Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

tried turning the font preview off richard? is vista's aero interface on or off? either way, try switching to the other.

I posted a couple here already, and this msg is a follow up to advice for some of my problems and other things I read in going through posts.

I updated CS4 to 11.0.1 and I got the most recent drivers for my graphics card -- and they *were* recent, February 2009. Unfortunately this only seems to have made matters worse.

Editing text seemed to be a bit better, but images had grey backgrounds and selecting parts of the image turned the whole thing black. Calibrating monitor didn't help. I dumped the preferences and now I'm back to what I expect as far as image handling goes (no grey/black issues) but the text tool is at least as bad as it was prior to the changes and possibly worse.

If I type a word at regular typing speed it's a full second + before it appears. Highlight one letter in a word and hit the delete key -- it takes even longer for this to happen: visually nothing happens a good second +.

Vista Business, Radeon® X1650 Pro 512MB AGP, 2 gig RAM (Photoshop can use up to 70%) and huge amounts of scratch disk space -- four drives, the first of which has 350 gig. I'd say more but I keep falling farther behind on deadlines.

That shouldn't be necessary Phil.

Select the files in Bridge.

Go to Tools > Photoshop > Load files into Photoshop Layers ...

Done!

If Photoshop is actually "crashing" maybe it is getting insufficient memory.

I had really bad problems with CS4, it was incredibly slow and laggy to the point where it was not usable. However I reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled Vista to solve some other issues and now CS4 runs smooth as can be.

I do have some issues with the design of the interface though. I don't like how it's always full screen by default it makes it difficult to load a bunch of images in and put them all into layers in one file. I tried making them all floating Windows (about 20 images) but PS crashed. So I just have to do it in full screen mode with a ton of tabs.

Save it as a 8bits RGB image. With maximize compatiblitity.
This is a terrible place for such an unrelated question...

After reading all of you about CS4 and its problems, I guess I know what to blame, since I can't apply a displacement map to a picture in order to get a reflection effect:
I have saved a rasterized (greyscale) document as *.psd file. With the text or image layer selected I go to Filter>Distort>Displace and choose it. It doesnt work, all I get a few broken up letters in the middle of my document. I have it saved in *. jpg format for anyone prepared to help me on this one!
Sylvaine Ruflet

>John Joslin:I only ask because I haven't found anything yet that won't run on Vista 64.

I have a whole raft load of software from the late 80's and early 90's that won't run under Vista 64. Of course, it is all 16-bit software--most of it created by Turbo C or Turbo Pascal, but why should that matter......:) of course!

> too many of my apps don't run on 64-bit

How did you establish that?

Are they very specialised programs?

I only ask because I haven't found anything yet that won't run on Vista 64.

Some plug-ins won't work with PS CS4 64-bit but that's not the same thing. I think some older hardware drivers won't work either.

>does anyone know if there's a solution posted somewhere for this problem?..

update the video drivers and update photoshop?

I'll add one more: I did start a new thread today, but no responses yet (OpenGL...). I wasn't aware of how long this thread was! However, I have a new computer: quad 9650 3.0 GHz, RAID array (fast!), 32-bit xp, 4 GB RAM (sorry, but too many of my apps don't run on 64-bit) AND ATI 4850 graphics card, 512 MB (tested and approved!). Works great with OpenGL turned off. With it on, brushes don't work right (they don't complete the line); preview on the stamp tool (there is none); images move jerkily; moving a dialog box or panel leaves a copy behind if it was originally over the image. And I haven't even tried other tools like gradient, etc (can't do it now, since my computer is in the shop for a graphics card overhaul).

Russell, you're right and I didn't read all the posts in this thread: does anyone know if there's a solution posted somewhere for this problem?...