Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

Kay,

The only reason I used a second hard drive was that it was just sitting around, not used, from a re-build. To be honest: I have seen no performance difference.

Kay,

It is true that we were told to update our drivers. Lots of people don't update drivers. It helped some but not all issues were fixed. Lots of people on these boards have written ATI/Nvidia/intel with their issues. So we just sit and wait while Adobe and the card companies iron things out.

oh no i only have one HD. i heard read somewhere someone saying that adobe told pple to ugprade their video (ati/nvidia) card drivers and that a fix would be included for cs4...guess that was a negative

Kay,

When your ram is used up photoshop cs4 puts your files in a scratch disk. Scratch disk is the like virtual memory. It is recommended, if you have 2 hard drives, to put the scratch disk on a different drive then your operating system and virtual memory. This will keep your main hard drive from thrashing around and speed things up.

Q Photo, I agree that there are some good features, but the improvements so far to my work has come down to one set Auto tune and sometimes the other auto features. It gives me a quick comparison to a really different way to present the image, which I like. The bigger changes for me came with CS3, particularly B%W conversion. It not only gives damn good control to the conversion, by choosing Luminosity instead of normal, you now have a set of adjustments to fine tune your color. Couple that with the color controls in RAW and you have an unbeatable combination. My druthers would be to see those controls refined, not a bunch of 3D features which mess up the rest of PS by virtue of the need for Open GL.

JJ, I suspected that there would be a way to customize the menu choices as you can customize hot keys but until now, I saw no need. Further, at times when I am messing with an image, I do get curious about menu choices I haven't used, and seeing them all with one click is an incentive.

What I am saying is nowhere should a program like this encourage dis- incentives by way of increased complexity at those fundamental levels.

I've referred to National Instruments before. I follow their upgrades as they are released,and every time I open an upgrade, it's like an old friend, with increased talent.

David- i have XP 32bit, i reformatted because i got a new computer and hate the bloatware it comes with. directx was updated from microsofts website and scratch disk? what's that?

>"...slicker than deer guts on a door knob..."

>"...rarer than lipstick on a bear's butt..."

>"...so ridiculously slow I'd rather eat my own face..."

Apparently CS4's Metaphor Tool isn't exhibiting any lag.

Lawrence,
Hang in there pal. This is a new version and changes have been made. Some good, some not so good. In the last thirty days this old dog has needed to learn a lot of new tricks. Got a Vista 64 system and had to learn that. Got Office 2007 had to learn that. PsCS4, had to learn that. In all cases "had to learn" means "am now learning". At times I feel like Kelly Bundy. By that I mean my brain can only absorb so much and then it has to throw out older information. Only so much room up there...

PsCS4 really does have some great features. Again, hang in there.
Q

Larry

> Essentials uses up a huge amount of screen real estate

So make and save your own Workspace. It will always appear by default if you have the appropriate item checked in preferences.

Also, just customise your menus and save the set. You can also suppress the ones you never use and add colours to the ones you want to pick out quickly.

Menus and panel/palette visibility can be set independently to your own taste.

This isn't new in CS4!

Essentials uses up a huge amount of screen real estate, so Basic it is.

Look, again, CS3 does a better job.