Inspiring

Question

Why is Photoshop CS4 so slow? [2009]

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
June 12, 2009
12 replies
67104 views

Hi,

I know there's probably a lot of talk on this - there is doing google searches.

I recently upgraded to CS4. All other programs are great (ID, DW, etc.) but Photoshop... I'm ready to go back to Photoshop CS3.

When I turn the guides on and off it looks like some sort of animation effect they take so long to turn on and off. Moving the artboard around and zooming in and out is horrible.All over slow!

I have all the latest drivers of everything. Is there anything I can do?

Thanks.

(Year added to subject)

This topic has been closed for replies.

D Fosse

Community Expert

This thread from 2009 was apparently revived by a robo-spam post - but what a thread! 😉 It puts everything into perspective. I urge everybody who regularly answers questions here to read this. Enjoy 😉

davescm

Community Expert

Should have sold popcorn with that one 🙂

Dave

A

Anonymous

Peo

ple who buy $1,500 video cards should also buy or build a system to take advantage of the card.

Carriage return compliments of Jive.

L

Lord_Forklift

Participant

Why is Photoshop CS4 so slow?

Because you have "Vertical Sync" enabled.

To disable it, go to

"Edit > Preferences > Performance... > (GPU Settings:) Advanced Settings... > (General:) Vertical Sync

and untick "Vertical Sync".

It's quite sad that even the technical staff didn't know about this.

Cheers.

B

blunderbuss5

Participant

I really enjoyed the rants in this post, and thought I'd share a little story.

At my in house design gig, my boss didn't like his computer because photoshop cs4 was running slowly on it. This didn't surprise the tech department because he routinely edits 4 Gig files with it. So he has them build a new computer and gives the old one to me, and it's really amazing; 16 cores, 32 Gigs of memory, yet photoshop cs4 runs at a crawl.

Out of curiosity I just put the cs4 trial on my home workstation, and same problem. I have a very common GeForce 7600 graphics card, with the latest drivers.

So that's the story of how CS4 scored me a new computer!

Semaphoric

Community Expert

I thought this thread died last Summer, but it's turned into a brain-eating zombie thread.

S

str4ngS

Participating Frequently

Stop trying to draw attention to your film post. If you want a fire fight post the link and your political view point in the lounge where it should be.

Why should I stop relating to other threads? What leading Adobe Forum's community members wrote in that thread perfectly represents Adobe's real corporate attitude (you're only good for buying it, if you want bugs fixed, buy it again). They don't support a $800 software for even one year. I think that thread has many things in common with this thread, that's why I linked it.

I thought this thread died last Summer, but it's turned into a brain-eating zombie thread.

It should've been dead, but unfortunately these slowdown issues haven't been fixed since last summer. Be glad, you're not a "disappointed zombie", but one day you don't want to spend your money on your 20th new computer, get back here and think this over again. I'm sorry if this thread eats up your brain, but CS4 also eats up many people's CPU who use it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just read my previous posts.

A

Anonymous

I am not going to dwell on that one sided jaded movie very much. The city I live in has a extreamly active recycle program. We recycle everything from newspapers to cardboard to carpet, you name it. Even the plastic bags from supermarkets can be turned back in to the supermarket in a 50 gallon drum sitting by the front entrance. So not everybody and every city is waste.

As far as PS CS4 being slow I do not have that problem. I have a 4 core AMD 965 with 8 gigs of Gaming RAM. Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit. Photoshop CS4 uses the 3rd and 4th core. Cores one and two are not even touched. When I thumb thru the tabs in Preferences the 3rd and 4th core do not even breathe hard. One itsy bitsy spike in the forth core on selecting each tab the first time. The second time there is no core movement suggesting it is stored in memory.

The only lag I see is when I hit a tool bar for the first time and it thinks for like one little second. However, this is a known issue (a non-issue for me) that everybody knows about who has CS4.

Some filters I can sit and watch cycle from top to bottom during application. Not all filters, just some like glass effects.

As for using the rest of the software: Everything is BAM right in my face blazing fast.

A

Anonymous

Some people expect a Ford Pinto to run as fast as a blown GTO because they put a racing stripe on it. If you want to run PS CS4 as it was designed to do then you have to update that computer to PS CS4 requirements. Simple as that.

A

Anonymous

And if you want to do professional standard work (which is what Photoshop is designed for) get a professional standard computer.

If you want to just play around, get different software.

-

-_AXS_-

Participating Frequently

If I have to hammer a nail into a wall, and someone puts a new hammer on the market, I expect the tool to do "at least" the same duty its precedessor used to do.

If I can't hammer the nail with the same speed or the same power it's not me needing to buy a different hardware, it's the tool that HAS to do its job. Eventually the "hammer engineers" should study a better beveled edge or a more balanced weight to allow my SAME force to push the nail faster and deeper inside.

Think about a Sport like Tennis.

Do the players have to train harder to use the newest hi-tech raquets and faster and more responsive balls -or- it's the technology that goes toward their needs and adapt to their capabilities, eventually allowing them to increase results and control sense?

Technology updates itself like a junkie needs meth. New Processors came out every 6 months. Video Cards GPU follow the same trend, with ridicule prices (600 EUR for a card that will live less than a year.. just makes bad words grow in my mouth - be realistic) If we have to buy new HW everytime a CS Version comes out we should have our offices full with wasted HW.

It's a lesson learned from many OpenSource developers.
If you see the same HW running Vista and Ubuntu, you realize that you can do practically most of the same duties with less than a fourth of memory. Microsoft realized it and developed a more light and better managed (but still not at Ubuntu Level - a pity that doesn't run Adobe soft) OS like Win7.

Apple reduced the high problematic life of its MacSystem9 with the release of OS X.

Now Adobe should do the same. IMHO They just devoured their antagonist so they are supposed to do a bigger effort and give us a cleaner product not "expecting us to buy other tools" to "hammer the same nail".

S

str4ngS

Participating Frequently

Hi,

It's interface bloatiness and CPU-wasting behavior because Adobe developers re-designed it again to be other than CS3, but they have forgotten to write efficient code and optimize it, so when there is no hardware acceleration, it will eat 100% CPU.

Hardware acceleration (OpenGL) support in CS4 is just some hanky-panky to lessen your indignation on Adobe's great developing-era: the newer the slower (thus has higher requirements). Here they are:

Image rotation
Zooming
Pixel grid
Image display (e.g. HQ anti-aliased text-preview)
Brush-stroke preview
Panning

These are six features, only zooming can be called as a basic feature. There are at least as much basic features as tools in the left-placed toolbox (over twenty). These basic features are not enhanced by GPU, so they are CPU-intensive and waste CPU resources. When I first saw NVidia's announcement on new Photoshop GPU features and comparisons I laughed a bit. They show the slugginess and lagginess of software-rendered displaying, rotating and zooming of pictures that were "implemented" from CS3 (I mean the lagginess). I believe it's not NVidia's or Adobe's pride that it goes so smooth on a GPU, but it's Adobe's shame that other features not enhanced by GPU are pretty slow and they get even worse at every new release. GPUs have very-high resources still untapped by many applications, thus Adobe is looking forward to developing for GPUs, because their lazy and bloaty code won't be felt as much as on a CPU. CS4 is a great example of this. If I don't use a GPU feature it's laggy and sluggish. I would recommend them to rewrite and re-program the whole user interface producing CPU-efficient code whether using good programming techniques or Aseembly optimizations.

Interface performance in CS4 comparison to Adobe Photoshop 7.0 is terribly slow. A basic example: try to draw a line using smooth paintbrush onto an image bigger than 1024x1024 by dropping a dot in the right-up corner, then holding the Shift key and dropping another dot in left-down corner. It will draw a line between the two dots and it's so slow in CS4 you will actually see while it's being drawn (takes a second or two), I need hardly say it uses (wastes) 100% CPU during the process. 7.0 does this immediately and uses much less resource. Although, 7.0 doesn't have hardware acceleration support at all, it has a kind of well-programmed and resource-efficient interface. Also tested and runs fine on a Pentium III 500MHz.

There is no point of wasting your money purchasing Photoshop CS4 or any newer (and slightly slower) Adobe product because it will only make you buy a new hardware, so the whole procedure is a waste of money, and only good for keeping up the wild-capitalist business chain and cause more environmental damage due to even higher CPU usages (unless we talk about low-power consumption PCs). I have a few professional photographer friends who still use Photoshop 7.0 or CS2, because they are also disgusted by Adobe's new "solutions".

You can stay at CS4 and post messages like that, maybe Adobe developers read this forum and they will think twice before creating bloaty solutions. They might also release a few updates on these issues if we ask enough times.

Cheers,
str4ngS

L

LensView

Known Participant

Sorry, but you sound like a troll. Just did your "test". Yes, I can see the line being drawn ... in about 1/10th of a second (not seconds as you say) for a 2048x2048 8bit RGB image. BUT, that's on my netbook with Windows 7 Starter, 1GB RAM, embedded graphics and an Intel Atom N280 CPU!

It's a hundred times faster on my 3 year old Core 2 Duo Desktop. And there, CS4 brought a significant speed bump compared to CS3 (with everything else unchanged and no Open-GL).

So, either you are an Adobe-hating troll or you have some other serious problem with your computer. You might want to check your hardware and software config and maybe do a hardware diagnostic. To give you an example: lastyear, I was looking for software problems for a month to finally find out it was one of my RAM modules that was faulty ...

Adobe isn't perfect and there are surely things to improve with the company, it's support and their software, but your ranting is neither serious nor productive.

S

str4ngS

Participating Frequently

Sorry, but you sound like a troll. Just did your "test".

Indeed? This was so expressive

Yes, I can see the line being drawn ... in about 1/10th of a second

Well, that is a problem if you see it being drawn. Test it with PS 7.0, you won't see that. This means inefficient code in CS4 and there is no point of more argument.

So, either you are an Adobe-hating troll or you have some other serious
problem with your computer. You might want to check your hardware and
software config and maybe do a hardware diagnostic.

I'm not an Adobe-hating troll, but if I was one, I'd have serious reasons to be, so decide yourself. Check out my other threads some time. The "test" you did was just one example which issue (Photoshop CS4 brush lag with wacom tablet) seems to be fixed now. You should test other basic features (all the brushes, masking) to call me a troll or prove yourself right. For example: roll through the menubar horizontally, I'm curious whether you see artifacts remaining from menu panels as they disappear and for how long. Another example: you have side-panels, right? Click on their tabs (like "swatches", "history"), and see how long it takes to actually display the tab you've chosen (it takes at least a second). Do these on your netbook, I'm curious.

It's so laggy, I have the time to press PrintScrn so here it is, what you are about to see:

You asked about my hardware, here it is: Pentium 4 2.00 GHz, 1GB RAM, nVidia Geforce 7300 GT

Operating system: Windows XP SP3

K

klsteven-vBdprK

Participating Frequently

Kodzilla, actually you CAN drag layers and groups to another document in another tab (or how it may be called). Just activate the group or layer in the layers panel, go to the picture itself and drag it to the other tab. Wait until the tab is active and then drag down to the new picture. The you only have the active layer or group draged to the other picture. No problem at all.

C

COUNTHOFFMANN

Participant

I can give a definitive answer to this that may help some users. I have a pretty robust machine that runs CS3 perfectly, but turned to molasses on CS4.

After a futile search for solutions, including "the latest video card drivers", I made one change to my system - I took out my nVidia 8400gs card, made by Asus, and replaced it with an ATI Radeon 4350 - and CS4 works perfectly!!

Now it may not be a common flaw of nVidia so much as a unique incompatibility that my Asus card experienced. But there it is. No other tweaks have ever worked, and in retrospect, no others were necessary. This is a surprising outcome, as nVidia claim to have worked alongside Adobe in developing their drivers.

Hope this is helpful to some of you. I know I searched for a solution for a year until I stumbled upon this one!

-

-_AXS_-

Participating Frequently

It sounds already absurd to me to spend so much time trying to fix issues that a program that costs USD 999,00 (EUR 714,00 if you convert the currency) or EUR 1498,80 if you buy it in Italy (that makes USD 2096,97!!!!!!!!) should not have. And it's supposed to be aimed at professionals!

On a Core2 Quadcore, 4gb RAM, Nvidia 9800GTX+, latest updates for OS and Video Drivers and DirectX and whatever it's needed to paint with Painter X (and it's a hell of a fantastic image program) everything runs smooth BUT photoshop CS4.

Crop a 35Mb tiff, copy a layer, stamp tools for 15 second, sharpen, save= 5 darn minutes. I say that's NOT a professional tool. Fix it.

The only words that comes to my mouth are bad words.

And I am seriously looking to switch to an alternative while perfectly working on a downgraded CS3 version.

-

-_AXS_-

Participating Frequently

Adobe started a bad Company politic after having vampirized Macromedia.

What happened to those times when the only needed hardware was a card able to show MILLIONS of colors?

Isn't that the ONLY thing Photographers and Photoeditors NEED truly?

I saw the same problems on 95% of my customers - Even with pretty good VideoCards from Nvidia like 9800 Series.

It's SLOWWWWWWWWWWWWW in a way that makes you feel Ashamed of having bought the program.

It makes you NERVOUS because of the slow response and the weird compatibility of some of the Alienskin filters.

I followed this:

Optimize Photoshop performance

and this:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/433020?tstart=0

and still customers have problems and some decided to downgrade .

CS4 is expensive for the upgrade, now that Adobe ate the opposite faction the prices and the customer service got worse.

In Italy we have even a worse situation if you compare the price with the rest of the world. There are absurd upgrades options with absurd prices and methods.

I am really disappointed from the new Adobe line. And often using the CS2/CS3 solution instead of the new one.

Chris Cox

Legend

Photoshop has always required a WORKING video card.

Photoshop CS4 just places more demands on the video card if you use the OpenGL features.

Remember that all applications are at the mercy of the OS and drivers -- if they don't work, the application won't work correctly.

And every time we release an application, someone has problems with it being slow -- usually tracked to a third party application, driver, bad OS installs, etc. When we find problems in our appliation, we try to get them fixed. But we cannot control your system outside of our application.

A

Anonymous

I don't like the UI either but at least I made the effort.

If you feel so strongly, why don't you complain direct to Adobe instead of ranting in a user to user forum?

its seems to me your the one ranting john dont you have anything better to do ( ha ha me too ) . and mahoney thats what this forum is for ,so people who dont have anwsers can get them no matter what the scale .which makes yours the worst post ever too (wanna be Adobe employees)

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