All of a sudden Photoshop has begun to hang. I use an Intel iMac, on 10.5.5, 2,16Ghz Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM. I am using CS3, files are on a LaCie External HD. I generally process in 16bit. Files are accessed using iView Media Pro into ACR. I haven’t changed anything and it used to work fine. Simple healing brush and clone can take up to 10 minutes each time unless it just hangs from the start.
I’ve done disk utility on both internal and external drives and they are fine. I’m rapidly losing patience and can’t seem to find anyone else with the problem, unless I am asking the wrong questions in the search panels.
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Drive sizes? How much free hard disk space, and where? Scratch disk stats and where? File sizes? Did this change when you upgraded from Mac OS X v10.5.x to 10.5.5?
One observation: 2 GB RAM isn’t very much, depending upon file size and what processes you are running.
IHD 250GB with 121GB spare. EHD 500GB 44GB spare. Scratch is the IHD, 1.4GB recommended, 1.6GB allowed. Just normal processes mostly, levels, curves, sharpening, cloning etc. Rarely use layers even though I should!
It looks like the scratch is on the 250GB drive but with only 44GB free space on the system drive it looks like there is no room for system SWAP files. any drive over 75% full is a disaster waiting to happen.
The system drive is the 250GB and is internal on the iMac, the 500GB is an external. You say any drive over 75% full is a problem, I understood this to be just the system drive, the external is just storage and files are accessed from there. Should the external drive also 25% free as well? I had also understood that 10% on the system drive was enough, if this is wrong then please let me know.
In addition, if you are using USB external drive, it is slower than FireWire and generally cannot be used as a startup drive (in case of internal hard drive failure).
Just to give you an idea, I run a very modest older machine with four internal drives. I have at least 300 GB available on my boot drive, which is a 500GB drive, and my primary Photoshop scratch drive is a dedicated 160 GB internal hard drive, with another 160 GB drive as secondary scratch drive. Other folks have much more powerful systems than I do. None of my drives, including my archival FireWire drives is even 40% full.
Dual bootable, DP MDD 1.25GHz G4 (2004), maxed out at 2GB of RAM, Tiger 10.4.11, both Spotlight and Dashboard disabled, FontAgent Pro manages fonts, Photoshop primary scratch disk on dedicated 160GB internal drive, at least 100GB available on each of the four internal drives, up to 300GB on some. Counting external FW drives just over 1.6TB of drive space available. nVidia GeForce 7800 GS 425MHz 256 MB graphics display card. Processor napping enabled through CHUD 3.5.2.
All this about Hard Drives is a bit worrying. The iMac cannot be expanded and I use Firewire Drives. LaCIe generally and there is also an Iomega Mini Mac Drive connected to my wife’s mini which I have shoved the JPGs on. I’m away from today for about 10 days and with your permission will follow this up then. I reinstalled Photoshop, which incidentally took over an hour which seemed excessive, it has been quicker since. But i haven’t had time to give it a proper thrash. Thanks again for all the replies, food for thought.
Buko means to say that the best machine config for Photoshop runs about $22,000 (build your top-of-the-line machine now at <http://store.apple.com)>. And then there are the rest of us that recognize that we use the best machine for the task. 🙂
It is certainly possible to configure your system to work well or to troubleshoot the current issue, especially if you are not working with layered images. An iMac should not have performance issues with what you have described, even if you were limited to one drive.
What I mean to say is that an iMac is not expandable and therefore not a good machine for Photoshop. The best machine is a tower that you can add extra RAM and hard drives to. You don’t need to buy everything at once as Jim has implied.
What I mean to say is that the problem noted in this thread is not related to a deficiency in hardware power. There is no point in distracting from the true issue here by implying that the problem could be related to an iMac’s limited expandability. An iMac should handle this task well.
An iMac with one over-filled internal HD plus a second external over-filled USB drive is definitely NOT the best machine on which to use Photoshop.
Neither has anyone suggested that you need to spend 22 Grand on a Mac to run Photoshop either. That was pure, and totally ridiculous, hyperbole! And totally unhelpful, too.
If David is going to use an iMac, he needs to empty his HD of half of the stuff that he currently has on it; and get himself an external FWD that he can use for Scratch.
before Jim found it necessary to add his unhelpful and hyperbolic two-cents worth!
I see that Ann Shelbourne still has the knack for making jackass comments. I simply noted that this problem is not related to deficient hardware after Buko gave the impression. Maybe if some of you pulled your heads from your bums, you might recognize what is abnormal system/program behavior and stop distracting folks from resolving the issue. Your distractions and personal attacks are the unhelpful element here.
Whether an iMac is or is not the ‘best machine’ has nothing to do with resolving the problem.
I am so impressed by the way that Jim is enlarging his previously rather limited (and vulgar!) vocabulary by regularly copy/pasting words that I have used in previous posts!
As previously warned, poking and jabbing at others will not be tolerated.
I’m not saying that others here are without fault or that they should be excused for responding to your personal insults, rather than walking away from fights.
Although, to be fair, you can be very helpful with your advice and insight, your persistence in character assassination is far more detrimental to the overall atmosphere here. Much of what has been directed at you is rebuttal. There are at least three topics this evening where you’ve overstepped the "new" forum guidelines.
You will have Read-Only status in the Photoshop forums for the next week.
Having returned from a period away I have tried to analyse the problem more thoroughly. I am in the throes of converting a ton of pictures for web use once they have gone through my standard basic processing. I used Activity Monitor to see what was going on. The processes themselves are OK, curves, a couple of actions and one or two other minor things, it was when I came to save them as .psd or .tif that the problem really came to light. when saving as something the CPU showed no extra usage at all over normal, when I was doing some of my basic processing it was up and down grabbing usage as it should. Saving from a 12MB raw file to a 55-60MB psd or tif was taking two to three minutes, no CPU usage above normal.
I’m stumped by this and am about ready to go over to Aperture but want to give it one last shot. Does anyone have any idea or ideas?
generally process in 16bit. Files are accessed using iView Media Pro into ACR.
Such workflows often do tend to be demanding on hardware.
Frankly
"the best machine for the task"
is a tower (as low as $2k + RAM; not $22k), certainly not an iMac. However it is what it is, so first we look to fixes rather than fantasies of new computers
The more-than-90+%-full hard drive is an obvious problem. Get ALL drives down below 70% full, ideally closer to 40-50% full.
The second obvious issue is onboard RAM. iMacs are by definition limiting to PS operation, so do your best by maximizing RAM. And under PS Preferences experiment with various RAM allocation settings in the 45% to 70% range.
about ready to go over to Aperture but want to give it one last shot.
I am a strong Aperture fan and recommend it. However if your problem is hardware related be aware that Aperture is even more demanding than PS. IMO you probably should not consider Aperture with improving your current limiting setup.
Saving from a 12MB raw file to a 55-60MB psd or tif was taking two to three minutes, no CPU usage above normal.
Sure sounds like RAM and/or overfilled hard drives to me.
All of a sudden Photoshop has begun to hang. I use an Intel iMac, on 10.5.5, 2,16Ghz Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM. I am using CS3, files are on a LaCie External HD. I generally process in 16bit. Files are accessed using iView Media Pro into ACR.
Let’s revisit this:
Any of the following could be the cause of your problem:
You are using iView Media Pro instead of using either your camera’s own download software or "Get Photos" in ACR to transfer and save your camera images to your external drive? (Try using something other than iView for this.)
Your external Drive is a FWD and NOT a USB drive isn’t it?
Your downloaded files are saved and written back to your external FWD to the same partition that you have selected for Scratch? (They should be on different partitions with Scratch being on the first and faster partition.)
How many files are you trying to open in ACR at the same time? (You may not have sufficient RAM for what you are trying to do.)
Your Drives are over-filled?
You have allotted too high a percentage of available RAM to Photoshop? (Try cutting that back to 50%.)
You have damaged Directories on your HD and FWD? (Run Disk Warrior.) [I would mark this as the most likely cause of your problems.]
Thanks once again for the replies. I have modified things a bit since the original post. I still have the same RAM but the hard drive on the iMac is down to 108GB free on a 250GB drive. I have isolated the HDs from the machine and am only using the internal for the moment. PS has a 65% setting at the moment and the scratch is the internal. I don’t partition and never have and since the problem has never happened before can’t see this as the cause. I’ll try a lower setting and see what happens. I only open one file at a time in ACR. My HDs are FWD.
I have wondered about iView as my version is an old one but again it hasn’t been a problem before and although I have a master collection I only use smaller ones for working.
I don’t have damaged directories as far as I can tell although I will run Disk Warrior again What I still don’t get is why it is only the saving procedure that appears to be hanging.
I’m running a brand new MacBook Pro, and I installed CS3 and it worked fine for a few weeks… now every time I launch it, it hangs… the menu and toolbar show up, but then all i get is hang…. i doubt it has anything to do with my hardware or hard drive because nothing has changed since it was working… not sure where to go from here
i doubt it has anything to do with my hardware or hard drive because nothing has changed since it was working…
But the contents of your hard Drive HAVE changed because you have added new files to it!
As a start, did you trash your Photoshop Prefs before re-installing Photoshop and also do the other maintenance tasks which were recommended earlier in this thread?
How much space do you have on your HD? And is your Scratch on a separate HD?
OK, so I created a new user and i do not experience the problem anymore… but i need to use my exsiting user profile, so what could the problem be? i’ve run disk utiliy and all is fine… I have 80GB left on my HD, and it is being used as the scratch disk… photoshop won’t allow me to use my external HD as a scratch…
Let me sneak in another suggestion for Preferential Treatment <http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22790> here. Free, fast, and safe. To be used in addition to any other disk utilities you have; it does not replace any other such application.
It helped me find a weird preference file that I would have never know I had on my system at all.
good point, i have online backup… anyway, i think that the fact that PS works fine in the new user account, it would nothave anything to do with the hard drive… so now I’m trying to figure out how to get this working on my official user account…
Insufficient hard drive space, or a malfunctioning hard drive could be responsible for the corruption in your regular account. If this is the case, it’s only a matter of time till the other account gets corrupted too.
I would get a second, dedicated internal drive for scratch, and would run Disk Warrior, Repair Disk and Repair Permissions on the boot drive.
I’m going back a bit to when I started this thread off in October. The problem has turned out to be a failing HD. The internal HD on the iMac failed about a week ago. This is despite running Disk Utility, Disk Warrior and doing all that was suggested at the time. The actual problem was the internal node structure. Seems to me that if one has a problem like this that this is where one should look first, but since the repair programmes were of no use whatsoever since they did not recognise the problem in the first place how does one recognise the problem that the repair programmes are convinced you haven’t got!
The internal HD on the iMac failed about a week ago. This is despite running Disk Utility, Disk Warrior and doing all that was suggested at the time.
Your utilities can only read what is recorded to the drive; not the drive status itself. If a failing hard drive were to corrupt what is recorded, all you would be told is that there is data corruption — not why it is corrupted. Some drives have SMART diagnostics built in which could give you more information about a drive’s physical condition.
But, largely, it’s your eyes and ears that will tell you if your drive is approaching failure: loud or odd squeals, chatter, clunks or other sounds are a dead(!) giveaway. Failure to boot or mount, occasional non-responsiveness, freezing, loss of its Desktop icon, erratic speed, file corruption, failure to save files, and burnt smells are other danger signs. The only good news is that loss of contact with the drive could just be a loose cable, easily fixed.
Most important to remember is that drives are electromechanical devices subject to wear and eventual failure. EVERY drive will fail at some point. It is up to you to recognize the symptoms and immediately take action — most important of which is to back up everything.
Have a second internal drive or external FireWire drive with a working OS on it. Buy the SuperDuper! utility and use it to regularly back up your drive contents, including the OS.
Rob an Archive and Install of the system should fix your user. An A&I will give you a fresh system and user without destroying Apps or Settings. Before doing an A&I trash Photoshop prefs as listed in the FAQs. and see if that clears things up.
as far as your external you need to make it HFS+ to use it as scratch.
AS we all know a HD has two states, broken and waiting to break. All was backed up but here were no obvious signs other than PS slowing down to a crawl. One of those things it seems.
would be inclined to first completely purge Ps prefs (since it clears in a new account) you may have tried that but you may have missed something…why not just swap user data over to the new account and trash the old one
its takes about 4 hours to move everything over to a new acount then change permissions to make sure everything works as it should. An A&I takes about 45 minutes including applying all updates.
Because this is a company machine, it was important to keep the user info intact from the previous account so I can log in to our network (there’s some corporate paswords that I can’t retrieve)…
so late last night, i decided to take a look at FontBook… under user fonts, there were 611 fonts, most of which i have never seen before… I decided to turn these all off and now Photoshop no longer hangs. I’ll have to go through and find the specific offender one by one, or just leave them all off because they don’t look like fonts i’d actually use anyway.
well, thanks all for all the help – after all the processes you suggested, i should have a fast running well-oiled machine now!
under user fonts, there were 611 fonts, most of which i have never seen before… I decided to turn these all off and now Photoshop no longer hangs.
More robust font managers, such as FontAgent Pro can do the job of font verification for you. The problem is either a damaged (corrupted) or duplicate activated font. But realize that you should not be keeping all fonts active anyway to keep system overhead down and font menus shorter. In addition to system fonts, just keep those fonts you need for the day activated.
doesn’t an A&I leave user preferences – the problem – in place
Not if you delete them.
another problem with swapping users is the permissions on files that belong to the old user. I have found that an A&I is much faster than and less trouble than moving to a new user.
Rob as G mentioned FontAgent Pro is b by far the best fontmanager out there.
