Photoshop CS SLOW to load and start……

PO
Posted By
Paul_Odom
Jan 4, 2004
Views
535
Replies
13
Status
Closed
I was hoping that Photoshop CS would have a stronger "loading engine" than PS 7.01, but I’ve been disappointed. I’m running Windows XP Home with a gigabyte of ram, but it takes forever for Photoshop CS to load. I’ve assigned it 3 hard drives to use and 60% of my ram. I had the same problem with PS 7.01. I have a lot of commercial plugins and I assumed it was the cause in PS 7.01. I only loaded about half the plugins into PS CS but it is even slower to load. No error messages, just slow (about 5 minutes or so). I still have PS 6.01 on my disk with actually more plugins than PS 7.01 or PS CS, and 6.01 just flies open. I can’t figure it out. I removed PS CS and reinstalled hoping this would help but it didn’t help at all. Anyone have this problem or know of specific plugins that will cause PS to "drag" on loading plugins, presets, and initializing?
Any help and advice would be very appreciated.

Paul
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RH
Ronald_Hirsch
Jan 4, 2004
Paul,

I thought my system was slow – it takes about 16 seconds for PS CS to load, which is about twice as long as PS 7 did. Once PS is shut down,and then reloaded, that time is cut in half. I thought it might be slowed down by the 400 or so fonts I have installed. But, I guess I shouldn’t complain.

I’m running 1 GB RAM, a P4 2.4 @ GHz, XP Home, and about a dozen or so various USB devices.

5 minutes is crazy – something serious must be wrong somewhere.

You ought to try a new install, and don’t addd in any plug-ins or other customizations at first. Then check the load times, and start adding in stuff, checking the load tiems each time something new is added in. Maybe you can find the culprit that way.

Ron Hirsch

++++++++++++++++++++

wrote in message
I was hoping that Photoshop CS would have a stronger "loading engine" than PS 7.01, but I’ve been disappointed. I’m running Windows XP Home with a gigabyte of ram, but it takes forever for Photoshop CS to load. I’ve assigned it 3 hard drives to use and 60% of my ram. I had the same problem with PS 7.01. I have a lot of commercial plugins and I assumed it was the cause in PS 7.01. I only loaded about half the plugins into PS CS but it is even slower to load. No error messages, just slow (about 5
minutes or so). I still have PS 6.01 on my disk with actually more plugins than PS 7.01 or PS CS, and 6.01 just flies open. I can’t figure it out. I removed PS CS and reinstalled hoping this would help but it didn’t help at all. Anyone have this problem or know of specific plugins that will cause PS to "drag" on loading plugins, presets, and initializing?
Any help and advice would be very appreciated.

Paul
DM
Debbie_Metcalf
Jan 5, 2004
Paul,

I have the very same problem… it takes about 4-5 minutes for CS to load on my machine. I’ve checked everything… Have a fairly new machine with lots of room, etc…

If you find out what it is, P L E A S E let me know!

Thanks!

Debbie
PO
Paul_Odom
Jan 5, 2004
Debbie,

I haven’t found THE answer yet. Only Adobe knows that. I did figure a way to get CS to load in 40 seconds, which is much faster for me. I decided to try an old trick of disabling(temporarily) some of mylarger plugins like Extensis, Andromeda, etc that I don’t use often. Just put a "tilde" ( ~ ) in front of the folder for any plugins you don’t use everyday.(for example, ~Extensis) Photoshop won’t load the ones you mark with the ~. You need to use windows explorer to rename it or some other file browser like Total Commander
or Windows Commander. They are much faster and easy to use for renamimg, deleting, drag and drop, etc. I’ve use Windows Commander for about 10 years. They are called Total Commander now. Anyway, if I want to use one of my "marked" plugins, I just remove the ~ and i’m in business. What blows my mind is that Photoshop 6 loads in
5 seconds with many more plugins. PS 7 is really slow but I have a ton of plugins and presets in it. I hope this helps. Feel free to
contact me if you have questions or if you find out anything that works better. Paul
DM
dave_milbut
Jan 6, 2004
adobe engineers say that anything that’s not an actual plugin (*.8bf etc) should be removed from the plugins folder. ie. all presets and image samples, readme’s etc. should go.
RK
Ronald_Keller
Jan 6, 2004
Debbie,

In case you have AutoFX Photographic Edges it’s even worse. It’s a nice plug-in but the content folder contains 1.48 GB of data (24000+ files !). Photoshop has to examine the lot and this of course takes ages even on a fast machine.
You can disable it placing a "~" but then of course you can’t use it in that session. But here is another trick: do place a ~ before launching Photoshop and remove it after launch. No big hassle if you know one or other programming environment. I used Visual Basic and now I only have to click a button: the folder is renamed; Photoshop is launched and the folder is renamed again. Very easy to program BTW.

What I can’t understand is why AutoFX insists on having the content folder in Photoshop’s plug-in folder…

Regards,

Ronald
RH
Ronald_Hirsch
Jan 6, 2004
Dave,

If Adobe engineers say that all else should go, except for the *.8bf files, I assume that they also mean all the *.8?? files that are in the plug-ins folder. There are all kinds of extensions other than "8bf", whic were obviously placed there by Adobe. How about the psd files in the displacement maps folder? that’s not *.8??.

I also guess that I shouldn’t complain about PS CS loading in 16 seconds. I’d been assuming that I had something inocrrectly set, as PS 7 was much faster.

Ron

++++++++++++++++

Adobe engineers say that anything that’s not an actual plugin (*.8bf etc) should be removed from the plugins folder. ie. all presets and image samples, readme’s etc. should go.
DM
dave_milbut
Jan 6, 2004
ron, no. that’s why I added the "etc." 🙂

(includes but not limited to: 8be, 8bi, 8li, 8bx, ETC. <g>)
DM
dave_milbut
Jan 6, 2004
I’d been assuming that I had something inocrrectly set, as PS 7 was much faster.

I can’t recall exactly what chris said about what changed, but I think it was the way the api’s are called (or a different set of api’s required) to verify the plug-in files. takes much longer than the old way, hence, pull all non-essential files.

for the record, my cs loads in about 16 seconds. 3rd party plugs installed are:

Alien Skin’s:
EyeCandy 4k
Splat
Xenofex2
Image Dr.

also KPT 3, 5 and 6.
J
jconley
Jan 6, 2004
My CS loads in under 15s, quick question what kind of system are you running in on what OS are you using and what are you using for a scratch or swap drive?
PO
Paul_Odom
Jan 7, 2004
I have a Dell Dimension 8100, with Pentium 4, 1.7mhz, 1 Gig of Ram, 3 hard drives, and so on. I have it set up (PS CS) to use my main hard drive – C: which has about 55 Gb of free space as the first drive. (it’s not a slow HD). I use my G: drive as the second scratch drive which has about 30 Gb of free space. I don’t use my D: drive(40 gig) since that where my paging file is. Microsoft says it is the fastest and most efficient this way. I seems to make no difference if I use all three.
What bothers me is Photoshop 6.01 will load in about 12 seconds the first time, with the same setup and many more plugins.

I’m running Windows XP Home SP2.
DM
dave_milbut
Jan 7, 2004
paul, as i said above, things have changed in the way adobe has to call the api’s to read the files. comparing 6 to cs is comparing apples and oranges. move any non filter type files and you should be good to go.
PO
Paul_Odom
Jan 8, 2004
Dave,

I’m not sure what you mean by "the api’s." Could you please explain what is is and how it works. My knowledge of programming is very
low.
It would be helpful to me in understanding what’s going on and I really appreciate it. I’m not happy with PS CS. What with being slow and Spastic activations. If I had it to do over again, I
would have just stuck with PS 7.01. I could do anything on PS 7.01 that I can do on CS and do it faster. Really disappointed.

Thanks,
Paul
DM
dave_milbut
Jan 8, 2004
you don’t need to understand, but before I explain, did you try the things i suggested to help you get it running faster?

My knowledge of programming is very low. It would be helpful to me in understanding what’s going on and I really appreciate it.

bascially an api (application program interface) is a "hook" into the operating system (windows). it’s what allows programs (like Photoshop) do things to interact with the OS (operating system) and your system. the "API"s in question are the ones that perform reading and writing on files on your hard drive. PS calls these apis, the os reads the files and reports back to photoshop. it’s my understanding that the new api calls photoshop is using are inherently slower than the old ones. adobe is required (by operating system specs) to use the new apis rather than the ones it used in the past.

like I said above, you don’t really need to understand this, just know that it is so. it’s not going to help you get things running any faster. the suggestions i gave earlier in this thread (garnered from posts here from the adobe guys and gals) should help you speed things up.

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