Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

ND,

I believe that the PS team is working with both nVidia and ATI on issues. Progress has been made. Several PS .release betas have been issued and tested. In my personal case, the second PS .beta resolved many of my OGL issues. Important issues remain and I am sure they will be resolved.

It will take time -- just the nature of the beast. In my 17 years as an IT and Operations executive; for any/all SW, the X.1 will always be the safer route. You can always expect some pain with the X.0 release.

Gamers are a very important part of the market, but many of the very high-end cards are really not directed there. Look at the nVidia CX series as an example. Most typical gamers do not spend $2K - $4K USD on a card.

H

>"Gee you've been bitten by a bug that we're confident will be resolved very soon. But in the meanwhile feel free to download any previous version from Adobe and use that until the problem's solved. Is there anything else we can help you with today? Thank you for shopping at Adobe."

Agreed, that would be a nice customer-friendly approach on the part of Adobe. Unfortunately, it will never happen, especially the first sentence. Adobe is now, more than ever before, dependent on video card manufacturers making their drivers work with PS. We are now, what, six months into CS4? No fix yet, and if there is one, I'm guessing that it won't address many of the problems that people are reporting.

Adobe might fix their bugs, but the vid card people don't give a rat's ass about PS problems. They are driven and supported by gamers.

Chris Cox tells us to contact our vid card people (I'm still waiting to hear how I might do that, Chris), and there is virtually no way to do that effectively.

"But in the meanwhile feel free to download any previous version from Adobe and use that until the problem's solved. Is there anything else we can help you with today? Thank you for shopping at Adobe"

Great idea!!

>I don't see why a PS11 licence doesn't automatically accord a license for v10, 9, 8, 7, etc..

that's a dern good idea russ...

> I did notice all the PS CS3 window "upgrades" are no longer listed on the website. So your client will need to make the decision soon.

David, that's a great suggestion for some. But many large companies won't (cannot) buy software online and/or cross-border (I'm in Canada) with the thought that perhaps the current version does not work as they expected. Imo, it would be better customer relations to say "Gee you've been bitten by a bug that we're confident will be resolved very soon. But in the meanwhile feel free to download any previous version from Adobe and use that until the problem's solved. Is there anything else we can help you with today? Thank you for shopping at Adobe.".

I don't see why a PS11 licence doesn't automatically accord a license for v10, 9, 8, 7, etc.. and that those versions are not available to paying clients if it means getting their work done. Most things that this company will need PS for can be easily done with CS2 (or less).

I feel less sympathy for those who upgrade as we can all just keep using any previous version we own to keep working. fwiw my CS4 works reasonably well. I'm more concerned for first time buyers who can ONLY buy CS4 through their authorised purchasing channels, and don't have the safety net of using a previous version if there's problems that they cannot wait to have fixed.

The upgrades are going away?

Just a suggestion:
Officedepot.com is still showing on their website CS3 suite for windows. Maybe your client, if they still can, return CS4 and buy the CS3 suite. Upgrade later on if they wish.
I did notice all the PS CS3 window "upgrades" are no longer listed on the website. So your client will need to make the decision soon.

I suspect that Adobe does not sell CS3 to customers who just bought PS and are having problems running the current flavour? Or will Adobe offer a downgrade to CS3 upon request?

I have a client who has just this week hired an in-house graphic artist and they use only PCs. I asked what version of PS they bought her and they said it was the CS4 suite. Now I'm worried that it will run poorly on their hardware and I feel sorry for the problems she might have to face. Perhaps it all works just fine. But it did get me thinking about this.

Dell continues to sell PCs that include a downgrade option to XP. A lot of software I use offers downgrades to previous versions for folks who have problems. I wonder if Adobe might consider doing the same for folks who can forego CS4's new features/changes and can get their work done until a 'dot' release arrives.

Just a thought ...

I have problems with Photoshop CS4..installed fine, but when i open any image its corrupt....i am running windows vista 32bit....could this be my graphics card thats giving the problem its a ATI Radeon HD2600XT?

Brad - a corrupt font could cause a crash, or a specific type of corrupt font is known to cause a crash in Photoshop 64 bit (because of a bug in our font handling code trying to recover from the corrupt font contents).