Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

"Most people not having problems don't post on the forum"

Means nothing. It's true most people don't even know of this place, or if they did, wouldn't know how to get here. The point is, most people here are having problems, and not "how do I", but rather, "it doesn't work". It's not isolated, but wide spread. It is a real problem for most people. I know, I am after all,

Expert Here

Mark John Murphy

At the risk of repeating what has been posted many times:

Most people not having problems don't post on the forum!

I found CS4 unusable, mainly because of enormous brush lag. I found a solution that works for me: enabling palette snooping in the BIOS. See my message http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b76749

Happy New Year,

Rudolph

Is Adobe close to a fix yet? Some entries that I read on this forum seem to suggest that the folks having the performance lag problem with CS4 are in the minority. No way can this be true. I suspect it is the other way around. We need to start an excel spreadsheet showing opsys and equipment, with the final two columns being CS4 RUNS GREAT and CS4 RUNS LIKE CRAP. I believe that there would be more checkmarks in the runs like crap column for sure. I have two machines, purchased last December from a small outfit called Dell that may have sold one or two of the same machines to others....a dell xps 1330 and dell vostro 400, each with plenty of processor and memory, both running xp sp3 ... CS3 runs like a dream ... CS4 has the performance / lag problems mentioned in this thread. I don't want to do a bunch of testing, turning things on and off, etc. I want Adobe to fix whatever is wrong with CS4 so that it runs like a dream on these recently purchased machines the same way that CS3 does. Right now, the Adobe take seems to be that (probably) millions of machines out there need to be fixed to work with CS4. No, no, no ... CS4 needs to be fixed to work with the machines. And please, no arguments about all the variables with all the windows machines out there ... they managed to get CS3 to work didn't they? They can do the same with CS4, even if they have to reverse their decision to mess with the GPU. I will check back periodically, but like many others I have given up for now and will not upgrade until they have things fixed. I am an Adobe stockholder so I really do hope that they come up with a fix soon because the sales decrease caused by this problem is going to cause further erosion in the stock price.

Look at the Forums index and find my post called something like Rx for a slow clone tool in cs4. i posted dec29

>This was all with a mouse, Microsoft Wireless Laser 5000. This lag was at 100% view. At 25%, 50% and 66% there was no real lag. Now for the interesting part. When doing circles with a Wacom pen (low end) there was no lag at all.

Curiously, this is something I have found and have reported with the new test build of CS4. I have the Wacom Intuos 3 w/latest drivers and my mouse is the standard MS wireless mouse/keyboard. No intellipoint drivers installed.

With XP, when the first bootup after instal occurs, the mouse will freeze on the log in page until the initial configuration is finished. First time I saw that I freaked! It can take a while, which is why I became concerned.

Thanks for info, Lawrence. It's not a big deal to me but I was surprised to encounter that behavior on a new computer. Never experienced it on older XP machine.

As far as boot-up is concerned, I make it a habit to start computer and touch nothing until I'm sure it has completed booting. Just a habit of mine that probably has no basis.

Q

I have seen that unresponsive mouse at a number of places where a big transition is occurring. During bootup comes to mind, that the mouse will pause for short periods while the process finishes.

ProArtist
I hope this is helpful. Most interesting thing I've discovered concerns brush lag.

It is not possible to run Ps window MAXIMIZED and on two monitors. Window must be made smaller and then drag right edge to second monitor. I'm always using Ps on two monitors.

I have absolutely no drawing skills, sorry to say. Photo manipulation is my area. I stand by my statement that I have no (or very little) problem with lag.

Doing curves color adjustment was real time.Photo over 500 megs.

HOWEVER, I noticed a lag doing your continuous circle test. I was making the circle at a really fast pace. I don't think in actual practice most people would move that fast. At any rate, there was lag that did increase. Doing strokes, long or short, showed no lag. This was all with a mouse, Microsoft Wireless Laser 5000. This lag was at 100% view. At 25%, 50% and 66% there was no real lag.

Now for the interesting part. When doing circles with a Wacom pen (low end) there was no lag at all.

I pretty much have only one complaint about this new HP computer. There is something strange about how the mouse works. That includes the original wired mouse and the wireless that I added. After closing a program there is often a 5 or 6 second period of time that the mouse is not responsive.

Good luck. I don't like to hear that someone is having problems with Photoshop. Much like seeing a homeless person and thinking "There but for the grace of God...."

Q