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.

[Guest]

U R two pfunny Dave............

[hhansard]

I'm still confused.

I understand the "selling ponies" reference. The phrase actually predates the urban dictionary reference by several 100 years...

Are you mocking my post or OLG?

Have you ever served on a standards committee? Do you know what it is like? Agreed, not perfect?

I was on the original IEEE Ethernet and the X.25 committees. If you have not been there, its like Hell, but with drinks served between sessions to prevent any mass killings.

H

[Guest]

Lighten up Hugh!

It's not about you.

Bart made a funny and Dave took it to the next stage.

We try to keep it jolly here in the face of so much adversity.

[hhansard]

Jolly is fine with me.

However, forums were created for users to ask questions and "hopefully" getting advice from those who have "been-there-done-that", and can offer constructive advice.

Posts that do not support that philosophy are simply a waste of bandwidth

this one included

Now how do I do that smiley thing?

H

[_J_Maloney_]

: )

[Guest]

no. not mocking at all! well, maybe mocking bart... a little... 😛 <br /><br />>However, forums were created for users to ask questions and "hopefully" getting advice from those who have "been-there-done-that", and can offer constructive advice. <br /><br />those who've been there done that and offer advice have to let off steam sometime. <max smart>sorry about that chief.</max smart><br /><br />ok. stopping now... ;)<br />:)

[_Kay_R_Richardson_]

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 ideas?

[_envy1234567_]

im having no issues with cs4 master suit, i dont have recomended settings either, i have 512mb of ram and a 6 year old computer, although it may have somthing to do with the fact that im readyboosting a 4 gig sd drive and running windows 7 beta?

[shoot_me_now-d3u3se]

>cs4 master suit...512mb of ram and a 6 year old computer...running windows 7 beta?

I have no idea how your computer could possibly be running the OS, let alone Photoshop. Either MS has worked a miracle or you are used to timing your Photoshop operations with a calendar.

[Guest]

Readyboost is a lot slower then RAM. Besides, assuming Envy has a 512 meg video card taking up the 512 address space, just exactly how is windows 7 running on readyboost alone? Also, having a 6 year computer means it has no e-sata so the SD drive has to be USB. Never mind the rest of the hardware and software. Very interesting indeed.

[_Sean_F_]

Took Hugh's advice and mimicked Wolf Eilers setup. Photoshop is now plenty faster, and I can finally finish a couple projects I was working on and start a few new ones. It still isn't perfect, CS2 was a little faster, but in CS2 the brush lines were less smooth if you drew quick circles than in cs4, so I guess that is a good trade off. The pen tool is still more sluggish than the brush tool on my system, but it is at least usable.

Now I get to fine tune it to see just how fast I can get everything running, and next is seeing if I can get Illustrator to speed up, on my large vector files with jpg background for reference, every time I hide or un-hide the jpg, everything goes white or black for a couple seconds, simply unusable for this type of work, guess I'm stuck with smaller files and free handing stuff for a while in Illustrator.

[_Kay_R_Richardson_]

Hugh's advice changing the nvidia settings didn't fix anything for me

[Mike Sargent]

Disabling the PhysX setting didn't fix anything for me either.

[_Expert_Here_]

You two must have missed the hidden nvidia setting:

phys-x plac-ebo on

Set that and you'll be ready to go to new heights, with no bounds. I know these things, I am, after all

Expert Here

[hhansard]

I am sorry. I did not make something clear in my post on settings:

The important point of my last post about card settings is not the settings themselves, they will be different for every class of card.

The point is that you need to disable PSs ability to alter the configuration of the video sub-system or place values in any of the settings.

There is usually a setting in the driver somewhere to disable an application from altering the cards / drivers settings. That was the key for me. Once I disabled PSs ability to change anything, then performance boost was achieved. I then tweaked with the settings to get what I wanted.

All card Mfgs have forums. You may find folks with optimized settings for PS. The settings do not have to be for CS4, just something recent. The Mfg may also have a FAQ on settings and even provide optimized settings for PS.

Hope this helps,

H

[_Drew_Shollmier_]

I've downloaded the trial version of Photoshop CS4 Extended on my XP Home system with 2gb of memory, AMD AthlonXP 3200+ @ 2.19 GHz on an ATI Radeon 9250 video card @ 128mb of memory. In short, a pretty dated system and I'm not having a single problem with the performance of CS4 Extended. My guess is there's something wrong with your system.

[Mike Sargent]

Hugh

Thanks for the info, but I've now tried everything I can think off including locking the settings for Photoshop, still no luck. I'm now seriously thinking of trying another more powerful graphics card, trouble is all this takes time away from paid work, which I seem to have a stack of at the moment - glad I've still got CS2 to use.

One thing if I turn off OpenGl in preferences the clone stamp and pen lags go away but the brush lag is the same (which is related to brush size and zoom percentage - as others have noted), so perhaps I do have a bottleneck somewhere.

[Guest]

I use the sony ex1 with XSX card that only cs4 can read but media encoder does not work. I have upgraded from cs2 and would love to go to cs3, I am stuck I guess. What other options beside FCP do I have to read those sxs cards.

thanks,

fred

[_Mati_Kala_]

save for web option freakin SUCKS!!!!!!
the annoying "YES" confirmation is still there and now i CANT EVEN PRESS ESCAPE TO cancel the even more annoying picture preview loading.
???? ?? ????

[_Kay_R_Richardson_]

what phys-x plac-ebo on ? huh?

Hugh - i understand what you are saying. i went into my nvidia control panel and went under 3d settings for photoshop cs4. i changed most values to the ones listed in the thread you linked to earlier. none of the features are program dependent and doesn't seem like cs4 is able to change anything

either way, still lags

[Hudechrome-sd9sPI]

placebo?

[Paulo Skylar]

I will add my experience with a new install of PS CS4. I installed the CS4 Design Premium suite on my computer that already had the CS3 suite installed as well as numerous other programs, all of which work well. The installation completed without problems. All comments are preliminary representing a first pass through the application.

My system contains the following items:
Asus P5Q-E board
Intel Core2 Duo E8400 3.0 GHz
8 GB RAM
320 GB C drive for sys and CS4
50 GB partition on a 2nd physical drive for scratch
Intuos 3 tablet not yet tested, using mouse for initial eval.

Vista Ultimate 64-bit , Aero enabled
Photoshop CS4 (64 bit), Open GL enabled
No plugins

Nvidia GeForce 9600GT 512 MB
Driver 7.15.11.7813 (Sept 2008, not the latest)
Eizo CG222W display 1680 x 1050

After verifying that PS performed its elementary operations, I took a brief look at brush lag and I experienced some at large brush sizes. I then kicked the tires of some of the other apps in CS4 to verify their basic operation and all was well with them. I then went to Bridge and set many preferences, did some e-mail and other things as well. When I reopened PS to check it out in more detail, the lag I had seen previously was gone or much reduced. I cannot explain why.

Currently, all PS tools are working OK and all the new CS4 navigation schemes behave well. There is, however, some occasional, unpredictable behavior with the tool tips and the history states. I've now determined that the brush lag is real, but only for large brush sizes. While that sounds like bad news, the exact same test using PS CS3 on the same system yields comparable results, maybe a tiny bit less lag, but within say 20% of the CS4 performance. The comparison was made on a 4000 x 3000 image and quickly moving the rough round brush of diameter 1000 pixels. I've also seen stuttering cursor movement (only on CS4) when a brush diameter is approximately = or > 20% of the image width, but this effect cannot be consistently produced and may be a pathological finding.

My bottom line is that PS CS4 is working on the above described computer and working well enough to get work done and not force me back to CS3. It does have some defects and most likely I will find more. Tablet issues have not been addressed yet. Additional effort to give a real review needs to be done, but with all the reported CS4 problems I thought my initial experience may be useful input. It demonstrates (at least) that with the right (unknown) configuration details the above hardware and software produce acceptable, if not yet great, results.

Paulo

[Mike Sargent]

I've just looked again at my anti-virus software and Photoshop CS4, now when I installed CS4 I didn't look beyond the fact that my anti-virus software (Kaspersky Internet Security 7) didn't disable OpenGL, as so many users had reported happening at the time.

However, I just disabled it (Kaspersky) and the brush lag for me has completely disappeared (I tested brushes up to 1800pt in size), also the lag with the pen tool has gone. The lag I was experiencing with the clone stamp tool is probably better but still exists (it's as though the source point is on a rubber band attached to the brush), this is brush size dependent.

Now obviously I can't can't run without AV software, but at least I've now got the option of pulling the plug on my internet connection, disabling my AV software and using CS4 for work, - might be beneficial, at least I won't be plagued with email from clients that way!

[Guest]

This seems to be an effect of Kaspersky Internet Security 7.

I have Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 (version 8.0) and it doesn't interfere with CS4.

[Mike Sargent]

John

That's good to know, my licence runs out in a few days, I might a well upgrage to the 2009 version then.

I wonder though, if there is going to be performance difference with PS CS4 Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 compared to Kaspersky Internet Security 2009? i.e. will Anti-Virus 2009 work well with PS CS4 (as you reported) and the Internet Security suite won't?