Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

Like others, I experienced lagging and momentary ghosting when moving images.

On average my images are 2 -3 megs and seldom larger than 5 megs.

Windows XP SP3
Nvidia 7900GS 256 (latest driver)
4 megs memory (3.5 useable)

For my purposes, slow response or lagging and ghosting was resolved by increasing the cache to 6, enabling OpenGL Drawing but unchecking everything in the Advanced Settings window except Advanced Drawing.

I have the lagging problem (and I have an Intel processor), but I wouldn't call CS4 a disaster. The rotating canvas (something Painter already had 10 years ago) removes my number one complaint about Photoshop as a pure drawing application.

I'm really surprised that in their beta testing, Adobe never encountered the lag problem, considering how many others like myself experience it now. Maybe their list of beta testers is too narrow. They should have done a public beta release like they did with Dreamweaver, and have thousands of testers.

I trust that Adobe has put top priority on solving this. Once it's solved, then I'll be delighted with CS4. Annoying, should have been tested more before relase, but not by any means a disaster.

Is that 2560x1600 the native resolution of the monitor?

The ironic thing is... if you go into the liquify tool, its FASTER at panning, redrawing, brush responsiveness and it liquifize smooth as silk...

BUT when you go back into CS4 with or without GPU opengl enabled... Its so slow in comparison.

Perhaps its the fact that my desktop resolution is 2560x1600 (since i'm using a 30 inch monitor...

But i dont think thats it, especially when you factor in that with opengl off, CS4 is still far slower than CS3.

GPU on and off in CS4 is roughly the same slow performance. The GPU slows down the performance a bit more... but overall, the program runs nothing like CS3 did.

P.S. DOES ADOBE HAVE A RETURN/EXCHANGE POLICY?

I would be happy to go to CS3 instead, even for the same money.

QUOTING MJ Murphy above:

"Moving images around the screen leaves a copy of the image where it used to be for a second. Very distracting. When I zoom in on a 20 MB image, in CS3 I can click the hand tool, drag the image around at will and it moves as smoothly as if I were moving a paper image around on a smooth surface. Cs4 is another story. As I click and drag I see a bunch of squares getting redrawn all over the screen. Very distracting."

SAME HERE!

AND: CS4 renders picture packages much more slowly than even 6.0 which is what I was running before we bought the full version of CS4.
CS4 does not take advantage of CPU power because it rarely uses more than 60% when rendering. (XP32, P4 HT 3.0GHz, 2GB RAM, dedicated scratch drive). Very disappointing...

Mark,

Those are pretty much my feelings and I returned my copy as well. I would have loved to keep it, but as I'm watching this unfold, there's no telling when it might get fixed and the problems are too pervasive.

One thing, Adobe makes it very easy to return it.

Paul

Add my CS4 installation to the DISASTER column. Very disappointing. I work with large images and usually have many open at once. There is a painful drag lag, redraw lag, whatever you want to call it. I do not wish to deal with it.

Moving images around the screen leaves a copy of the image where it used to be for a second. Very distracting. When I zoom in on a 20 MB image, in CS3 I can click the hand tool, drag the image around at will and it moves as smoothly as if I were moving a paper image around on a smooth surface. Cs4 is another story. As I click and drag I see a bunch of squares getting redrawn all over the screen. Very distracting.

On my Dell 1330 Laptop there is the additional problem of a disappearing brush outline above a certain brush size. On the laptop there is no hope because Dell will not release another video driver for this machine for XP in my lifetime.

On both the desktop and the laptop there is a gray line bisecting the menu at the top of the screen.

I have downloaded the latest nvidia driver to my dell vostro 400 desktop intel core 2 duo 6850 3ghz 3gb ram Nvidia geforce8600gts driver version 6.14.11.7824.

I have tried all of the turn off open gl and change cache level suggestions.

Something is amiss with CS4. If you have not purchased, don't. You should get the trial version and see if it works with your hardware.

CS3 works great on both my desktop and laptop - both about a year old.

I like Adobe & Photoshop, and I am a stockholder, but I am returning CS4 because it doesn't work on my machines. What disappoints me as a stockholder is that there are millions of others out there with machines like mine. I will be happy to purchase CS4 again, or CS5?, once Adobe fixes the problem with my machines.

And Adobe pointing to nvidia does not cut it. Adobe can't throw software out there and then point to, lets say, Epson as the reason why your printouts are all of a sudden screwed up, or to nvidia as the reason that CS4 is not displaying things correctly. They have to work out these problems with the manufacturers PRIOR to releasing a new version of CS, I don't care what the marketing folks say!

I would be glad to hang on to CS4 for free and work with Adobe to fix their problem (and I do mean their problem)..... but I am not going to hang around on my dime. I am getting my money back.

> It's odd that your 975 chipset didn't support memory remapping. I had an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, also based upon the 975 chipset, which DID support memory remap.

I read CR Henderson's response and wished that I had not sold that board if it could indeed run stable with 8GB RAM. I just ran out of patience with Intel who wore me down with long distance $$ tech support calls and inept suggestions. Seems like Asus, who I was a long time fan of since the old P2B and P4T days, are better at getting their bios' right. Intel really left me thinking that they had nothing to offer...

Russell

I have a amd processor running on vista ultimate 64 and I don't have big issues. I did have some lag like others reported but I set my cache to 8, as stated above, and it runs smooth now. May not make problems go away for others but it helped me out.

Also there is a new directx out 11/5/2008 (today) for those who might be interested.