Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

Mike,
I had Kaspersky Antivirus 2009 and had no problems with CS4, as my license for Kaspersky recently came up for renewal I took the opportunity to upgrade to Kaspersky Internet Security 2009. I havent seen any difference in performance of CS4 (or any other application) since changing to KIS.

I did see that after installing KIS it had recognised that I had CS4 on the PC and added the Adobe applications to the Trusted Applications group for the firewall/registry access rules etc.
You are best completely uninstalling KAV before installing KIS and always remember to disable KIS before installing any Adobe applications.

Gordon #598

From various posts on the forum we know Adobe is aware of the problems, are working on them and (seemed) to have identified solutions to some of the issues.

Has there been any official comments? No.
When will a patch be available? When it's ready.

Anthony.

Rob

I've set Kaspersky to ignore the PS executable and the scratch disk, but there might well be another setting I've ignored, Kaspersky can be a be of a maze (to me anyway!), once you step outside of the standard configuration.

From a bloody freezin' Suffolk - I've never seen such a frost such as we've had this morning.

OK - I am another unhappy CS4 user. Same issues. I would like to know if there is any offical word from Adobe about this and when a patch will be available?

When an AV suite delays PS it shouldn't need to be completely disabled. Try to find a way in the AV-suite's configuration to "ignore" PS, instead of monitoring each step.

Rob

John

That's good to know, my licence runs out in a few days, I might a well upgrage to the 2009 version then.

I wonder though, if there is going to be performance difference with PS CS4 Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 compared to Kaspersky Internet Security 2009? i.e. will Anti-Virus 2009 work well with PS CS4 (as you reported) and the Internet Security suite won't?

This seems to be an effect of Kaspersky Internet Security 7.

I have Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 (version 8.0) and it doesn't interfere with CS4.

I've just looked again at my anti-virus software and Photoshop CS4, now when I installed CS4 I didn't look beyond the fact that my anti-virus software (Kaspersky Internet Security 7) didn't disable OpenGL, as so many users had reported happening at the time.

However, I just disabled it (Kaspersky) and the brush lag for me has completely disappeared (I tested brushes up to 1800pt in size), also the lag with the pen tool has gone. The lag I was experiencing with the clone stamp tool is probably better but still exists (it's as though the source point is on a rubber band attached to the brush), this is brush size dependent.

Now obviously I can't can't run without AV software, but at least I've now got the option of pulling the plug on my internet connection, disabling my AV software and using CS4 for work, - might be beneficial, at least I won't be plagued with email from clients that way!

I will add my experience with a new install of PS CS4. I installed the CS4 Design Premium suite on my computer that already had the CS3 suite installed as well as numerous other programs, all of which work well. The installation completed without problems. All comments are preliminary representing a first pass through the application.

My system contains the following items:
Asus P5Q-E board
Intel Core2 Duo E8400 3.0 GHz
8 GB RAM
320 GB C drive for sys and CS4
50 GB partition on a 2nd physical drive for scratch
Intuos 3 tablet not yet tested, using mouse for initial eval.

Vista Ultimate 64-bit , Aero enabled
Photoshop CS4 (64 bit), Open GL enabled
No plugins

Nvidia GeForce 9600GT 512 MB
Driver 7.15.11.7813 (Sept 2008, not the latest)
Eizo CG222W display 1680 x 1050

After verifying that PS performed its elementary operations, I took a brief look at brush lag and I experienced some at large brush sizes. I then kicked the tires of some of the other apps in CS4 to verify their basic operation and all was well with them. I then went to Bridge and set many preferences, did some e-mail and other things as well. When I reopened PS to check it out in more detail, the lag I had seen previously was gone or much reduced. I cannot explain why.

Currently, all PS tools are working OK and all the new CS4 navigation schemes behave well. There is, however, some occasional, unpredictable behavior with the tool tips and the history states. I've now determined that the brush lag is real, but only for large brush sizes. While that sounds like bad news, the exact same test using PS CS3 on the same system yields comparable results, maybe a tiny bit less lag, but within say 20% of the CS4 performance. The comparison was made on a 4000 x 3000 image and quickly moving the rough round brush of diameter 1000 pixels. I've also seen stuttering cursor movement (only on CS4) when a brush diameter is approximately = or > 20% of the image width, but this effect cannot be consistently produced and may be a pathological finding.

My bottom line is that PS CS4 is working on the above described computer and working well enough to get work done and not force me back to CS3. It does have some defects and most likely I will find more. Tablet issues have not been addressed yet. Additional effort to give a real review needs to be done, but with all the reported CS4 problems I thought my initial experience may be useful input. It demonstrates (at least) that with the right (unknown) configuration details the above hardware and software produce acceptable, if not yet great, results.

Paulo

placebo?