Photoshop CS5 freezes

[Yefolio-KBIqSr]

Hi,

Have been using PS CS5 since the trial became available. But seems CS5 responds a lot slower than CS4. Sometimes, it just freezes or slow the whole computer down when I tried to open a many-layer file. I had to force quit the application, It's really frustrated because the system responds very slow even I tried to quit PS. Once it's quite, everyting's back to normal. Does anyone have this problem?

Thanks,

[Chris Cox]

Topox - you may still want to try clearing the OS font caches.

The problems we're looking at for freezes are tied to the OS font cache being corrupted, and it doesn't seem to be related to specific fonts, but some sort of bug in the Apple font code.

[DG. David Escalante]

Oh yeah, I remember doing that the first time I installed CS5.

yes, Photoshop runs smoothly and without any kind of freeze, but it started to give me this problems later.

I will clean the cache font today and see if it gives me any problem soon.

I will keep in touch, thanks.

[Vinod Balakrishan]

We do have couple of known font crashes with Type tool. These issues happens during font preview generation or Type Tool initialization. Here are the KB docs on the those known issues.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/843/cpsid_84363.html

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/846/cpsid_84633.html

But, we have been tracking down another font related issue on Mac which causes whole system slow down after Type tool initialization. If you encounter this slow down, here are some tips to track down the issue. Any help from users side will be appreciated.

As far as we know, it is a Mac x64 bit only issue.

If you encounter system slow down with Type tool, please check the system console ( launch /Applications/Utilities/Console.app ) and watch for any error message. We have seen certain bad fonts are causing some of the system tasks to crash and restart repeatedly.

Some of the users have seen the system slow down issue going away ( occasionally on temporary basis ) after clearing the system font cache using the system utility "atsutil". More details about atsutil can be found by running "man atsutil" on unix terminal application or from the link: http://www.macworld.com/article/139383/2009/03fontcacheclear.html.

We also want to know whether users are using any font tools like FontBook or any other third party font tool especially after clearing the system font cache. We also would like to know your OS version too.

Finally, If you are encountering the problem anywhere close San Francisco Bay area or Seattle, please let us know.

Again, any help to track down this issue will be appreciated.

-Vinod

[C-Wave]

Vinod-

I just ran the font script and all of my fonts, which I have already pared down with the help of FontBook, tested fine, with the exception of lastresort.ttf. I didn't recognize the name, and didn't even know about it until I looked it up just now online, but see that it is a hidden OS font (which explains my not seeing it before). I threw it away, but as it is a system font, it was immediately replaced. I ran the script again with the same results: all fonts fine except for Last Resort. Have any suggestions as to how to fix it? A web search didn't turn up any suggestions. Is it likely to be a legitimate issue, or is Photoshop just reporting it as a problem because of the unique nature of this font?

"Failed Font(s) Found. If the error seems to be the font related issue, please send this log to DL-PS-External-Bugs-Tools@adobe.com.

- Font 568: LastResort (IOError: General Photoshop error occurred. This functionality may not be available in this version of Photoshop.

- )"

Thanks,

Ron

[Vinod Balakrishan]

Hi Ron,

LastResort font issue is a known problem with us and we have been working for a fix. For the time being, please follow the steps to work around the problem.

LastResort font is a fallback font, system maintains to render glyphs that are not available in other font. Looks like you have some bad font/s in your system and those fonts get fallback to the LastResort font.

Once Photoshop successfully builds its font menu, the following cache file will be updated with all system fonts information. You may have to make the font preview off to successfully build the font cache file.

<userhome>/Library/Caches/Adobe/TypeSupport/CS5/AdobeFnt_OSFonts.lst

Open this file with TextEdit, and search for "FontName:LastResort". If you have any bad font in your system,  you will find multiple entries for "FontName:LastResort" in the cache file. Looks for the entries with different "FontName" and "OutlineFileName", they actually represent bad fonts with fallback font as LastResort.

The following is a valid entry and its FontName and OutlineFileName are LastResort.ttf.

%BeginFont

Handler:ATSHandler

FontType:TrueType

FontName:LastResort

FamilyName:LastResort

StyleName:Regular

FullName:LastResort

MenuName:.LastResort

StyleBits:0

WritingScript:Roman

WritingScriptsMatch:no

OutlineFileName:/System/Library/Fonts/LastResort.ttf

ATSFontName:LastResort

FONDName:.LastResort

FONDStyle:0

DataFormat:sfntResource

ResourceID:-32768

WeightClass:400

WidthClass:5

AngleClass:0

OverriddenByNameDB:no

%EndFont

Following entry represents a bad font: SEGULIM.TTF in the system, In this entry "FontName" and "OutlineFileName" are a different. This font ( SEGULIM.TTF ) will not work in Adobe apps ( may be other apps too ). Please *manually* remove the font from the appropriate folder to work around this problem. The Photoshop font cache file will be updated automatically when it needs to be.

%BeginFont

Handler:ATSHandler

FontType:TrueType

FontName:LastResort

FamilyName:LastResort

StyleName:Regular

FullName:LastResort

MenuName:SeGulim

StyleBits:0

FamilyNameNative:

StyleNameNative:Regular

FullNameNative:

WritingScript:Korean

WritingScriptsMatch:no

OutlineFileName:/Users/ariza/Library/Fonts/no bug/SEGULIM.TTF

ATSFontName:SeGulim

FONDName:SeGulim

FONDStyle:0

DataFormat:sfntResource

ResourceID:-32768

WeightClass:400

WidthClass:5

AngleClass:0

OverriddenByNameDB:no

%EndFont

Please note that, Photoshop's font cache file is for information purpose only. The end user should not modify this file directly. 

-Vinod

[_scott_]

Thanks for that, Vinod. It let me confirm that all fonts are good here.

[nnnickk]

Hey,

I followed the instructions in those technotes, but the problem still occurs. 

I tested my fonts with OSX's font book, as well as with the PS CS5 font test script.  All fonts passed -- however, in fontbook, there were some "cautions" due to duplicated fonts.  Nothing got the big red X.

I then proceeded to trash photoshop's font caches, remove the system font cache, with ATS util, reset the photoshop preferences file with command-option-shift at startup, disabling openGL, and disabling font previews. 

After doing that-- I restarted PS, opened a window, hit "t", and the freeze/system slowdown happened.

Hrmm.

...and as an aside, Chris, regarding our earlier cheery debate about freezes vs crashes, I thought it was interesting that in the Adobe technote for the problem, they make numerous interesting references to-- well, why don't I just quote the page:

Solution 4: Determine if a damaged font or font cache is causing the crash. (Mac OS)

Step 1: Reset preferences.
Perform this step after experiencing the crash. It's also a good idea to restart your computer after your computer crashes.

Heh.

[Vinod Balakrishan]

Do you see any error message in the console application while initializing the Type Tool ? You can lauch console application from /Applications/Utilities/Console.app.

Does it happen if the font preview is off ?

-Vinod

[nnnickk]

Hi,

No, I didn't see any error messages (and I was watching!)

Yes, with font previews off, it happens.

[Vinod Balakrishan]

Please make sure the folder: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/TypeSupport/CS5/ has two subfolders named CMaps and Unicode and a file called FntNames.db. If you have all these needed pieces on  /Library/Application Support/Adobe/TypeSupport/CS5/ folder, you may have a bad font which is causing font enumeration to fail. Please start manually removing any newly added fonts from the font folder. If the problem persists, start removing half of the fonts from the font folder. You can repeat the procedure in recursive fashion till you nail down the bad font.

Also check out the Step 7: Find the font causing the problem of the KB document http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/843/cpsid_84363.html to get a detailed steps to narrow down a bad font in the system. You may have newly added fonts in following locations.

• /Users/[username]/Library/Fonts
• /Library/Fonts

-Vinod

[Chris Cox]

Nick - yes, the technote mentions crashes because it is talking about actual CRASHES.

Fonts are known to cause a lot of problems right now, and we're tracking both crashes and freezes caused by Apple font code.

[gollings john]

we have the same CS5 photoshop freezing problems in australia and in my studio its across a range of configurations, compounded with spotlight problems across a network with large servers. (it takes over the cpu while indexing and should be turned off thru the terminal)

however the workaround for photoshop freezing is to simply turn off open GL support on photoshop prefs. This seems to fix most performance issues, whether you run in 32bit or 64 bit kernel

as for a proper fix, it would seem that serious coordination is needed between adobe, apple, the open GL consortium and video card manufacturers. i'd love to know what machines adobe test on because they obviously havn't seen this problem ,which is affecting most of their customers

colleagues using cs5 photoshop on windows describe the same freezing problems

i'm interested in feedback from everyone having these problems but getting rid of open GL has worked for me on many different macs

[Chris Cox]

We have yet to see any freezing problems caused by OpenGL code.

The few reports we had during CS4 came down to defective cards or drivers that needed to be updated.

[DG. David Escalante]

Well, since my computer do not have a supported video card (GMA 950) I can not enable/disable the hardware acceleration feature, so I dont think the problem is related to graphics.

[lkemper]

My symptons are a bit different.  I can use the type tool (most of the time but it takes 6 seconds for each letter to render.  And When I do freeze my WIndows Server does not show 100% it is usually low.  My freezes come from a variety of tasks and they don't seem to be always repeatable.  Different tasks will cause the freeze each time.  But I froze twice today.  Once while working with type and once just accessing mini bridge.

I would be more than glad to use LogMeIn if anyone at Adobe want to monitir and watch my type situation.  If I type a 12 letter word it takes at least a minute to see the word!

[Vinod Balakrishan]

Can you disable OpenGL and try again ?

Preferences>Performance... uncheck "Enable OpenGL Drawing." Quit and restart PS. Does it still crash ? What OS version you are running ?

-Vinod

[lkemper]

So far that solved the slow typing issue.  I'll let you know about the crashes after I run it a bit!

Thanks!

[ericb007man]

Same problem here when I chose the Type Tool. OSX 10.5.8 2x2.8 Ghz Quad/ /8GB RAM

I turned off Font Previews in preferences and haven't had any problems so far. I'll follow up if it didn't fix it.

[Guest]

I also have the problem when I use the type tool. I have done everyone's suggestions and still have the problem. Can anyone help me?

[kitoda]

Please contact me (itoda@adobe.com).

Thanks,

Kyoko

[ericb007man]

Yeah, no fix. Still hangs up my entire computer.

[ndumont67]

I'm also facing the fact that my computer freezes completly, but with an additional fancy lightshow. I installed CS5 3 days ago, have had all the other problems (slow process, brush display flickering, crash & complete freezing, scratch disk working more than usual), but this stuff just started today - second time now. It happened as I was dragging 5x 70MB TIFF files from Photo Mechanic to PS5. iTunes was the only additional app open at the time.

I've checked my fonts - don't have many, as work mostly on photographs - all seem fine.

For what it's worth, I've uploaded a video of my monitor's behaviour to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziLVLS9gMqA.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4

Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 GHZ Quad-Core Intel Xeon

16GB 800Mhz DDR2 FB-DIMM

Nvidia GeForce GT 120, 512MB VRAM

Regards,

Nick

[Adam Jerugim]

Nick,

The issue you describe (the system frozen with the screen flashing) appears to be related to the 10.6.4 update.  At this point a few of us have run into it (mainly using the GT 120 video card, but we have seen one report with a 8800 GT video card), and we're still in the process of trying to determine the nature of the issue.  As far as we can tell, the problem does not occur with 10.6.3 - it only happens after the update.  Again, we're still investigating this, but if you can find a set of steps that will help us reproduce it, please let me know.

Thanks,

-Adam

[ndumont67]

Adam,

It just happened again (system freeze / flashing screen). This time iTunes was off. Only Photo Mechanic and CS5 on. The computer has only been on for 30 minutes, so quite fresh.

It's now happened three times, and every time as I drag and dropped 3 - 5 TIFF files (70MB each) from Photo Mechanic to Photoshop.

I don't know if it's worth mentioning that I've recently had similar problems with Photo Mechanic. The software sometimes just closes down as I drag and drop image file between two drives. I've had PM for a while and all this is indeed happening since the new Apple update.

Thanks,
Nicolas Dumont

[Adam Jerugim]

Nick,

I did some research yesterday and found the issue affects many users of different software after upgrading to 10.6.4 - not just Photoshop.  Seems to be an issue with the 10.6.4 update and nVidia video cards (affects iMacs, MacBookPros, and MacPro systems).

For more information see the following links:

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/snowleopard/index.html#d23jun2010

http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1916253&start=180&tstart=0

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=2d83a44d876cbaa3a666b46f2ac3262e&t=1311095&page=4

We are aware of the issue (I can reproduce it occasionally on my MacPro system with nVidia GT 120 video card), and we're working with Apple to get it resolved.

Thanks,

-Adam