Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

[_ProArtist_]

I'm am just at a loss of words.

What a mess. It could not be any slower. What were you thinking Adobe?

You ripped apart the code just to add GPU support for what? To provide worse performance?

Make sure you DL the demo first... CS4 is a disaster.

The latest hardware cant even run it smoothly... Dont tell me its graphic drivers.

[_Sean_F_]

Actually I have been popping in here about once a week, no I haven't read every post, but I have spent quite a bit of time reading up here and other places, sorry I missed the generic driver comment, wasn't trying to say I solved everyone problems, just made a discovery of my own.

[Hudechrome-sd9sPI]

Well, maybe for LCD, but for crts, generic drivers are good only for getting something on screen.

For all the others, avoid even opening the tabs leading to their gui, and if you do, don't touch a thing!

Gettcha every time. :-(

[Guest]

> maybe for LCD, but for crts, generic drivers are good only for getting something on screen.

disagree. and they type of monitor has nothing to do with it.

[_Robert_L__Quinn_]

guess again...brand new HP PC w/8 gigs of ram...CS$ works poorly! just because 10,000 people haven't posted doesn't mean only 10 people are having problems. plenty of people have problems with our government, how many people actually write their congress rep'?

[Hudechrome-sd9sPI]

dave, at work we do not use drivers from the video card for either, and I have to say that the behavior of the LCD on generics is better than crts on generics. Both are perfectly adequate for our needs, but the range of options in generic on crts don't meet my needs in graphics. That has been a subject of interest some years back when crts ruled. I distinctly recall that when faced with generics vs drivers with the GUI for the card included, the advice was to only D/L the drivers. The generics were insufficient then, why are they sufficient now?

Maybe you are thinking of generics for the monitor.

[mcoleman80]

I am reading through this forum and, while there is a lot of information and it is very difficult to cover it all, I can tell that many people are having problems with their mouse in CS4. Please allow me to join your ranks!! I have a brand new PC running Vista and I installed CS4 Premium on it the day I set the computer up. The rest of Creative Suite runs fine -- I'm very happy with it. But Photoshop seems to be a complete wreck. There are features of the new Photoshop that I'm not happy with -- for instance running actions that create a new file (copy then create new file then paste, for example) always assigns the file a name from the most recent previously named file instead of allowing for consecutive naming like Untitled-2, Untitled-3, etc... Then there's the whole windows default to a tab arrangement thing, which is solvable I know, but annoying none-the-less.

The REAL problem I'm running into is with the mouse, though. It seems to have a mind of its own... When I use the Marquee tool, it creates a box on the first click that has my cursor as one of its corners the remainder of the size and location of the box is completely random. Click again, same thing happens with the box having different dimensions and location. Only maybe one in three clicks am I actually able to drag the marquee tool to select exactly what I want. It is almost impossible to do a lot of cut-and-paste type stuff, and for me that makes Photoshop CS4 unusable. I'm trying to stick it out and find a solution, but I'm getting very frustrated and occasionally have to return to my old machine running CS2 to get work done.

I've tried reinstalling my mouse drivers... I've checked to make sure I have the most recent versions of .net and DirectX... I turned of OpenGL in Photoshop... I've replaced my mouse and made sure the trackpad on my laptop is turned off... I just don't know what to do now!!!

Will someone pleeeeeease help me make Photoshop CS4 a functioning program? I hate to be accused of whining, but need the application to work properly -- so even it's user error that's making is suck so bad, lay it on me, let me know, so I can fix it!

[_Chris_Chaison_]

My photoshop cs4 wont let me use any 3d options

[_Daniel_nieto_]

OK, I yanked out the Radeon 2400 which is on the Adobe approved card list and re enabled the old on-board graphics card. Result: CS4 still lags by the same amount. Of course, OpenGL is not available now. Great: my cheap Dell laptop circa 2006 plays CS4 just fine altho without OpenGL but my Dell desktop circa 2004 doesnt even when OpenGL is not an option and is grayed out.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron B130 with Celeron{R}M 1.5GHz, XP SP2, one-half GB RAM. My desktop has XP SP3: I wonder if SP3 is screwing with CS4?

At any rate, editing my 80MB images with only 2 gigs of RAM is a joke so I am going to buy a new PC. I will install only CS4 and of course the crapware that comes with it and see what happens. The PC will come with a Radeon 3650 and I have seen posts elsewhere on the net that the 3650 doesnt have problems with those who have posted. Google: Radeon 3650 CS4.

Desktop is using a Pentiun4 2.4GHz. Maybe thats a problem.

[_Jason_Mullin_]

Well, I just wanted to echo the sentiment that there are many others lurking here, but not posting about their problems. We ran the trial at work, and every machine we tried it on had lag issues with the brush and clone tool. Additionally, the pen tool response was so slow as to be unusable. We have tried many of the potential "fixes" listed in this massive thread, and I even e-mailed about the request for help for a possible solution. We have, as yet not seen anything that has helped. We are not the only local shop with this issue, and I would expect that it may be more common then some realize.

A lot of people won't post on a forum if they don't have a productive solution. We haven't found one, and neither have any of our colleagues, so none of us have said anything, but if this is what it takes then add my voice too.

[_Arthur_Marshall_]

Jason is right. There are many (like myself) who have one or more of these many problems and don't post because we have no solution.

It is impossible to know how widespread the difficulties are. Only those with a problem tend to post, but not everyone with a problem posts.

What bothers me (apart from two days of time wasted combing this forum and other sources without any solution for the slow operation and corrupt displays) is that there is no simple way to turn off the "features" that are causing the trouble.

I bet many will simply give up and keep using CS3. GIMP is even starting to look attractive, despite being 2 generations behind PS.

Arthur

[_Wilson_David_]

Until two weeks ago I had a three year old 3.6ghz P4 (with 4gig of RAM). It ran CS3 very nicely. After anxiously waiting for CS4 to arrive, I was absolutely stunned at how awful the user experience was. I've been a programmer since 1968, and I've seen a lot. It's perfectly normal for a product to require more horsepower from one version to the next. But not like this.

I was rather dismayed reading the first couple of hundred posts in this thread. I saw basically two camps. People with severe problems (as I had), and people with new enough hardware to run CS4 ok. The latter seem to regard the former as whining morons who are obviously doing all sorts of things wrong.

I decided my blood pressure wasn't going to cope with getting into this fight, so I just threw a bunch of money at the problem. Now I'm running Vista 64 with 12GB of ram, a Core i7 920, and a GeForce 9800 GTX+. CS4 runs great, at least as much as I've had time to try after spending so much time and money upgrading, installing a new OS, and reinstalling everything.

I didn't have any where near the patience to try upgrading one piece at a time to figure out just how much is strictly necessary for CS4 to run right. As a programmer, it's my personal opinion that Adobe really screwed up. Turning off all the GPU options, for example, was not enough to get even minimally acceptable performance from my previous processor. All of Adobe's developers (and all of the authors of the glowing magazine reviews) must have the latest and greatest systems. Adobe's QA department, at least, should have tried CS4 on a more "normal" PC before they threw CS4 out the door.

Having seen both sides now, I can say that with the latest/greatest hardware, CS4 is really slick. Some of the new visual features are downright silly (spin your image around like a top??), but some of the new stuff really is nice. I can also say that if you don't have new enough hardware, CS4 is truly awful. The fellow who started off this thread 550+ messages ago put it very well.

[Guest]

I grew suspect reading all those perfect, I just love it, PS CS4 reviews. Plus when you read those reviews not one of them (least the ones I found) list their computer system specs. My copy of CS4 extended runs ok but has minor issues already talked about on here. I just lerk and read now: Waiting for Adobe to sort it out with who ever.

[digital gene]

Just to let you know I am one of the lurkers here and I have no problem with CS4 speed but it crashes a lot.

I am retired and only process a few images a day,
but when it crashes I lose my work. Yes, I save a lot, but if I decide that I don't want that image, I have several copies on my drive.

The speed (for me) is not an issue. I have a 4 core vista 32 system with 3 gig of memory and nvidia 8600GT 512 memory card with the latest drivers and GPU set to off.

Thanks to this thread I have made some improvements in speed.

[Hudechrome-sd9sPI]

i The latter seem to regard the former as whining morons who are obviously doing all sorts of things wrong.

Not all of us! :-)

[_mark_kalman_]

Well, add me to the list. I followed forum, bought ATI radeon hd 4850 graphics card. It was on adobe's tested list. Man was I excited! thought it was running great until I tried to paint on a levels layers mask. I was trying to darken a selected area. It was unusable at a 300 zoom F%#K I am so disappointed. I would paint a single click, nothing would appear until I clicked it again somewhere else then the previous spot would appear wtf! I am sorry just pissed I can't get anything done. I switched off gpu it worked a little better but come on then all the features are gone. I spent an hour updating driver. I am not a computer expert just a wedding photographer. What do I do now. If anybody at adobe wants to know the rest of my brand new system I bought to exclusively run CS4. Let me know.
I could call if u want. I really need to know what to do next. I spent over $1,500.00 For everything and now I am back to using CS2 on my old system I need advice.

thanks
-mark

[plasticAnimal]

gosh all I want to do is read the help file to see if I missed something in CS4.

But it doesn't work, something on Adobe's site keeps trying to do an unauthorized action across my firewall so the whole thing just hangs.

I'd like to know what that is too. But really all I want to do is look at my help file !

Why does it have to go to Adobe.com just so I can look at my help file ?

[_Kay_R_Richardson_]

making this post like couple months after i initially made a post in this thread, is there a fix yet?

core 2 duo 2.4ghz
3gb ram
512mb 9600GT
win xp 32bit
newest drivers

played with settings, GPU on, upped cache, etc

still lags. my biggest complaint is when i try to type texts i would type like a sentence and it would appear like 10seconds later

any idaes?

[Mike Sargent]

I must say that when I installed the CS4 Design Premium suite a couple of weeks ago, I was pleased to note that I didn't have any of the OpenGL problems. However, now I've finished the 'playing with the new toy' phase and started to do real work I find many of the same problems listed in earlier posts, i.e. lags using the brush and clone tools, pen tool lags and text lags. These alone break this version for me as far as work goes and now will revert to using CS2 full-time.

I have tried as many of the fixes that have worked for other posters, but obviously this hasn't helped me.

Specs are:

Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz
4GB ram
2 internal HD's
Nvidia 8600GT
Vista Home Premium

I'm sad to say that I probably will never trust another major version upgrade from Adobe again until it has been thoroughly tested in the marketplace for some months.

Surely given the volume of the problems now surfacing Adobe must of been aware of this before shipment (I now they can't test all combinations of hardware/software) and therefore, were they forced into shipping a defective product by the marketing & finance departments?

I just had to add this post, to speak up for the silent minority/(majority)? of users having these problems.

[_Q_Photo_]

"The latter seem to regard the former as whining morons who are obviously doing all sorts of things wrong."

That is absolutely incorrect. Many have offered suggestions to those having problems. Note that the original poster, ProArtist, asked that I run a test for him on Dec. 29. I did the test, as requested, and to date, Jan. 6th, haven't received a reply.

I ended my reply to ProArtist: Good luck. I don't like to hear that someone is having problems with Photoshop. Much like seeing a homeless person and thinking "There but for the grace of God...."

I don't see how this indicates not caring or not trying to help.

Q

[hhansard]

Couple of things:

There is an interesting thread related to graphics card settings the absolutely cleared-up my all my speed, windowing and drawing issues. With the settings that I posted a while a go in this thread, I now run CS4 significantly faster than CS3. The link is:

Wolf Eilers, "CS4 and nvidia 180.48 driver - disable PhysX GPU acceleration" #8, 6 Dec 2008 11:32 am

These settings only modify how the video sub-system interacts with the requesting program and not OGL. The example settings are for nVidia, but apply across all venders that produce high-end cards. Note: these settings are usually only applicable to high-end cards designed for 3D applications, so you may not be able to modify your settings.

A looong time ago, I wrote graphics drivers, so I could give an analogy as to what is happening, but I realize that folks are interested in solving the problem, and not techno-babble. Give it a try.

Adobe is aware of this issue and is working on it.

My OGL is still NG. I am running OGL 2.1.2, which is fairly recent I believe 2007 considering OGL has been around for about 17 years. Adobe includes an OGL compatibility tester with AE. AE, PP, etc are all OK. I have been trading e-mails with PS engineering on test data, so they are aware of the issues and working on it. Considering this is the first time PS engineering has included OGL code, it is not surprising that there are a few glitches.

Folks in this thread should really check-out about 6 or 7 other threads on speed issues. I have seen several suggestions that have not appeared here. You should also check-out threads on photo.net, digitaldarkroom, etc. There are some very sharp folks on the web that do not visit the Adobe forums and have posted work-arounds.

Hope it helps,

H

[mcoleman80]

Hugh-

That looks like an amazingly helpful post!! I'm excited to try the routes you suggest. I will let you know if they resolve any of the issues that I'm struggling with on my machine.

thanks!!
-MC

[Guest]

Maybe the PS people can talk to the AE people about OGL and maybe, OMG, it could work!

[Guest]

(OMG!!!PONIES!!11!1!!!) :)

[hhansard]

I'm sorry; I really don't understand the previous post.

[_J_Maloney_]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ponies