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,

[_scott__]

Yes, but you've offered absolutely no information about your system or it's configuration.

[Chris Cox]

I tried to open a many-layer file.

How big a file? How many layers?

We have to reproduce the problem to investigate it, and you haven't given nearly enough information for anyone to reproduce it.

[Yefolio-KBIqSr]

Sorry, I'm on a 2x3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro with 4GB 667 DDR2 Ram. 10.5 OSX, The situation is, it seems it's freeze on the memory consumption, so u can switch to other applications, but the responds are really slow. Even you command+opt+esc it will takes a long time to show the window to force quit the PS.

[Chris Cox]

That sounds like some sort of OS issue:  the Window manager, OpenGL, VM or similar.

And, again, we need more details to try and reproduce the problem.

[Evil_Lair]

Sounds similar to what is happening to me. Octo 2.6, 12GB ram, 4870, 10.5.8, with ~1800 fonts activated. It has happened several times in the few times I tried using it, and according to activity monitor it is the window manager going crazy on a single core, preventing me from doing much of anything. First was after changing the font preview size for the character palette, then it happened right after opening PS, then while I was just panning around looking at an image, then after closing an image. The first 3 or 4 times it lasted about 5 minutes, the next time it took 20 minutes. When it happened again after that I tried to force quite PS, but it took about 5 minutes to have the task manager come up, and select PS, and click the force quit button, because everything was so slow.

On my Mac Pro at home running 10.6 and mostly the same fonts this hasn't happened at all.

[Yefolio-KBIqSr]

Yea, I agreed with Evil, I have CS5 on my laptop, Macbook Pro running 10.6 SL. Even the panning and zooming's not much smoother than using it on 10.5. But I definitely didn't experince any freeze/hang on PS CS5. It's probably a OS conflict?

[Guest]

Yup... got very similar problems, running Leopard 10.5.8 on a 8core 9gb RAM, when dealing with both very huge multi-layer files (3 to 4 gb) and very small ones (500Kb)

[Nov1]

Same problem here. PS CS5 just freezes my computer. It took my computer over 10 minutes to snap out of it, and react on my Force Quit command.

I tried to past a vector object into a PSD. The Psd contained just one layer. Yesterday I had the same problem, with a similiar action.

My setup: Mac OSX, 2x2,66ghz dual core Intel Xeon. 8 Gb DDR2

[ashlie_h]

Mine occasionally freezes as well. Very similar to what everyone else is experiencing. I'm on a mac mini 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB 1067 MHz.

[Publiciously]

Same story on my system (10.5.8, 2 x 2,8 Quad Core Intel Xeon / 6GB).

When I select the type-tool PS gets very very very very very slow...

Force quit takes minutes. Is there a solution already? Maybe restoring system-fonts, or renew the system font lists?

Please technicians: What's wrong? 

[nnnickk]

I'm having the same problem-- and not necessarily many-layered files.  It will crash quite often.  Sometimes it will be when I click in a text layer, sometimes it will just happen.  There doesn't seem to be anything predictable about it.  I can't work for more than half an hour without a system-consuming crash that requires I force-quit photoshop.  This takes about 5-10 minutes as the system becomes extremely bogged down.  Extremely frustrating.  I am thinking I have to go back to CS4 because CS5 is absolutely killing me.

I'm on an octo 3ghz xeon mac running 10.5.8 with 8gb ram.

[Chris Cox]

I'm having the same problem-- and not necessarily many-layered files.  It will crash quite often.  Sometimes it will be when I click in a text layer, sometimes it will just happen.

Freezes and crashes are 2 very different things.

An analogy:

Freeze:  my car stalled and won't restart.

Crash:  my car exploded, and there's nothing left but a burn mark on the road.

I can't work for more than half an hour without a system-consuming crash that requires I force-quit photoshop.

Um, are you talking about a crash or a freeze?   After a crash, there is nothing to force-quit.

I sounds like you may have a problem with a font.

Have you tried disabling font previews in preferences?

Have you tried checking for font problems in FontBook?

[ashlie_h]

Can't speak for the people you quoted but in my case it always freezes. Sometimes I can force quit if I'm extremely patient waiting for things to respond. Other times it freezes to the point that nothing will respond at all and I have to shut the computer off.

Will try messing with my fonts. Is there something specific I'm looking for as far as incompatible fonts?

[nnnickk]

Chris Cox wrote:

I'm having the same problem-- and not necessarily many-layered files.  It will crash quite often.  Sometimes it will be when I click in a text layer, sometimes it will just happen.

Freezes and crashes are 2 very different things.

An analogy:

Freeze:  my car stalled and won't restart.

Crash:  my car exploded, and there's nothing left but a burn mark on the road.

Yes, if you interpret the words "crash" and "freeze" literally, they *are* two very different things, I will give you that.

An analogy:

Freeze: My water froze in the freezer.

Crash: My plane crashed.

Have a look here, on the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(computing)

To save you the trouble, a direct quote:

A crash (or system crash) in computing is a condition where a program (either an application or part of theoperating system) stops performing its expected function and also stops responding to other parts of the system. Often the offending program may simply appear to freeze. If this program is a critical part of the operating system kernel the entire computer may crash.

You might be extra interested in the part that says "Often the offending program [that is, the program that has crashed] may simply appear to freeze."

It appears, then, that the consensus is that the two are not two "very different things". 

Now, on to the problem at hand:

Basic problem solving in complex systems suggests that you swap components to isolate the ones that aren't working.

An analogy:

My car won't start.  I replace the starter motor.  The car now starts.  One can assert that the problem likely lies with the starter motor.

Continuing...

IF it were the case that I had font problems, then I wouldn't be able to go back into CS4 and work without problems.  In fact, I haven't had any problems with CS4.  I do, however, have repeated crash/freeze conditions with CS5, and this isn't always related to working with fonts.

Applying what we learned from the starter motor, this suggests that the problem is not with the fonts, or with anything other than CS5 itself, as the very same program in an earlier version works perfectly well with all of the fonts. 

I can certainly try disabling the font previews, but I didn't have to do this with CS4-- so if this is what I'm to do, I'm curious as to why an inferior font-preview-rendering-feature was included with CS5?

[_scott__]

I think these "freezes" are the same thing I'm experiencing. The application simply works really hard for a few minutes causing the entire system to sputter... then is fine. Watching Activity Monitor, I wee the Window Server suddenly become the most active processes.

[toxic_waltz]

I find it pathetic that we are discussing the difference between a freeze and crash when we should be discussing the stupidity of two companies releasing their products peppered with problems. To watch the malay of complaints here is testament to greed which shall cost dearly in customer loyalty and trust. The damage inflicted shall come full circle which only perpetuates layoffs for everyone.

[Gustavo S.]

I agree with Kevin.  The way I see it, you should never, never upgrade software or OS for at least 6 months.  Let the adventurous and risk takers iron out the wrinkles for ya.

[CDPritchard]

El Gu man wrote:

I agree with Kevin.  The way I see it, you should never, never upgrade software or OS for at least 6 months.  Let the adventurous and risk takers iron out the wrinkles for ya.

I might agree if this were freeware or an open source offering, but at this level, there should not be any wrinkles left. We are talking about final release software by a leader in an industry that demands perfection. 'Good enough' should not be the standard for release into the marketplace, especially if we're paying thousands of dollars on a collection released by Adobe for professional use. If it's not ready, it shouldn't be on the shelves.

[mpocoroba]

There you go folks. I couldn't agree more.

[Gustavo S.]

I was a product manager in software development in a prior (and good) life.  It is impossible to have a wrinkle free release.  There are many factors and market pressures that push the release.  You know for sure that there will be issues, some totally unknown from testing.  Until you put it out there, you will not know all the bugs and performance issues.  I know we are talking Apple and Adobe here, but the underlying theme is the same, small or large company.

[Chris Cox]

Watching Activity Monitor, I wee the Window Server suddenly become the most active processes.

Sigh.  OK, that's a useful clue.  Now we just need to figure out what is causing the Apple Window Server to wig out. (normally it's due to large numbers of windows or dialogs, but that shouldn't be the case here)

[_scott__]

Don't let the others get to you Chris... there's no way Adobe could test every possible configuration of every user.

[Mike_Ornellas]

In the big picture of things, he could care less. So could I.

The problem is releasing a product on top of a buggy OS.

It's brilliant act duce.

[Chris Cox]

In the big picture of things, he could care less. So could I.

Sorry, but I care.

I know, it's a personality flaw of mine:  but I care.

Even if it is a buggy OS:  we can sometimes work around the bugs, or get the OS vendor to fix their bugs.