad you have found an improvement with the 9.1 driver version. I am using that too, although I have dispensed with CCC altogether.

Anthony.

Part one of two:

Anthony, our specs, according to SiSoft Lite, are similar. However, my date of manufacture is Feb. '07, as opposed to yours, Nov. '06. Your Library Version is 7.14.10.636, whereas mine is 6.14.10.6903. Your card has one head, mine has two. Everything else is the same.

Part two:

Chris Cox,

>It still sounds like a driver bug.

It appears that you are correct, at least to some extent. This morning I discovered that ATI has released new drivers for my card, Catalyst Control 9.1.

I first downloaded only the driver, and installed that. Bad news. My second monitor was not recognized, and CS4 would not open at all. Got an error message and was told to terminate the program. I uninstalled the driver, downloaded the complete Catalyst Control Center 9.1 and installed it.

CS4 opened with the message about my video card not being capable, and that OpenGL would be disabled. I enabled it anyway, in prefs, and the OGL stuff seems to be working.

My biggest problem, that of window content disappearing after dragging a file, has gone away. I still get flickering of the image content while dragging, but the content eventually displays. This is annoying, but at least it is now a workable situation.

Bottom line: If you're experiencing the vanishing window content problem with an ATI card, get the 9.1 CCC update and give it a whirl.

Thanks, Anthony. I used to have Sisoft Sandra installed, but don't anymore. I'll try it again and report back.

Jan,

>I think the only thing that I would still condsider to be a failure on Adobe's part is that the real graphics requirements of CS4 were downplayed and glossed over in the promotion and ads for CS4.

I could not agree with you more. Glad you've found the right combination of hardware/software to run CS4, but a good many of us are still sitting here with an upgrade that is junk.

Nick: I used SiSoft Sandra Lite to report the specs of my graphics card and then cut and posted what seemed to be the relevant bits...

http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/

Anthony.