Tricia,
Do this (IMO). First, it’s possible that the length of time to show the drop shadow is related to a RAM issue. Check your presets manager – do you have a lot of presets loading? Sometimes I add really, really, huge patterns and they get added to the presets. If I don’t save them to disk and then delete them from the presets, they load every time I start photoshop.
I prefer to keep presets manager as lean as possible since everything that loads when photoshop starts, chews up some resources.
It could be a vid card/driver issue if you’ve changed or added anything recently, but I doubt it at this point.
If none of the above helps, first, reset your preferences per the procedure in the FAQ’s. If that’s no help, reinstall PS. These may not specifically address your issue, but at least with the reinstall, the files that are supposed to be in a certain spot will be there after you reload.
Once that is sorted, then you can (reasonably) properly evaluate the slow re-draw.
Peace,
Tony
aha! I did a search on Presets and found three Presets folders: Presets (29 mb) Presets2 (18 mb) and Presets3 (18 mb). I wonder if I’ll hang myself if I delete 2 and 3!! Thanks for your help – nice to know there are gurus out there helping us muddlers.
tricia
aha! I did a search on Presets and found three Presets folders: Presets (29 mb) Presets2 (18 mb) and Presets3 (18 mb). I wonder if I’ll hang myself if I delete 2 and 3!! Thanks for your help – nice to know there are gurus out there helping us muddlers.
tricia
YrBkMgr – help!! You say: Start with opening photoshop and go to Edit|Preset Manager rather than deleting/moving directories. But what do I do when I get there? Do I choose, then delete all presets manually. Taking a chance, I deleted Presets(2) and Presets(3) – they are still in the Norton Protected Recycle bin – but it still takes the Drop shadow box 45 secs to appear before I can place effects on a layer. I uninstalled and reinstalled PS7, then upgraded (yet again) to 7.0.1, and don’t know what else to do. I had little problem with Photoshop 5 in Win 98, but since upgrading to XP and PS7 it’s been a nightmare. Hope you can help. Other programs seem to work at the usual pace. My computer RAM, speed, HD are all adequate, even overkill, so I don’t get it. It seems that the computer doesn’t know where to find the folders containing whatever is needed to make the layer effects.
Thanks
Tricia
Okay, lot of ground to cover, and if someone is going to be able to help, we have to clarify really well what’s been done and what’s happening.
First, I presumed, based on your earlier post the Preset(2) and Preset(3) were directories. I was merely saying, this: having the files on your hard drive, the ones that make up the contents of the Presets Manager in Photoshop, is not a problem. It is when you load them. They are loaded in the presets manager.
When you create a new pattern, it is automatically added to the Patterns section of the Presets Manager, and thus, will load into RAM every time photoshop starts. So think about it, if you created 100 patterns today, and closed photoshop, those patterns will be available in the presets manager, the next time you launch photoshop. Presumably, the next time you need a pattern, your new creations will be readily available.
So the prudent thing to do, IF you have created: brushes, patterns, swatches, gradients, etc., is to first LOOK at the presets manager, and review what’s loading.
The first section will be brushes, but click on patterns, for giggles and grins. Do you need all of those every time you use photoshop? In most cases, the answer is NO. But you don’t want to get rid of them per se. So, what you do is, you click on a particular pattern, or shift/control click on multiple patterns, and then click the Save Set button. That way, you can save (in this case)that pattern to your hard drive. After that, you can delete it from the presets manager with the delete button. All that does is prevent it from loading when photoshop loads.
So what if you want it back? You open the presets manager, then click on the load button, and load it back.
So my suggestion was aimed at looking at your presets manager to try and determine if you have a lot of things loading when Photoshop starts. If not, then it’s not relevant.
In general, the first things to look for are: what’s photoshop loading, do I need all that (the preset manager).
Next, how much free HD space do you have? How much RAM is allocated for photoshop (Edit|Preferences|Memory and Image Cache)? You shouldn’t have more than about 70% there.
Next, do you have more than one HD? If so, you can try to set the second HD as the place where photoshop creates its scratch disk (Edit|Preferences|PlugIns & Scratch Disks). If you only have one HD, then this isn’t relevant.
Next, think about this, then give us the answer: Has photoshop ever performed well on this machine, with this OS (XP)? If the answer is no, then: did you upgrade your OS from win98 or is this version of PS running on a completely different machine with an OEM install of XP?
If photoshop used to perform okay on this machine, something changed. Symptoms, as I understand it, is that it takes way too long for the Blending Options dialog to appear and for you to see the result of, for example, a drop shadow.
That would point to resources, in general. So, RAM – what’s using it, HD – space available, video card/drivers (done any updates lately?). That’s about as far as I can take it at this point…
Peace,
Tony
Very good and complete answer Tony, two thumbs up!
Tricia, 5very nice pictures, btw!) as for the extentions, they are normally located in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 7.0\Plug-ins\Adobe Photoshop Only\Extensions
So you state that Photoshop was crashing, and you moved the extentions out of their normal location… did it fix your problem? If so, that must mean that some piece of hardware is defective, it could be the processor…
Un-installing then re-installing Photoshop could cure only a corruption in the code of Photoshop, VERY unlikely. but doing this will not erase the preferences of photoshop, that can be corrupted easily in the case of a crash.
To reset them, launch Photoshop, then immediately after, hold down CTRL+ALT+Shift. you’ll get a prompt asking you if you want to delete your preferences, answer yes…
….and turn off norton recycle bin. it’s known to cause no end of problems w/photoshop! as a matter of fact you should turn off all the norton utility stuff except for anti-virus and see if that clears it up.
Thank you so much for that tip. I’ve done that now. I do believe that it was after installing Norton SystemWorks 2002 that all my PS7 problems started!! I should have recognised that. I also defragged the computer, and everything seems to be moving more rapidly. It would be great if they could all get together and make everything compatible, but then someone would go out of business! Win XP seems to be particularly recalcitrant.
Thanks again Dave
Tricia
no problem. it’s a team effort here! 🙂
