The performance has gone so out the window that i cant even begin to imagine why Photoshop CS4 is considered a "FINAL" version.
On a Vista 64, quadcore system with 8 gigs of ram and a Geforce 8800 GTX… I can not effectively run photoshop CS4 smoothly. It is useless.
Color curves interactivity – Extremely slow interaction. Levels interactivity – Extremely slow interaction Brush drawing speed – Lagged and SLOW. (Its faster in software mode but still slow)
Maybe its because i’m on a 30inch monitor at 2560×1600?
DL the demo… check this out for yourself, because this is just ridiculous.
WOW.. simply WOW.. What were you thinking? I’m glad i tried the demo because if you thought CS3 was slow…. hahahahahaha get ready to be very pissed off.
Learn how to optimize Photoshop for maximum speed, troubleshoot common issues, and keep your projects organized so that you can work faster than ever before!
Same here. A few startup glitches that quickly got sorted out, and now I wouldn’t dream of going back to CS3. It’s faster than CS3, and it handles everything I throw at it without blinking. Another great workhorse.
ProArtist: This is bad timing. We’ve just had our fill with two other posters who refused to even look at their own systems, and just automatically blamed everything on Adobe. That sort of attitude doesn’t go down well here. Tell us your exact problems, and we’ll try to help out.
I’m running a QX7600 Vista 64 system, 8GB ram, Nvidia 8800GTX. Its not my system.
I’ve tried all of the drivers etc etc. There are too many complaints for it to be user error. The problem is with the hack job Adobe did on the PS code. I’m sure it wasnt pretty. You dont get GPU support into a mature code base such as photoshop without ripping it apart hard.
Its just not right. CS3 ran a lot better. The GPU is not supposed to bottleneck or hurt performance. Its supposed to ADD performance. It does not in photoshops case.
I like the new features, but something is seriously messy with the CS4 code.
The sad thing is… they added all of this 3D object painting support and in the end… its worthless. Its not feature rich to support texture map painting on a professional level, nor is it fast enough. So why bother Adobe? WHY?
Body Paint 3D is still far superior and CS4 inst production ready for Interactive 3D Object texture mapping.
Hell right now, its not even production ready for 2D painting.
I’m not denying that some people have problems with GPU acceleration. I don’t see them myself, so I can’t offer anything more than what’s been covered in the other threads.
But what’s fairly obvious, is that they’re pretty busy both at Adobe and NVidia, and postings here by Adobe engineers Chris Cox, Adam Jerugim and Steve Guilhamet leaves no doubt that they are taking this very seriously.
ProArtist, I do not doubt your word that you are having problems and I’ve read threads from others who are having problems, too. However, there are many who are not having problems or have only minor problems. I am one of those not having major problems. My system:
Windows Vista Ultimate x64 on an Intel DG965WH motherboard, 8GB RAM, 1TB+ free diskspace, nVidia 9800 GTX+ video card, Wacom Intuos3 6×8 tablet. All of my PS CS3 plugins work fine in Photoshop CS4 Extended 32 bit. I’ve almost forgotten what the PS CS3 interface looks like for I never use it.
ProArtist, just a little thing you can try: Set up the cache level to 6-8. On my system when the cache level is at 1 for example, Photoshop gets extremely slow! Even turning a layer on or off takes 2 seconds.
What helped me (XP pro SP3, Q6600, NVIDEA 8400GT+512 MB) was turn on GPU in preferences, but then click on Advanced, and switch off everything there.
Result: smooth canvas rotation, smooth panning (swithed off flick panning, don’t like that kind of ballistics) and smooth odd zoom factor image.
One negative result: Smooting in the Brushes Panel doesn’t work any more (after these settings, that is) but I still use an ancient wacom graphire with old driver.
I ordered a wacom Intuos, and when it arrives I’ll dive into that.
Runs like it was custom designed for my system. I’ve never been more amazed with a piece of software. It may be that higher end systems are happier with this release (if you can even call it that – it’s more like a brand new application).
For once, hardware has to catch up to the software. It’s elegant and if I could I’d marry it. I’d give it anything it wants and even take out the garbage without being asked.
Asus Maximus II Formula 8GB OCZ Reaper 1066 ram Intel Q9550 OC’d Vista Ultimate x64
Windows Vista Ultimate x64 on an Intel DG965WH motherboard, 8GB RAM
I’m surprised that system is working properly. I had an Intel 975BX2 motherboard that could not use any brand of 8GB RAM with Vista64 let alone CS4. Intel even RMA’d me a newer revision of the board and it also could not run stable. So I replaced it with an Asus P5E WS-PRO which works fine. I was left with the impression that only x38 and newer chipsets that support "Memory Remappng" will work. The 975 chipset did not so I’m very surprised the 965 chipset does.
It’s odd that your 975 chipset didn’t support memory remapping. I had an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, also based upon the 975 chipset, which DID support memory remap. In fact, I only learned what that was about after finding my PC was only indicated slightly over 3GB of RAM during the POST. This sounds more like the Intel BIOS simply didn’t support that option; similarly, I do not see it in the AWARD BIOS of my Gigabyte P45-based motherboard, yet it still detects the 8GB of memory I’m running with now.
I miss my ASUS board…seems it actually outperforms this newer Gigabyte board with my Core 2 Extreme processor, but the ASUS decided to throw up a puff of smoke when I plugged in my headset microphone recently…after years of using an Audigy 2 sound card but troubleshooting an audio issue and thus reverting to the on-board sound. I still need to contact ASUS about a possible RMA under warranty, given I’ve got 1 year left on it. Oddly too, the ASUS would boot fine with external USB drives plugged in, whereas the Gigabyte does not.
I’m hoping to get some help as well. I feel exactly like ProArtist – I feel like CS4 is an absolute disaster (because I am experiencing this ridiculous slowness). That said, for fear of being counter-productive and negative, I’m just hoping that Adobe and NVidia can get this problem worked about sooner than later. I am running a brand new Dell Latitude D830 on Vista 32 with 4GB of RAM. CS3 works amazing, but CS4 is a major bog (with or without GPU). The card (that is built into my laptop) is a Quadro NVS 140M. Any help from other users that have solved this on a Dell laptop would be appreciated. (Regarding the AMD comment noted by Robert – my system is running Intel Core2.)
It is interesting that looking at the people having problems I see two reoccuring themes here.
1. AMD processors. 2. Nvidia graphics cards.
Having been burnt by AMD once before I now always go Intel. As for video I used to be a diehard Matrox user, but they haven’t kept up with the technology so now it is ATI and I have had my share of problems with them. But, finally have stable drivers.
One word of advice. If you get stable drivers don’t update unless you have to. On several ocassions I have done this only for the drivers to break things that worked fine before the update. The trick is getting a stable set of drivers.
Russell Proulx:C R Henderson Wrote: Windows Vista Ultimate x64 on an Intel DG965WH motherboard, 8GB RAM I’m surprised that system is working properly.
It didn’t for quite some time. Intel had a problem in the BIOS that caused any 64 bit system with over 4GB RAM to run about as well as a TRS-80. If an old version of the BIOS was installed all worked OK. After about 2 years they finally came out with a BIOS version in June that fixed all the x64 problems for the 965 series of boards when used with a 64 bit OS and >4GB RAM.
Another offer to those experiencing CS4 performance problems…
If you’re located anywhere near the S.F. bay area, please let me know. Having a system to debug on that’s actually showing this problem is essential for us to be able to get a better understanding of why this is happening.
Most of these problems really are driver issues (though some seem to be card firmware) — please make sure that your video card manufacturer is aware of the problems, including the specifics of your system.
I have a amd processor running on vista ultimate 64 and I don’t have big issues. I did have some lag like others reported but I set my cache to 8, as stated above, and it runs smooth now. May not make problems go away for others but it helped me out.
Also there is a new directx out 11/5/2008 (today) for those who might be interested.
It’s odd that your 975 chipset didn’t support memory remapping. I had an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, also based upon the 975 chipset, which DID support memory remap.
I read CR Henderson’s response and wished that I had not sold that board if it could indeed run stable with 8GB RAM. I just ran out of patience with Intel who wore me down with long distance $$ tech support calls and inept suggestions. Seems like Asus, who I was a long time fan of since the old P2B and P4T days, are better at getting their bios’ right. Intel really left me thinking that they had nothing to offer…
Add my CS4 installation to the DISASTER column. Very disappointing. I work with large images and usually have many open at once. There is a painful drag lag, redraw lag, whatever you want to call it. I do not wish to deal with it.
Moving images around the screen leaves a copy of the image where it used to be for a second. Very distracting. When I zoom in on a 20 MB image, in CS3 I can click the hand tool, drag the image around at will and it moves as smoothly as if I were moving a paper image around on a smooth surface. Cs4 is another story. As I click and drag I see a bunch of squares getting redrawn all over the screen. Very distracting.
On my Dell 1330 Laptop there is the additional problem of a disappearing brush outline above a certain brush size. On the laptop there is no hope because Dell will not release another video driver for this machine for XP in my lifetime.
On both the desktop and the laptop there is a gray line bisecting the menu at the top of the screen.
I have downloaded the latest nvidia driver to my dell vostro 400 desktop intel core 2 duo 6850 3ghz 3gb ram Nvidia geforce8600gts driver version 6.14.11.7824.
I have tried all of the turn off open gl and change cache level suggestions.
Something is amiss with CS4. If you have not purchased, don’t. You should get the trial version and see if it works with your hardware.
CS3 works great on both my desktop and laptop – both about a year old.
I like Adobe & Photoshop, and I am a stockholder, but I am returning CS4 because it doesn’t work on my machines. What disappoints me as a stockholder is that there are millions of others out there with machines like mine. I will be happy to purchase CS4 again, or CS5?, once Adobe fixes the problem with my machines.
And Adobe pointing to nvidia does not cut it. Adobe can’t throw software out there and then point to, lets say, Epson as the reason why your printouts are all of a sudden screwed up, or to nvidia as the reason that CS4 is not displaying things correctly. They have to work out these problems with the manufacturers PRIOR to releasing a new version of CS, I don’t care what the marketing folks say!
I would be glad to hang on to CS4 for free and work with Adobe to fix their problem (and I do mean their problem)….. but I am not going to hang around on my dime. I am getting my money back.
Those are pretty much my feelings and I returned my copy as well. I would have loved to keep it, but as I’m watching this unfold, there’s no telling when it might get fixed and the problems are too pervasive.
"Moving images around the screen leaves a copy of the image where it used to be for a second. Very distracting. When I zoom in on a 20 MB image, in CS3 I can click the hand tool, drag the image around at will and it moves as smoothly as if I were moving a paper image around on a smooth surface. Cs4 is another story. As I click and drag I see a bunch of squares getting redrawn all over the screen. Very distracting."
SAME HERE!
AND: CS4 renders picture packages much more slowly than even 6.0 which is what I was running before we bought the full version of CS4. CS4 does not take advantage of CPU power because it rarely uses more than 60% when rendering. (XP32, P4 HT 3.0GHz, 2GB RAM, dedicated scratch drive). Very disappointing…
The ironic thing is… if you go into the liquify tool, its FASTER at panning, redrawing, brush responsiveness and it liquifize smooth as silk…
BUT when you go back into CS4 with or without GPU opengl enabled… Its so slow in comparison.
Perhaps its the fact that my desktop resolution is 2560×1600 (since i’m using a 30 inch monitor…
But i dont think thats it, especially when you factor in that with opengl off, CS4 is still far slower than CS3.
GPU on and off in CS4 is roughly the same slow performance. The GPU slows down the performance a bit more… but overall, the program runs nothing like CS3 did.
I have the lagging problem (and I have an Intel processor), but I wouldn’t call CS4 a disaster. The rotating canvas (something Painter already had 10 years ago) removes my number one complaint about Photoshop as a pure drawing application.
I’m really surprised that in their beta testing, Adobe never encountered the lag problem, considering how many others like myself experience it now. Maybe their list of beta testers is too narrow. They should have done a public beta release like they did with Dreamweaver, and have thousands of testers.
I trust that Adobe has put top priority on solving this. Once it’s solved, then I’ll be delighted with CS4. Annoying, should have been tested more before relase, but not by any means a disaster.
Like others, I experienced lagging and momentary ghosting when moving images.
On average my images are 2 -3 megs and seldom larger than 5 megs.
Windows XP SP3 Nvidia 7900GS 256 (latest driver) 4 megs memory (3.5 useable)
For my purposes, slow response or lagging and ghosting was resolved by increasing the cache to 6, enabling OpenGL Drawing but unchecking everything in the Advanced Settings window except Advanced Drawing.
Adobe makes it very easy to return CS4. However, they won’t sell anything CS3 since CS4 has been released. If you want CS4 you need to check with Amazon or some other third party vendor.
For troubleshooting, all users affected should maybe give more info: Screen Resolution; for each screen if there are several. Videocard type; brand; firmware version; Driver version CPU type, speed; motherboard; amount of memory Windows version, peculiarities (window blinds, anti-virus) Photoshop settings: Cache, amount of ram allocated, what Open Gl settings etc. How does the issue appear, when (immediately?)
I agree with you, the rotate canvas tool is awesome… as are all of the new features. I’m not saying the features are a disaster, but the quality of programming and performance of photoshop CS4… that is the disaster. With GPU, this program should be lighting quick… Without GPU it should be lighting quick. 🙂 Its neither… However CS3 is lightning quick without GPU! So CS4 introduced GPU support but the performance is worse than the old display code they were using in CS3!!! Whats the point ?
And its not the GPU, because in software display mode in CS4… its almost as slow as with GPU… and its still far slower than CS3 was.
Do i think they can fix this? Sure… When? I dont know. But why was it released this way? And what is the real cause for this severe problem?
I’m glad there are trial versions.
Please dont tell me its because us 30inch guys run at 2560×1600 because that would be an entire industry of graphic artists.
The system i tested on…
Intel QX6700 (quadcore extreme) Intel D975XBX2 motherboard Nvidia 8800GTX 8GB Ram Latest Nvidia drivers (I also tried running the newest beta drivers) HP 30inch monitor – Native resolution 2560×1600 Wacom Intous 3 Local Raid 0 (sata) Vista 64bit.
I’m using a Wacom Intuos 2 with the latest driver. But I get identical performance problems whether I use the mouse or the tablet. On my second computer, I use an Intuos 3. Same thing, identical whether using mouse or tablet. Both systems are Win XP SP3. One is single monitor 1920×1200, the other is dual monitor 1600×1200.
Pro Artist, "Latest" is almost meaningless, please state the exact version, maybe also the firmware version of your videocard. Some other users reported a big bost when updating directX, don’t know if it is related.
Not using tablet on my MSI m670.Never had troubles with CS3, but in ver4 met:
1) slow working 2) already mentioned, brush round disappears, leaving small part – no way to define where you’re painting >( 3) in PNG "Save for web" dither and color masks disappeared 4) interface got worse and tabs names take more space, and there’s no way (tick) to stop menus from hiding some
Btw, InDesign isn’t better also 😉 God bless I’ve tried the trial first. Will be looking for CS3 again.
Not yet. Just spent the morning setting up a fresh XP Sp3 box. I’ll spend the day cycling video cards in and out of the box to see if I can repro (starting with the cards people have reported as problematic).
The retired system engineer in me is delighted that there are so many defects on which to do problem determination. What’s delightful is the complete unreliability of the PS (and Windows) code. Sometimes you do A, B, & C and X happens; sometimes not. The two areas I have in mind are the new GPU ‘support’ and the old as the hills but still unreliable pen pressure support. Adobe can’t make the new functionality right and can get the old functionality to work reliably. A techie’s dream – a complete mess.
The professional photographer in me is completely appalled. I’m spending so much time with the tools that I’m getting very little real work done.
I do wish that Adobe & Microsoft (among many) were less interested in speed and ever so much more interested in quality. Any bug in a shipping product that can be completely described in ONE simple, short sentence means that they just don’t care (or aren’t up to the work at all).
How about more engineers and many, many fewer pieces of suited overhead.
If those of you that have the lag problem could run "dxdiag" and then email that text file to danielatadobedotcom I would like to run through some of the data.
– In the taskbar at the bottom of your screen, click Start, and then click Run. – In the Run dialog box, type: dxdiag ( Click OK to run) – A dialog box displays System and display info – Save All information (or at least System and display information)
Wayne – we are interested in quality, and we do more testing than any other product I know of. But, especially with the GPUs, there are too many variables.
And just because a bug description is short, does not mean it is accurate, or simple, or that it could have been caught in testing. "Processors with Pentium4 mask revision 3 and unpatched BIOS versions lock up for several seconds when running threaded code."
And right now, we have absolutely no idea why the nonGPU case is running slow or showing problems — it should be the same as CS3, and was in all our tests.
Mike – the round brush cursor and SFW are both due to known driver bugs (probably an Nvidia card). Please update your drivers. If updating the drivers does not solve the problem, then contact the video card maker.
Well, Chris, if getting CS4 to run properly will require me to turn off the OpenGL features, then I might as well have not upgraded. And had I known this, I would not have done so.
Nick – one more time: if your card and driver work correctly, you shouldn’t have to turn it off.
We are slowly gathering information and reproducing some of the problems. Some are still drivers, a few might be bugs, and a few look like issues with XP and window ordering.
CS4 is far from a disaster. I have some graphics issues with both desktop and laptop, but even without the GPU features active, CS4 is a definite improvement over previous versions. We all have an infinite combination of motherboards, graphics cards and such like, such that it really is impossible for the software to run without a hitch on every machine.
The software has only been shipping for about three weeks, it’s early days. Okay, quite a few people are posting to this forum, but there are probably a big majority of users who have had minimal problems and who are reaping the benefits.
My graphics card meets the minimum requirements for Open GL and Shader, but the computer restarted if I switched on the GPU features. I have updated the driver and it now freezes up if I use the lasso tool, but no restart. I suspect there’s some other requirement for this to work. My PC is only 20 months old and reasonably well spec’d. Asus PB5 motherboard with the P965 chipset, an ATI Radeon 1950 XTX graphics card with 512MB graphics memory and 3GB normal ddr2 RAM, Core Duo E7500 processor.
I’m sure some fixes will come and an update released to improve things.
I installed CS4 the day it arrived. Everything has worked as advertised. What am I doing wrong?
Intel 5400 chipset Intel Xeon E5410 (2.33GHZ, 1333Mhz, 2x6MB, Quad Core) 8GB DDR2 667 Quad Channel Memory 667MHz 512MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 3700 160GB (7,200 rpm) SATA Two 500GB (7,200 rpm) SATA DC power supply 875 Watt Windows Vista Business (64-bit)
We are slowly gathering information and reproducing some of the problems. Some are still drivers, a few might be bugs, and a few look like issues with XP and window ordering.
Thank you, Chris. Finally, an admission that there might be bugs. As I have said before, I’m more than willing to help you work on this. But, I do Have The Most Recent Drivers. (Caps are in response to what you said to me.)
I am indeed talking to ATI about this. Trouble is that I’ve had issues with this card since day one and never managed to get it resolved while my warranty was valid. I’m just being patient and negotiating as best I can.
I can still benefit from many of the features while I’m resolving my graphics issues with ATI. My laptop has an nVidia card (8600M GT) and while this is one of the cards Adobe tested, there’s the problem with the cursor. No updated drivers available either, I’m a bit stuck with that one! I haven’t tried to turn on the GPU features on that.
I’m a little curious about one thing. I’ve noticed that very few – if any at all – of the forum regulars seem to have any major problems.
What do most of the regulars have in common? We build our own systems (or so it seems to me).
So here’s what I’m thinking: Can any of the OEM/third-party utilities and applications that come with most off-the-shelf computers be interfering in any way?
Another thing – and I’ll probably get a sh*tload of angry answers for even suggesting this – could it be that the forum regulars are above average interested in technical stuff, and so tend to have less "dirty", more regularly maintained and updated systems?
As stated in another thread, I had lag problems too (panning and rotating), but the lag dissapeared when I went to PS preferences, Performance, leave "Enable OpenGL Drawing" on, but under Advanced Settings turn off eeverything.
And yes, I maintain a separate pc for PS and such, no cr*p comes near that one.
Intel P35 chipset Intel Q6600 (2.4GHZ, 800Mhz, 2x6MB, Quad Core) 8GB DDR2 800 Mushkin 4-3-3-10 RAM BFG nVidia 8600GT OC 512 Mb Four 500GB (7,200 rpm) SATA II DC power supply 850 Watt Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit) Two Dell Ultrasharps ( 1920 x 1200, 1680 x 1050) Two LG DVD/CD drives.
Running Adobe Master Collection (full load), Quark 6.5 (for compatibility), CorelDraw X3, Pagemaker 7 (for compatibility), Office Professional 2007 (full load) & Maya 4.5. I also run SystemSuite 9 for maintainence. Don’t do games on this machine.
could it be that the forum regulars are above average interested in technical stuff, and so tend to have less "dirty", more regularly maintained and updated systems?
100% true. those who care enough about photoshop and their systems to peruse this forum every day pick up all kinds of tips and tricks from the natural sharing and learning that comes from reading problems and helping solve them.
Someone else mentioned DirectX. Adam, have you considered this? I’m not at all knowledgeable about DirectX. But I checked my system and it shows I have directX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904), with numerous dll files dated between February 2006 and April 2008. A search of Microsoft’s website shows an August 2008 installer for 9.24.1400 and November 2008 installer for 9.25.1476. These do not show up, even as optional updates, on the Microsoft Update page. Which leads me to question whether there are different versions of DirectX installed on different Windows XP installations, depending on when Windows was installed.
Just a thought, since DirectX version was a major issue in a non-Adobe animation program I use.
And to those who speculate that the lag is happening on "dirty" systems… I am not a regular Photoshop forum user, but I work hard to keep my system clean and lean, avoid spyware-laden resource-hungry programs like Real Media, never install anything I don’t need or never use (like Adobe Drive and Version Cue), don’t visit dodgy websites, and so on. When I work in Photoshop, usually no other program is open except sometimes Bridge and/or Premiere. Yet I experience huge lag in Photoshop CS4, even with a new file with a single blank layer that I try drawing in. The problem is within Photoshop CS4.
And to those who speculate that the lag is happening on "dirty" systems…
of course there are people like you who take the time to do the work to keep their systems running optimally. the point freeagent made and i agreed with is that in general, those who hang out here are almost all of that group, where as outside the percent who care to keep their systems running smooth if it goes beyong an occasional virus or spyware scan is very small indeed.
no disparagement intended, david. just an observation.
this is not to say that there aren’t problems with certain configurations. bugs in inside code, outside code and plugins and drivers, etc. and problems with interactions of the multitude of components that go into making up the windows market.
they’re being worked on, as in past releases. and this care is shown by the influx of adobe engineers and support staff that have been flooding this forum recently with offers to help track down problems and offering explanations. i know it sucks to keep hearing things like "update the video driver", and "write the card manufacturer", but if the past is any indication (and i’ve been here from version 5.5 and every release since then) most of these problems WILL work out sooner rather than later.
When Chris keeps saying something like "update the drivers" he’s just suggesting good, standard troubleshooting procedure. The types of problems many are citing point toward outdated or corrupt drivers as a possible cause, and may likely be something Adam J and the other members of the QA team noticed as they were testing. Eliminate problems one-by-one so that the playing field becomes more level, and so that one can methodically work toward zeroing in on a qualifiable cause.
Yes, companies put a lot of bloatware in their computers (as it is sometimes called) that may not mesh with other software that is installed later. I have seen it with patches to make their software work with on board sound or even video. When you process a laptop or computer for repair the first thing the company tells you, that if need be to get your computer running, they will wipe your hard drive, and restore it to factory specs. It even reads that in the paperwork you receive with the system. They have no obligation what so ever.
I build my own systems because I upgrade. It is alot cheaper, in the long run, for me to do so. Everything I have learned is from reading books and visiting forums like this one. Computers are like a hobby for me. What I learned is to research before I buy so that I know before hand that what is bought will work with my system.
I take care of my systems. Keep them warm and clean. Yes I keep my system updated but I also do system restore points because some updates just break things that worked before.
Yup, lots of software that will not run on my vista 64 bit machine correctly (Or at all). Ran on the 32 bit version. But I knew this before I went 64 bit.
Yes, I am a technical type of person who wants to know why something works. It is in my blood and I enjoy the heck out of it.
Yes, store bought systems can be upgraded to a point. But a lot of vendors will put a fix on their systems to make things run. I bought a Dell computer years ago. The on board sound would not work without their little fix to their software. That was a mess when a new sound driver came up. Also the RAM that I ordered and paid for was not in the motherboard. Dell had put in cheaper, slower running ram. I found this out when a stick went bad. Dell refused to give me the ram that I ordered. I was past the one year point. That was enough for me.
So that day forward I have built and upgraded my own systems. I know what is in the case!!
I think there may be a grain of truth in what you say in that many of us are Photoshop users with regards to digital photography, but aren’t power users of the software. Up until CS4 came out – a decent spec PC with a good dose of RAM and a decent processor/graphics card would run the software without drama. Regulars are probably more power users and much more gemmed up on the properties of various motherboards and graphics set ups.
My PC is just over 18 months old, and was spec’d to run CS2/CS3 which it did without a fuss. It wasn’t an off-the-shelf system, but was built by a company that allowed customers to specify much of what went into the box. My laptop is just coming up to a year old and had the best laptop graphics available at that time, which just happened to be nVidia.
My system is ‘clean’ in that it’s kept fully patched, cleaned and defragged regularly and has the minimum of superfluous software on there. So those of us who are users rather than very computer savvy do our best to spec our PC with a bit of future proofing built in, but occasionally we will get caught out.
Laptops are a whole other can of worms here. I consider myself lucky that my hp laptop runs CS4 well, because if it didn’t there wouldn’t be much I could do about it. The graphics card is a NVidia 8600, but hp has modified it to the point that NVidias driver won’t work. I have to feed it hps own driver – the latest being 6 months old and counting.
When I bought it, that laptop had well over twenty "helpful" little gadgets that would autostart on boot-up. It’s now down to four.
The problem I have is with zooming and the text tool. Panning and rotating aren’t a problem. Turning off advanced OpenGL settings doesn’t make a difference. There seems to be a lot of people with the lag problems that have the nVidia 8800 series card, and a lot of people who have the 8600 series are working fine, but it’s hard to believe that there wasn’t an 8800 card in one of the tester’s machines.
18 month old computer should run CS4 just fine. Glad you had input on what went in it when you had it built. CS4 has not been all fun and games with me. However, reading the boards and trying things out helped a lot. Just minor stuff now that I live with but with new drivers it may help out in the future. I am not even close a CS4 power user. Just part of my hobby.
I used to have a ASUS G1S laptop and that company was the same about updating the 8600M gt. Might be the same card as in yours. I never installed CS4 on it. I went as far as CS3 on it and it was working perfect. I ended up giving it to my son for college. He needed it more then I did and it was working perfect.
I have been lucky with ATI card’s and bought only one that refused to work. I bought it at Compusa, when they were still alive, and they gave me a new one that worked. So I agree with you on the bad card and they, whoever they are, should honor the warrenty.
Freeagent, Before you upgrade to 64 bit, please make sure the laptop will allow it. I wanted to update my Asus laptop to 64 bit. However, reading the boards people were having problems with that laptop running 64 bit. Besides the motherboard would only take and accept 4 gigs of ram no matter what. Plus there were hardly any drivers for that laptop for 64 bit. There was well documented issues with the motherboard and vista 64 bit.
Yes, pretty funny how all them helpful things boot up at the same time dragging things down with it.
I’m not sure what the point of the previous 20 or so posts are. There is still a problem many people are having with the lag. By the way, I also built my own computer (with help of a major techno-geek) to spec it for 2D animation production. It is just over a year old. Absolutely every driver is up-to-date. I have a second computer, three years old, full of junk and running lots of unnecessary bells and whistles (since my teenage son uses it), which doesn’t have the lag problem!
So the idea that "clean" systems experience the problem less would seem to be untrue. The opposite, in fact.
May I make a suggestion to the Adobe engineers who have been so eager to fix this issue? They are unable to reproduce the problem. Adam keeps calling on anyone in the Bay Area with this problem to contact him, but obviously there have been no takers. Would it be asking too much to suggest Adobe choose one of us with this problem and invest a couple hundred bucks into sending one of their engineers for a visit to try to track down the problem? Then they can go back to San Jose and work on a fix. It sure isn’t going to happen by guesswork.
See post #48. No need for any of us to fly anywhere…
On Friday I set up an older box (3GHz Pentium D, dual-core) with a clean XP Sp3 and can now reproduce many of the issues reported. We’re in the process of investigating and I will provide more information when I have it.
dave milbut:you’re a gem adam. thank you for all the help and support you’ve provided for the last several releases
Ditto…
There is also the fact that he is online providing useful information on Sunday. That shows either dedication or he has no life. I suspect the former for him while for me it’s probably the latter 🙂
vista x64 Asus P5Q deluxe 16gb ram nVidia 8800 gts 640mb q9650 3ghz loads of drives This system only goes online to activate software / download updates.
CS4 runs really well.
There are so many variables…..hard drives / ram / drivers /etc… any bad combination could cause issues.
For those having problems, I’m wondering if it’s an OpenGL and Direct X conflict, in some cases, as they’re two separate systems that are trying to achieve the same thing. Maybe a Microsoft DirectX update has interfered with OpenGL in some way.
I will be following this thread to see what you find.
It sure is an improvement over M-soft’s "trouble shooting" which blames BitDefender running under Vista for every problem I have had. That includes those with the cable un-plugged and BitDefender not having been started.
Actually, Chris keeps saying "update the drivers" because people are mentioning known driver bugs that the video card makers are supposed to be fixing (but obviously haven’t yet fixed for every model and OS combination). We need to get past the known driver bugs so we can find any as-of-yet unidentified bugs.
Chris Cox, I go to the ATI site Every Day to check for new drivers. So far, no luck. I have contacted them three times, via email, and they have nothing to say about the issues I’m seeing with CS4. They tell me to re-install the driver package, which I’ve done about four times.
I read that Adam J. has reproduced the lag problems on a machine there at Adobe. Do you or Adam have any info on that? Are you two on speaking terms? Sounds to me like there might be identified bugs.
Adam’s office is next door to me – we talk, well, a lot. There are several "lag" problems being discussed.
But things like "incomplete redraws" and "incomplete brush cursors" are known driver bugs, and updated drivers are the only thing that will fix them. Again, we have to get those known issues out of the way first before we can start looking for other problems.
Team A develops a program or an app. They are the basic engineering team. Their work becomes the core for Team B. Team B has been created or enabled by marketing to take A’s work and put a skin on it, and wouldn’t it be nice to ad this feature, make that feature more useful or glitzy, etc. B develops what marketing wants. Now, the design begins to be buggier than the early alpha version of Team A. In fact, when the remaining bugs for A’s product gets resolved, team B’s product generates evenmore bugs. So they talk. Team B files a bug report that starts out in the setup description with "Install the Team B app". "Hold on!", says A. "We didn’t create that. You did." "Yeah", says B, "but when you fixed big number XYZ, we have another problem show up." A says that’s not our problem. But in the spirit of cooperation, A takes a look, and, with it’s core running fine they cannot generate the bug. Bickering starts. Team A issues a final release, whereby Team B rejects that ….
You know the story, I’m sure. Now, Team A and Team B are separate companies, and the battle is more like a marriage gone bad.
Could it be that Adobe is asking the video card and driver to do things the card vendors haven’t anticipated, and in fixing things for Adobe users, it fouls the nest for other users, causing a cascade of bugs and fixes? On both sides?
On the system in my office that I’m seeing the problem on (Pentium D 3GHz, 4GB RAM, XP Sp3), using a combination of the AllowOldGPUS_ON.reg and then using the following settings in the GPU advanced settings:
Vertical Sync: enabled 3D Interaction Acceleration: enabled Force Bilinear Interpolation: disabled
Advanced Drawing: enabled Use for Image Display: disabled Color Matching: disabled
The brush lag, in my case, is mitigated with these settings. Disabling Open GL Drawing altogether brings the brush performance nearly in-line with CS3.
In my case, I’m using the nVidia 8800 GT (512MB VRAM). It is worth noting that the same card runs CS4 without any issue on three other systems in my office (one XP SP3, two Vista64).
As stated in previous posts, my experience is quite different than what you’re experiencing. Disabling OpenGL makes performance worse. Using the settings you listed above also makes it worse. Again, the only way I get decent (but not great) performance is:
AllOldGPUS_ON.reg in place Enable Open GL Disable all Advanced settings
Any other combination of settings brings the problem back.
It seems the problem is very hard to pinpoint.
Maybe you should give some us a phone call, ask us to try different settings, and give you instant feedback. I’m ready and willing to spend the time to help you get to the bottom of this.
Adam, When you say the same card is it physically the same card tried in different PCs or do the other PCs just have the same model of card?
I wonder if it could be related to the card bios or even the manufacturing date of the card, perhaps some un-documented changes were made to the card hardware for different production runs.
Occurs to me that in some instances problems may not be caused by drivers. The presumption is that the card itself is functioning properly.
A year ago my 7900GS was stricken with the infamous Nv4_disp.dll Infinite Loop . . . intermitently. The only consistent advice from users on Nvidia’s forums and in general was to update the drivers or revert to an earlier working version.
After several months, under warranty, I tired of looking for a solution and after performing Dell’s hardware video tests, replaced the card. End of of problem.
For peace of mind, those experiencing problems might want to make absolutely certain their card does indeed function properly. Just because the card is new does not guarantee it is working as it should.
I’ve been secretly thinking that too. I’d just get a new card first of all (or try the other three I have lying around).
Still, too many people are seeing these problems to avoid concluding that something, somewhere, is messing things up. I have to say I feel a little sorry for the engineers. Here they are, testing on hundreds of systems and there’s not a problem anywhere in sight – and then they get hit in the face with a ****storm like this. But they handle it admirably well.
Although there are a lot of people posting here with genuine problems (and I really sympathise) I wonder what percentage that represents of the total sales of Photoshop CS4 so far.
Has anyone actually replaced a card with a different version, obtained the most current updates and said problem solved? Without a series of such events, we do not have any basis by which to say the bug(s) are resolved.
In software testing, when we have filed a bone fide bug, it has to be resolved by the engineers then tested over several platforms before QA will close it.
At least, that’s the way we do it where I work doing such testing.
I would suggest that Adobe actually have a couple of cards know to be good available for others to test in their systems. It would go a long way to root out exactly where the problem lies. It needs to be the same card version and driver.
The resulting list of systems that were fixed and those it didn’t would be highly useful!
So far, it seems that Adam has been able to duplicate many of the problems. His suggestions so far have only been workarounds that he says will get you "close" to the performance of CS3. It may be driver issues and/or Photoshop bugs, but too many people, including Adam, can demonstrate the problem so I’m betting that it isn’t a "defective" card issue. And in my case, I have a $900 card that runs my other 3d apps perfectly, so I’m not that willing to just go out and buy another for testing purposes, although I might if I was the only one having the problems.
To each his own, but if Adobe can demonstrate conclusivly that, with a system basicaaly configured to be reasonably close to universal, this card and this driver will perfom as speced by Adobe. In the interests of getting feedback, offering a short time loan to qualified users would, IMO, garner significant additional data points to be valuable.
Paul, your position on expensive cards is tantamount to expecting a $50,000 Lexus to perform as well in extreme conditions as a 10 year old jeep Wrangler then blaming the terrain for the problem.
There appears to be no universal autos and no universal video cards. 🙁
To restate what I said, I have an Nvidia Quadra FX 3700, it is on Adobe’s "tested and approved list" of video cards. As I said, it handles all other 3d apps just fine. So, I have an "approved card" running the latest driver, an up-to-date system running a supported operating system on a clean install of windows and the only application installed is the CS4 Design Premium Suite. As a consumer, I have met or exceeded all the requirements that Adobe puts forth, I’m not using a Lexus, I’m only running what Adobe says I need. So I’m sorry, but I don’t see your analogy.
I know John, You’ve said before your system is working fine. I’m on XP sp3, and it didn’t make any difference what driver I used. That’s why I’ve said that it’s not as simple as "just get this card and this driver and it’s going to work." People with the same card and driver are seeing different results, even some people like yourself who are running Vista 64 are seeing problems. I have no idea what the problem is, I’m just responding to the comment that suggested that the problem might lie with defective hardware. I wouldn’t doubt that assumption if the problem was less prevalent, however, the fact that the Adobe techs are all over this like I’ve not seen before, suggests to me that there are other issues and the difficulties are effecting a fairly good number of people.
That’s just my two cents and that’s about all it’s worth.
Perhaps inadequate rather than defective. Within a statistical sample range, some devices simply won’t make it when the combined statistics between all devices work against the desired results. To test against that is a daunting task! Simply changing one element or device can repair that problem, but it may not be the same device or element from system sample to system sample. Even the BIOS version can trip one up.
So, it looks like patience is the key. Not great for those who paid for and need professionally the program. I am holding off on a whole raft of upgrades i know I need to run at the levels i wish to run. C3 does very well at the moment. It’s reasonably stable and gives me wonderful control.
Yes, different people are seeing different problems.
And overall, not that many people are reporting serious problems.
And just because Adam has reproduced a problem, doesn’t assign the blame for the problem (we reproduce lots of OS vendor bugs, and hardware vendor bugs – then send the reports to the vendors to fix).
Quite right on the patience Lawrence. I should have known better, but I fell for it like Charlie Brown and the football. I didn’t get CS3 until CS4 was almost here. I had gone to counseling and thought I had the problem licked, but it seems I fell off the wagon.
As you’ve said, there isn’t much in CS4 that I need for my current work either, except that I will be needing ACR 5 when the Canon 5D MkII becomes available. But there again, after Canon’s 1dsMkIII problems, I don’t think I want to be an early adopter there either.
That’s good to hear. Perhaps you have better luck getting in touch with the folks at Nvidia, and swing more influence, then some of us do. I know I spent a fair amount of time on hold to get nowhere.
If I knew what (if any) video card would work with CS4 on my system, I’d go buy one. Hell, I’d probably even build a new system if I knew exactly what components it takes to run CS4.
I’ve been running Vista64 on a MacPro (dual, quad-core, Jan ’08) for the past few months without any issue.
The hardest part (in my case) was getting boot camp and the Vista installer to play nice. Once that was working, I just needed to grab some extra drivers (and update other drivers – for example the default nVidia bootcamp driver is ancient) in order to get everything working correctly.
I wouldn’t buy you HDD, memory or displays from Apple. But that’s just me. I think you’re looking at more like $3500 then. With a new 24" flat screen. 🙂
I’m getting tired of hearing that perhaps my graphics card, one of the Adobe-tested ones (nVidia Quadro FX1500) is defective, or the driver is the wrong one, or nVidia and Adobe passing the buck back and forth on this. As it stands, my graphics card works perfectly with every graphic and 3D application I’ve ever tried. The older card on my other computer works great with Maya and so on. Puh-leez, quit saying that all the people reporting the lag issue might have defective hardware. I really, seriously doubt that both of my graphics cards are by some enormous coincidence both defective.
Chris says that not that many people are reporting problems. Well, not that many people in proportion to all Adobe users access this forum. The fact that more than a few are reporting a serious issue in common speaks to the fact that there is a flaw in the software somewhere. If the coding is so delicately sensitive that a slight variance in hardware or drivers can send it out of kilter like this points to non-robust code.
I really want a solution, not a shrug of the shoulders and an "I dunno" or, as seems to be the growing consensus on this forum among people who don’t have the lag problem: "It must be your fault. I’m all right, Jack."
I just purchased Photoshop CS4 Standard via download. There were a few bumps but it installed just fine.
My graphics adaptor is the Mobile Intel 965 GMA X3100 part of my Toshiba laptop,latest drivers from their (Toshiba) website. The GPU functions are reported as not available in Photoshop’s Prefs under Performance.
Other than that it’s running fine and I like the new features. Nice that the install did import my Bridge workspace settings.
I did a quick canvas rotate test on an 80 MB multi-layered file. It’s twice as fast as CS3.
So is it still possible I may get the GPU goodies in the future?
Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit Version: 6.0 Service Pack 1 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:15, Stepping:13 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2 Physical processor count: 2 Processor speed: 1729 MHz Video Card Vendor: Intel Video Card Renderer: Intel 965/963 Graphics Media Accelerator OpenGL Drawing: Disabled. Video Card: Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family Video Mode: 1280 x 800 x 4294967296 colors Video Card Driver: igdumd32.dll Driver Version: 1280 x 800 x 4294967296 colors Built-in memory: 2038 MB Free memory: 918 MB
Dennis – that isn’t something we’ve seen or heard from any other users. Undo (and other history changes) is normally instantaneous if the document isn’t hitting the scratch disk too hard (if it comes even close to fitting in RAM).
I think I actually found the root of the lagging-interface-problem that alot of you, and Adobe, have been struggeling to solve.
I was helping a friend of mine out with this. His computer has an Intel Q6600 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a NVidia 8600GTS graphics card. System is Windows XP SP2 updated to SP3 and the latest NVidia drivers.
Photoshop had huge user interface performance problems. Extremely slow and non-responsive (with and without GPU acceleration).
I then installed DirectX (using the Redistributable version from August 2008), rebooted(!), and guess what?….. It made all the difference in the world!!! Now everything is superfast and smooth and hardware accelleration works like a charm. As an added bonus, his Lightroom program also got alot more responsive!
Don’t know which DirectX version is included in Windows XP SP3, but it seems to me that it’s too old to support the new Adobe user interfaces.
Hopefully I wasn’t just lucky and this is indeed the solution for all of you. Well, I’m sure you guys will let me know either way.
Good luck!
PS. It probably works well with the latest DirectX (November 2008) update as well but, since it’s now working, he wouldn’t let me try it out 🙂
I updated my DirectX and it had no effect. What did have an effect was unchecking ‘Open Documents as Tabs’. Now with OpenGL on zooming is much smoother than CS2, with OpenGL off it’s about the same as CS2. Typing text still has a delay to display but that’s not a big deal to me.
I just updated my DirectX with the November 2008 distributable. Previously I had the 9.0c update from April 2008. It definitely helped, but is still far from perfect.
Previously the brush and pencil tool lag was small but noticeable with these settings:
AllowOldGPUS_ON installed Enable OpenGL Disable all advanced features
ANY other setting (OpenGL disabled, or any advanced features enabled) resulted in tremendous lag
AFTER updating DirectX, AllowOldGPUS_ON still installed
With any of the following settings, the lag is less, drawing somehow seems smoother. When drawing very fast there is still recognizable lag.
Disable OpenGL
or
Enable OpenGL Disable Advanced settings
or
Enable OpenGL Enable Advanced Drawing
All of the above are okay, zero difference in lag. The greatest improvement is in dragging free-floating windows. They STILL stick before moving, but for less time.
If I go so far as to enable ANY other advanced settings, such as "Use for Display", the lag is noticeably worse.
Windows XP Pro SP3 nVidia Quadro FX 1500 latest nVidia drivers and nVidia control panel
Is there anything new from Adobe to report on this issue? It’s driving me mad.
I see that you’re testing on a Geforce 8800 GT and are seeing lag problems, but can you also please test CS4 on an EVGA Geforce 8800 GTX in Vista 64 SP1?
That is the hardware I saw the brush lag and severe cloning/heal brush lag. Toggling layers seems to draw fairly slow, and color curve adjustments and sliders in general were terrible.
This was at 2560×1600 on a 30inch LCD.
Intel BadAxe 2 board, Intel Quadcore qx6700 extreme are the other components.
CS4 a disaster? No, I don’t think so. It has its problems for sure and its really hard to figure all out in betatests because of the million different computers out there. See my configuration: <http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b7022d/21> for example. I am really sure that this kind of configuration is not for the common standard user. If have also some problems and I am very sure that this will be fixed if it is possible. I’m also involed in producing software ( computer games ) and I know what I am talking about. You can do a lot with betatests but not all. Even when now all the availible graphic cards are added.
I think CS4 is a huge step ahead and for me the first time buying the Extended Edition to get all the cool 3d tools. Of course there are other programs which might be better for 3d editing such as Bodypaint but you know what…it would cost me a lot more. Photoshop is the standard I need and when I can get an edition where I can paint my 3d models and get the flexibility to use all photoshop functions ( I don’t thing Bodypaint has the same functionallity ) for some bucks ( Upgrade ) more and even can paint directly or use the textures which are also stored in the same psd that is amazing. As my texture coordinates are usally correct when I start using PS in the texturing process I am a lot more flexible. No more searching for the right position or switching between the applications.
To sum it up. Yes there might be other programs which can do some tasks faster then PS but I think with the complete functionality PS is alone. And this kind of programs are designed for just that task. PS wants to do all. So before blaming Adobe, give them some time and help them to fix upcoming issues. Bugsearching is always not very easy in software development.
Why have adobe stripped out the The Picture Package functions, Bridge CS4 is no substitute and light room 2 don’t cut it either. As a busy photographic studio Not having picture package is a reason NOT to go to CS4. The GUI issues are a side show compared to the throwing away the best auto production on the market. Adobe talk about cutting of your own Nose to Spite….? unless I’m missing something, it’s good night CS4 you aint got what Photographers need
Phil your question has been answered in a number of other threads. Instead of reading them you choose to bury your comment in a completely unrelated thread.
Chris, Photoshop may not use DirectX, but I and others on this forum have reported improvements to Photoshop performance by updating to the November 2008 DirectX drivers. Another user here claims that OpenGL in Windows functions as a wraparound to DirectX…whatever that means.
I just got a new PC to work and finally decicded to upgrade my CS2 to CS4. I’m experiencing serious performance issues with the new Photoshop CS4, it’s just very laggy.
Examples:
– Panning layouts is jerky, I have disabled flick panning.
– Sometimes browsing the layers menu, I click some layer and it takes a while when it actually selects it, changing visibility between different layersets also takes very long to actually refresh the new content to the screen.
– Font-tool: lets say I have webpage layout open and I change some text, I’m a fast writer and I can actually type in a whole sentence before it appears on the screen.
– Rectangular marquee tool is also slow, when hold the button down and create as selection, the selection borders are a bit behind my mouse cursor.
– Moving layers and pretty much everything is just way slower than it was in CS2. I have tried changing cache level options and disabling/setting OpenGL support but with no luck.
My system setup:
Windows Vista Enterprise 64bit (fresh 3 days old install) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83Ghz 4GB DDR2 PC-5300 Ati Radeon HD 3600 / Catalyst 8.10 HD Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb (System disk) HD Western Digital Raptor WD360ADFD (Photoshop scratch disk)
Everything else runs smooth like butter, only photoshop giving me lag issues.
I would appreciate any ideas on how to make it running faster, I’m barely able to work with such low performance 🙁
When you finished your system did you download the .net update and directx update? Neither will auto download and both are really needed to run correctly with your computer. The .net and directx are needed for your CCC to run correctly too.
Also there are 8.11 drivers that may help.
Your ram specs seem to be a little slow too that could cause a bottle neck compaired to the rest of your hardware. Might think about upgrading to the max speed that your motherboard can use. Ram is so darn cheap now.
Did you defrag after you finished your install?
Look on the internet. There are lots of sites that give free information to help speed up vista too. I did and it made a world of difference.
David, how do I know, wether I need a DirectX or .net update? I thought DirectX 10 (which comes with Vista) is the latest DirectX version. Are you sure that both of them don`t update if I do a Windows update?
I am positive they do not update. Just knowledge from research to help my friends computer issues and building systems and such that they need updated too.
Yes Vista has 10.0. . However, you need a video card that can run 10.0. Plus whatever software that can take advantage of 10.0.
Vista still needs directx 9.0 to run your directx 9.0 software. People on here have said updating has helped with their issues with CS4. Also opengl drivers are only updated by card manufacturers.
..Net 2.0, according to ATI, is the "least" version to correctly run CCC. I was using .Net 3.0 and CCC had worked better. When my hard drive crashed a while ago I just downloaded the .Net 3.5 update and was done with it. Didn’t notice any difference.
Thanks for your tips. The RAM is not a bottleneck, if you see some comparisons of "high end" superfast memorys you will see the actual difference in performance is almost non-existent. And it all comes down to used FSB.
I actually already updated the DirectX to the latest versions and installed new .Net-framework. After that I updated to catalyst 8.11.
Results: no performance improvement on phothoshop, still very laggy.
Everything else works so perfectly so the only thing that comes to mind is that Photoshop CS4 is poorly coded or the hardware requirements are ridiculous. Of course there might be something wrong on my system, but based on the amount of whine about performance I point my finger on Adobe.
based on the amount of whine about performance I point my finger on Adobe.
the 2 or 3 guys whining on this forum is not a good example of a bad product. If Photoshop was performing poorly for everyone this forum would be full of complaints. like every thread would be a complaint.
Actually Buko, I disagree. I run an advertising agency and know a number of people that are having problems and just aren’t posting (including myself). It shouldn’t take an outside group of this magnitude to waste our time responding to every post that comes through. We paid a decent price for this software and it is Adobe’s responsibility to get it right. I agree with a number of people (including a number of my associates) — this is just shotty code – plain and simple. If Adobe would like to pay us for our time to beta test, then by all means, we would consider it. But when you are going to charge $1,500 per license for a suite and then expect to launch a less-than-sufficient product, then no offense, but it’s on them.
I am part of a number of beta communities for open-source software and provide a great deal of support for free. But let’s face it, Adobe is not open-source (at least the last time I checked my credit card statement).
The fact of the matter is — Adobe missed the boat when it came to building CS4 with all of its users in mind. I run Adobe ColdFusion Enterprise – an $8,000 product. We use ColdFusion to host most of our websites for a number of high-profile clients. If all of a sudden (even though we had a top-of-the-line Dell server), ColdFusion would not work because we did not meet a right video driver, I would be outraged.
Because Photoshop is a graphic-intensive program, we have generally given Adobe the benefit of the doubt and assume that they will fix their mistake in short order. But to expect that every single user that is having a problem is going to post on here is ridiculous. I made my case earlier in this thread – I do not need to waste hours a day on this.
There is an old saying – 1% of people participate while the other 99% of people absorb and do not participate. This is just reality. My point is – if 1% of your users are actually stating on a forum that there is a problem, then the actual number of people that are having the problem is probably MUCH greater. They are simply waiting in the queues for a solution.
There is a problem. Adobe needs to come up with a solution.
No need to be sorry – ColdFusion was the best decision we ever made. (Let’s save that for another post though so that we don’t clutter the real issue here.)
I’ll put in my opinion that it is Adobe’s responsibility. This forum is not indicative of the general user base. I’d be curious how many bug reports Adobe has received from people who never come to this forum, or how many complaints people have made to the retailers where they bought the programs.
Video card drivers may be faulty, hardware may be slightly different in individual systems, but the general consensus among those reporting the problem (including me) is that these performance problems didn’t exist in CS3 and earlier, using the same equipment. I’ll add that other graphics programs I use which have OpenGL options, do not experience any lag. Adobe has a huge variety of users, from students, hobbyists and dabblers, to seasoned pros. Many people will buy the Web Premium suite, for example, because they are Dreamweaver or Flash users, but need Photoshop as a peripheral program for creating graphics. These are not power users. And when they experience the performance problems, they probably shrug and think that Photoshop simply sucks by default and thank God they don’t need to use it often. The code should be robust enough, and generic enough, to handle all current hardware and CURRENT drivers.
I frankly resent some of the smug comments from hardcore users here on this forum, the ones not experiencing problems, using terms like "whining" and implying that those of us who are disappointed with CS4 just don’t have it together technically. Screw you. I eagerly bought the CS4 upgrade the moment it came out. I own a video card on Adobe’s "approved" list. I have a clean system. I experienced significant problems with Photoshop. Some of the workarounds have helped me achieve mediocre rather than poor performance; an improvement, but still hugely disappointing. And if I complain, I’m whining?
I definitely don’t blame Adobe engineers and programmers. It’s clear that Adam and Chris are the tip of the iceberg of programmers trying to set things right. And I’m sure no one in the development team would have allowed this version to be released if they’d been aware of the GPU problem earlier. But management obviously rushed the entire CS4 suite release prematurely to meet a sales deadline (it ain’t just Photoshop: Flash CS4 is so extremely buggy I wouldn’t even rate it as beta). It was also a management decision to limit the Photoshop beta testers to a set group, all of whom are likely super-advanced users with high-end hardware. Same with Flash (that I know for sure, since I know some of the beta testers). As a result, huge numbers of bugs go undetected because this user group doesn’t access those functions as part of their work.
Adobe placed Dreamweaver CS4 for public beta, by contrast. I tried it, it was a real MESS. But they got a large volume of feedback from every type of user, and the release version is, so far, pretty tight. Makes a big difference when you let more than just your friends noodle around and find bugs that the power users might not discover.
They certainly would have heard of this GPU issue months ago if they had a less exclusive beta tester list. And at this point I think it’s Adobe’s sole responsibility to engineer a solution. I believe that they are working on it. The anger in this post is directed to the "I’m all right Jack" forum regulars who are so bemused by people like me.
I have not checked back in a while. Has Adobe yet realized that they have a major malfunction on their hands and need to either recall CS4 or include a computer that will run the software in the shrinkwrapped box? I am a long time photoshop user and this is the first screw up of this magnitude that I have witnessed. Suggestion: pull out all of that malfunctioning GPU code and go back to depending on just having fast main processor chip(s). Tell the early CS4 adopters, heh, heh, just kidding, pull the software, get the thing right….. and then re-release!!!!!!
Just wanted to add my $2 cents to this discussion in case someone from Adobe is reading. I upgraded from CS3 to CS4 and have just requested a refund from Adobe. In my opinion, CS4 is not ready for release and should have stayed in beta. I’ve had numberous video card issues, random crashes and locks since installing CS4. It also runs slowly for me — no advantage compared to CS3. I’ve upgraded the video card drivers, the Wacom drivers, and done every microsoft update to no avail. I used Photoshop for over a decade and this release has been the most troublesome so far.
Dell XPS 720 Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66 GHz Windows XP x64 SP2 Nvidia 6800 GTS 8 Gigs RAM
I was getting apprehensive, reading threads like this, as I was re-building my system [Asus P5Q DeLuxe, Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0 GHz, Vista Business 64-bit, 4GB RAM, ATI Fire GL 3600] to handle the upgrade from CS2 to CS4, but so far, I have no complaints.
Everything really flies. All the GPU stuff works as advertized. I am quite happy with it all.
I’m beginning to notice that most of the problems occur on pre-builts and I was wondering whether some crap installed by the builders was causing the problems.
It might be a case where a complete re-install of the OS, sans the builder’s crap, would solve most of these problems.
As per JRN who built his own system as I did and others who use pre-builts but reformat/re-install the OS before moving forward.
I just wanted to put my 2 cents in. I haven’t noticed any lag between CS3 and CS4, though I am a newBE in using CS anything, I use CS4 Web Premium. I’ve followed some tutorials on lynda.com and all worked as advertized. I do this in a dual monitor mode using the 780i SLI motherboard with a Q6600 quad core processor, and 4 GB RAM. My graphics card is the ATI Radeon HD4870 X2 2GB memory. My 32" HDTV is connected via DVI to HDMI, and I use that monitor for watching training videos, and preform task on my 22" SyncMaster 2253bw set at 1680 x 1050 @ 60Hz. Of course, I haven’t enough experience with Photoshop’s more advanced features yet to say anything about those, but the rotate image works even with large TIFF or JPEG file formats for me. My system’s only 2 months old as of today, (happy birthday) almost time to upgrade… 🙂
Exactly, Bart. That’s been my theory too for some time, and I’ve said so (and got the expected replies…)
John, no doubt, but there’s a difference between the pro market segment and the consumer market segment. In the latter, it seems the major selling point is how much they can manage to squeeze in there. That’s what most people mistake for "value".
Dell (and others, most likely) will not allow a spec by the buyer that stops with only the OS. They insist on their particular AV, for instance. I can understand that for the general public, but for the computer capable, that’s not acceptable. If they insist on shipping with a/v, then there should be allowance for the buyers preference. As is true for anything else.
With Dell, wouldn’t it be true that to re-install (now from a partition, not a disk), you would simply be re-installing all their preferences for add-ons?
I have a professional work station I built myself, with the help of an uber-geek friend. Not a single unnecessary piece of junk was installed, and I regularly disable and uninstall junk such as all those annoyances that come with so many programs which continually scan for updates.
I also have a self-built computer filled with junk installed by my teenage son.
CS4 lag problems on both of my systems. Ironically, it’s worse on the "clean" workstation.
No Dell or other pre-built computers. Though my view of Dell (which my wife has) is that they come installed relatively cleanly. The only thing to get rid of is the trial version of an AV program.
If Adobe is depending on folks to build their own machines and re-install the operating system to get CS4 to work, they have lost touch with reality. Only a tiny percentage of the user base know about building machines or even want to think about re-installing the operating system. That is way to disruptive to even contemplate.
I want to spend my time creating in photoshop. Make me a version that runs on the "common" hardware currently available from Dell, HP, whoever. You can make another version for the 10 people who give a crap about building their own machines and messing around with operating systems. There is discussion here now about maybe the software installed on Dell, etc. machines when shipped is the problem? Pulleeeeeeze. Get real. Wake me when Cs4 is fixed.
If Adobe is depending on folks to build their own machines and re-install the operating system to get CS4 to work, they have lost touch with reality.
That’s not the point. The point is to reduce the number of complicating factors.
Try this scenario: Adobe builds CS4 according to the OpenGL specification. They get it right. The card manufacturers, being mostly concerned with gamers as we all know, have introduced a few tweaks and bent the specs here and there to keep the makers of those games happy. After all, that’s where the money is.
So – what’s Adobe supposed to do? Of course, they have to stick with the specs. But being the latest addition to this brew, they naturally get all the blame.
One more thing: They have problems over on the Mac side as well, but not nearly as much. Someone on the Mac forum suggested an explanation for this that I think makes a lot of sense: a Mac is a much more tightly controlled environment. Not because it’s "better", but because there are far fewer third-party manufacturers involved, far less "free" software available on the web – and a lot less preinstalled crap.
That’s why you reformat and do your own OS install: to take control of your computer.
Several people have installed CS4 successfully on a shop-bought system (Dell in my case) and everything works fine straight out of the box.
Dell Precision Workstation T7400 here with nothing added but an additional drive. Installed the trial version of CS4 last week. Had to update the NVIDIA Quadro FX 570 driver to address the incomplete brush cursor effect. Since then, nothing but pure delight, (aside from the trial-nag screen once per session).
I picked up on the earlier references about those that just watch and don’t speak up.
I have had the same issues with CS4 which sparked this thread, although I can add that importing 3d files provides only vertices and selecting any other render settings makes the model dissappear altogether.
I find the whole issue frustrating and tending to lift the blood pressure after two weeks of fiddling with this and that. I will be reloading windows later this week, in one last attempt to make some difference. If that fails (and it has for several friends). I’m just putting CS4 back on the shelf and listing it as too hard and too expensive to spend any more time on. It will be back to CS3 until (or if) it ever gets sorted out … or if enough time passes before I buy a new system (say 18 to 24 months).
Not angry, just unhappy and poorer for the experience. I hope the issues get sorted quickly but I’m not holding my breath
XP Professional SP 3
Intel Pentium Dual Core 3.2 GHz
3.25 Gb Ram
(Leadtek)Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 512 Mb with Release 178 (178.46) Nov 08 driver
I may have identified one of the root causes, but now I need your help to make sure that the change I’m testing actually fixes the problem for *you*.
So, if you’re experiencing a "lag" in performance when using CS4 on Windows, even with all OGL features disabled, and are interesting in helping me test possible solutions, please email me directly at travlin_adam at yahoo dot com (my non-adobe email addy). I’m interested in all Windows OS, but especially newer systems running Vista Sp1.
Also I’ll make this request again, if you are seeing a performance lag with CS4 and live in the SF bay area, please contact me directly.
Hmm…I just got off the phone with a tech and here what I learned. To in order to have the features that use opengl work correctly you have to have Windows Vista as the operating system because DirectX 10 is needed. I was so shocked to find this out I asked the tech to explain it twice.
Now I have to say that isn’t listed in the system requirements section on the web site where they are selling CS4, my computer matches or exceeds the requirements listed there. Here is my question, why list XP as operating system choice it can’t fully run the program? I am not going to put Vista on my computer ever…I have been forced to use it at work and it is horrible. Perhaps there will be a work around for XP users and that uses DirectX 9.
If my understanding of all this is wrong, please let me know as I would love to be able to use CS4.
When I went from CS3 to CS4 I couldn’t install CS4 because of a profile being locked. Even with technical supports help we couldn’t get the file rights/permissions to unlock the file. The only way I could get CS4 to install was to backup my data (easy since most is on a secondary drive) format, reinstall Windows and then install CS4. This worked fine. It is a lot of work and yah it does miff me a bit but I look at the bright side of it and that is it fushed Windows system and now everything is nice and clean and tidy. I like to compare to have a stopped drain, you can use liquid plumber to get the water flowing again, but using a drain snake really cleans it out and removes any nasty build up. Since when you install and uninstall stuff you never really get rid of all of it, doing this from time to time isn’t a bad idea. But, having to do this to get a program installed is a bit of a miff.
Yes, I did remove CS3 before hand, that was one of the first things I did and one of the first things technical support asked about. In the end it was all down to one profile file that just wouldn’t let itself be overwritten and there was nothing that could be done to get to let itself be overwritten. I have had this happen with two files on my desktop, they were zero byte files but I couldn’t delete the icons for them.
Thanks for your response, Chris. So Windows XP with Direct9x isn’t the problem then? I am using the trial awaiting the upgrade I ordered. I called because my floating windows don’t redraw after dragging them to a new position, I have to click them to restore the photo.
I don’t doubt you, Chris, but CS4 definitely runs better on my Vista64 machine than my XP32 machine. With OpenGL on XP has a problem with displaying images and cursors. XP also has a flickering with the title area when zooming. These sound like driver problems but I’m running the same driver version (nVidia 180.48) on both machines. Could be something with XP that the tech was alluding to, but is it likely a lower level support person would know this? Both have lag problems zooming with the tabbed interface, however. The regular window interface zooms fine on either monitor with Vista64, and fine with XP32 on the primary monitor. The machines run the same 8800 GTS card and have very similiar hardware.
So you are aware of the secondary monitor problems in XP? What about the smooth zooming discrepancy with tabbed vs. windowed viewing on both OS’s? I’d like to know if this a problem with my machines or expected behavior.
I have an Asus gs1 laptop with an nvidia 8600m, I installed the latest drivers from Nvidia. I upgraded to cs4 from cs2. I love cs4 but it constantly crashes and the cursor keeps blinking and bridge wont open from within cs4. Adobe advertised cs4 as being able to use gpu’s. They should of tested it more, because it doesnt work with mine. I hope they will have a fix soon. Cs4 is too expensive for these type of problems.
Vista does not run CS4 better. I dont care what you say. CS4 runs terrible on all OS’s due to bugs in the software. CS3 runs faster on Vista than CS4.
I recommend staying with CS3 unless you really like punishment.
Adobe is looking into the performance problems with CS4, and so far there is no solutions.
Stay away from CS3. You’ve been warned. There is a trial. DL the trial and see for yourself. Make sure you give it a good going over, but if you’re like most of us, you will notice right away that CS4 is ridiculously slower than CS3.
Hi, I started a thread about a problem I’m having with Photoshop CS4 <http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b71909/4> but I was told that this thread here is dedicated to similar issues. So please check the link above and consider my input as part of this thread. I started to read the messages here starting from the last one backwards hoping to find some solution to the problem but it is a long thread with a lot of noise and after going through a number of messages worth several pages, I decided to ask if someone current to all information here can kindly summarize it for me by answering a basic question. Is there some suggestions in this thread that were helpful to users with problems like mine or is this thread something that users are hoping to make Adobe take notice and fix this problem? I appreciate your help.
James, You do know your laptop has well documented GPU issues right? I "used" to own the same laptop as yours. I didn’t not have any problems but there are a lot of GPU’s that have failed or have rendering problems.
Nvidia has spoken on the issues and also you can find all sorts of information on the ASUS website forums.
Here is a website that you can, if you wish, to look into updating drivers on your own. Use at your own risk. Do a system restore first. You already may know of this site.
David, Thanks for your reply. Laptopvideo2go is where I got the latest drivers from. I tried the latest and several others, none worked well. I also saw that the 8600m was supposed to have been tested with cs4. I never had any ‘issues’ with cs2, or any other programs, even with vista, on this laptop. The only issues were with cs4.
emil – did you read the thread? The most commonly reported problems are solved with driver or DirectX updates. There are still some remaining issues that Adobe is looking into.
Just because Adobe tested with a particular card or chipset does not mean Adobe tested with your specific configuration — Adobe can’t account for all the variations in hardware, drivers, and other software installed on your system. For the majority of users, CS4 is working fine. For some users, it isn’t working well – but different people are seeing slightly different problems, due to issues with the video drivers, other software, some OS components (thank you DirectX), and some possible bugs in Photoshop.
(please remember that CS3 and previous versions of Photoshop didn’t even try to use your GPU, now we’re using it rather heavily, and exposing problems in the driver and OS support)
"You have 30 day to return photoshop or you can buy hardware that it will work with"
So, is there a definitive list of hardware that it WILL work with? Perhaps Adobe should post the list that they tested it on before CS4 was released? Perhaps they should put a disclaimer on the software box that CS4 is not guaranteed to work in all situations?
There is a windows update, KB957321, that came on my Vista auto update that addresses a Adobe XMP specification issue with windows. There were 2 other KB’s but nothing to do with Adobe.
For XP and Vista 32 and 64 bit and some window servers and such.
Just a quick note – I would agree that Adobe usually exposes other people’s problems, however, I believe in the case of CS4, it’s also an Adobe issue. Consider these 2 factors:
1. Even if you uncheck the GPU option in CS4 (which is supposedly the cause of all of this), there are still a number of crash issues (which Adobe itself recognizes).
2. If you have a computer with dual video cards – one that supports GPU and one that doesn’t, CS4 goes into convulsions (whether GPU is checked or unchecked).
There are some major code flaws that go beyond the OS and video card drivers. There were also some serious issues in Premiere Pro CS4 as well that Adobe has now solved (and released a 4.01 patch). Hopefully a 4.01 patch is around the corner for Photoshop as well, as I’m sure it is.
Regarding some of the "whining" comments by Buko, seriously, if you don’t have anything valuable to contribute to this forum, then don’t. Many of the people here are having valid issues. Just because you have a system that works doesn’t mean that another person is "whining" when they show frustration. You are the only person in this forum that keeps telling people to stop whining. You have made 5 posts in this forum, not one of which is the least bit constructive or helpful. If you have something constructive to say, then say it. If not, then please refrain. (I’m sorry to center you out, but seriously, it’s getting old.)
I think James is referring to people like Buko who have nothing to contribute except to repeat over and over that he has no problems, and that anyone experiencing problems is whining. I doubt such comments help you very much in your efforts to isolate and fix the performance issues.
Chris Cox, "Photoshop CS4 is a disaster" #209, 25 Nov 2008 1:14 pm </webx?14/208> Thanks for explaining the situation Chris. I understand. Unfortunately I’m not one of the lucky Photoshop CS4 users. I build my computer with hardware components that are less than 2 months old and were carefully selected rather at a premium price to insure computability and take full advantage of the latest software. Unfortunately in my case that was not enough for Photoshop CS4. I also tried all suggestions and tips but that didn’t help either. After Photoshop CS3 to me CS4 feels like a big downgrade and I don’t feel like buying a new computer just for taking another chance with Photoshop CS4. The Photoshop team took a great challenge with making full use of the GPU and understandably this is not an easy task. This also requires a strong collaboration with Microsoft and the GPU manufacturers. I don’t know if there is a clear cut about who is responsible for what but common sense tells me that if one party works really hard they can compensate for the others and in situation like this the greatest effort I think has to come from the party who may loose most. I already paid for the hardware and the operating system but I’m not buying Photoshop CS4 with this problem and there’s nothing I can do about it.
common sense tells me that if one party works really hard they can compensate for the others
Only up to a point. This has been demonstrated time and time again where Adobe has identified a problem in some software they have to interact with and the responsible organisation fails to co-operate.
Before anyone jumps in and calls me an Adobe Apologist I will point out that over the years I have been one of their most vociferous critics.
I complain a lot, but I don’t whine, nor do I ask for the impossible.
The problem I have is, the screen does not refresh after making a change. If I zoom in or out the screen will refresh with the change. Also, when Photoshop first starts most of the menu options are grayed out until I make a selection to one of the menu items not grayed out. I’m running windows XP PRO 32 bit, with service pack 2 and all updates applied. Intel Core 2 duo at 2.8 ghz. I have 2 gig of top shelf memory and multiple 500 gig sata drives also GeForce 9800GT with latest drivers.
I have color Efex Pro 3.0, sharpener Pro, silver Efex, and viveza from Nik. I removed all NIK plugins and CS4 works like a charm.
I have instal the updates from Nik Software programs and CS4 finaly works!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If my story tells you anything try it. Regards, Nikos.
First of all, I want to make it clear that I sympathize with everyone having problems with PsCS4. It’s frustrating to spend so much money and time and not being able to run the program. That being said, I am one of the lucky ones that, to date, has been very happy with CS4. It runs great on my system. No delays with cursers, very fast screen rewrites, menus and pallets fine and all that. Bridge is cool.
My last two machines were custom built. No "off the shelf" junk for me. Last machine is six and a half years old and did well running CS1. Well, until recently when it starting corrupting jpg’s.
I decided to go Vista 64 on a new system. However, I was unable to find a shop to do the build at a reasonable cost. So I did the unthinkable and purchased an HP. Bloat-ware and all. I was rather doubtful but I was saving $500.00 and getting a better video card.
The main specs are as follows: HP Pavilion Elite m9450f. Vista Home Premium 64. Processor, Core 2 Quad Q9300. Motherboard, Asus IPIBL-LB Memory, 8 gigs. Video, Nvidia 9800GT (512) (driver 7.15.11.7556 – not newest) two 19′ CRTS. Second hard-drive 500 gig, Photoshop scratch only.
CS4 runs great on this system and there’s really nothing special about the machine. I posted this hoping it is of some help. I’m not connected, in any way, with HP. Scanner & printer = Epson…
To Q Photo and other lucky users. If I haven’t used Photoshop CS3 before trying CS4 I would have not noticed a problem. I would have simply considered the problem as limits that I had to live with. I don’t have problems with functionality, menus and palettes. I haven’t used Photoshop CS4 much but so far the only problem I have is that painting with larger brushes is very very slow comparing Photoshop CS3 on the same computer. It may be that some users who consider themselves lucky simply don’t use Photoshop for processor intensive tasks. Here is a test. Create a new document with the U.S. Paper preset. Take the Rough Round Bristle brush at its default size of 100. Paint quick continuous horizontal strokes along the entire width of the canvas covering it all from top to bottom without interrupting the stroke. When I do this with CS3 its all real time feedback and a slight (about 2 seconds) delay at the end of the page. When I do the same with SC4 the real time feedback stops at about the first few lines at the top of the page and the rest is a guessing game. When my hand is at the end of the page the brush redraw is still going on at the upper half and after I finish it takes about 10-15 seconds for the stroke to complete.
Buko, if you dont have anything constructive to add, please dont say anything. People are trying to deal with real issues, your immature remarks are uncalled for.
To my surprise, my XPS 400, Windows Pro SP3, GeForce 7900GS 256 passed your test. From start to finish, the paint followed the brush by about 1 to 2 seconds but never slowed nor lagged.
Part of my surprise arises because there is always a mountain of junk running in the background. This particular system is rather . . . cluttered. And, this proprietary Dell/Nvidia 7900GS wasn’t exactly designed for this sort of thing.
Think I’ll try it again later under conditions which do tend to slow things down for me quite a bit at times. With the following applications launched simultaneously: Photoshop, Bridge, Indesign, Word 2003 and at least one MSIE browser window.
OpenGL settings turned on: Vertical Sync; 3D Interaction Acceleration; and Advanced Drawing. Cache set at 8.
emil: I only see a lag doing what you asked if I whip my cursor back & forth very quickly. If I just move it back and forth at a reasonable rate there is no lag whatsoever doing the whole page.
I tried your test using the largest brush possible and smaller sizes. I saw no problems. I even doubled the size of the file and painted with six different colors, one over the other.
I often work with files that are a couple hundred megs. Occasionally the files are over 500 megs with 30 or more layers. I use a lot of filters and effects. Previously, this was on a Windows machine with 2 gigs of ram and CS1. It was slow, at times, but workable. Now with Vista 64 and PsCS4 I seldom need to wait long for any operation. Actually, saving a really large file is usually the longest wait I have to endure.
Again, I’m NOT bragging as I didn’t build this machine. Just trying to give you some hope.
Kwan: Think I’ll try it again later under conditions which do tend to slow things down for me quite a bit at times. With the following applications launched simultaneously: Photoshop, Bridge, Indesign, Word 2003 and at least one MSIE browser window.
With files loaded into each launched application, no difference from what I reported to you a few messages earlier.
This is of rather intense interest to me because next week I’ll be installing CS4 Master Collection on a new Vista (32 bit) system.
Don’t I know it. At this point, my only hope of being able to actually use the features that I bought this upgrade for is that Adobe (and/or the video drivers that it depends on) will sort this sh!t out.
Yes, it distracts you from how slowly it redraws the screen.
Incidentally although I have a number of speed issues with CS4 curiously it passes Emil’s test with the rough round bristle brush. Everybody seems to have a different experience.
By the number of posts in this thread, it would seem that yes, there are major problems for a number of people.
Buko, please tell me again how my whining sounds. I have now installed CS4 on a completely new XP Pro install. I still have the disappearing window content that I had before. And yes, I have the latest freaking drivers.
I’m done with this, until (or if) Adobe gets their program fixed.
I had a lot of problems with photoshop cs4 upgraded from cs2. It would crash alot and the cursor would blink alot. I already had the latest drivers, but I installed all of the latest microsoft updates. I went into prefs, performance and set ‘Let Photoshop use’ to 85%. I when into plugins and unchecked additional plugins. I havn’t had any problems since. I can even use gpu. Dont pay attention to kids like Buko, he shouldn’t be allowed in adult forums. His whining is the worst Ive seen. Hope this helps.
System Config: LR 2.1 PS CS4 XP Pro SP3 Dual dual-core 3.6Ghz (genuine Intel) Intel chipset on HP motherboard with latest BIOS and Intel drivers 6GB Ram Dedicated Scratch Disk: dual-channel FC array RAID 0 (4GB/sec) 1.0TB Data: (images) separate dual-channel FC array RAID 3 (4GB/sec) 2.0TB Dedicated program spindle (SATA 7200) Dedicated page spindle (SCSI 320 15K RPM) fixed page size All Drives less then 50% full Quadro FX Pro 1.0GB Dual 30 displays native resolution 2560 x 1600 All drivers verified as latest Average image size: 120Meg
CS3 ran flawlessly — I could have up to 15 images active and little to no performance issues.
De-installed CS3, then clean install on CS4
Issue1: screen repaints as reported in the thread. Slow repaints, and corrupt repaints. Disabling GL support did reduce the corrupt repaints and general repainting is quicker, but not as fast as CS3 cache level 4. Switching GL on/off is 100% repeatable.
General Note: It is not acceptable to blame nVidia. I have over 10 apps that use the GL Accelerator (including AE CS4), and they run fine. Some of this must be the way Adobe is making the system calls.
Another General Note: The test cycle for PS must not have included enough higher-end nVidia cards (Quadro FX series), or this issue would have revealed itself quickly.
Issue2: long delays when accessing file menu. I can no-longer open more then 3 large documents at a time and not experience 10-15 second delays when accessing the file menu. The program completely freezes. Then the menu opens, if I select save-as, then another freeze. If I save as a layered TIFF, then another freeze until the tiff options come-up. The save is completed, and PS returns to normal. This is 100% repeatable. I could open 15 of these same documents easily in CS3.
Issue3: Memory management. As you open files in PS, PS starts allocating memory up to the limit set in properties (in my case 1.5G). Now as you close the files, this memory is not released back to the free page pool. This has a dramatic (and very negative) effect on all other applications running on the system. Apps should release resources when done. This allows the garbage collection daemon and resource allocation routines to properly load balance. Clearly PS does not do this, the only way to release the memory is to exit PS. If garbage collection can not collect enough free pages, then virtual memory thrashing is the result. Newer 64bit will help, but how much physical RAM will you need? Applications must be disciplined enough to only allocate what they need and release when done. This is just good coding.
Issue4: Interaction with LR. Clearly Adobe feels that the future for PS is a LR centric workflow. Unfortunately, PS is hording memory so badly, that LR performance starts to degrade even after a short session. There is a long thread on this in the LR forum.
Did Emil’s test… with document size 1271×1000 and round brush 100 size. Made long strokes horizontally and found the lag a 10th of second behind, quick but still noticeable. Also another test. If I do continuous swirls with round brush size 10ish I notice the stroke can’t keep up with the cursor, it’s 1cm behind my cursor until I stop. I think most people would be fine with this, but I recall never noticing this with CS3, hence why I am on this thread.
I run windows XP 32bit on a Boxx workstation running a dual quad core processor system, 4 gigs of ram and a NVidia quadro FX graphics card. This is a top spec VFX workstation, so I do not think there is a problem with what CS4 is running on.
I think I may go back to CS3, see if my sweet memories of no lag are not me dreaming…
I have a HP DV9700 notebook with 3 GB RAM, Vista Home Premium 32, Nvidia Gforce 8600M GS GPU and an Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.00 GHz, 2.00 GHz. Not a particularly spectacular system, but ok for a laptop. It registers 4.8 on the Windows Experience Index. I bought it because it has two internal hard drives. I was experiencing quite a few of the performance lags detailed in this thread. I did two things on the same day and one or both solved my problems. I trashed the Preferences file (shift + ctrl + alt when starting Photoshop) and I installed the latest Microsoft updates. In Photoshop’s Performance Preferences, I unchecked C: (the system drive) as a scratch disk and checked D: and moved it to the top of the list for good measure. No other changes from default preferences were made. Everything is now smooth and responsive. I hope this may be of help to some of you.
Disabling Open GL and Documents as TABs has dramatically improved performance and corrupted screen paints. Hope that provides some help.
I can now open as many documents as I regularly did in CS3 without the slow menu access issues. To test, I went back to a that was edited in CS3—>file processing seems identical. basically 15 200+Meg files in process at once. But that is the FC talking, could not do that single spindle.
Issues around memory management and interactions with LR remain.
Disabling Open GL and Documents as TABs has dramatically improved performance and corrupted screen paints. Hope that provides some help.
I can now open as many documents as I regularly did in CS3 without the slow menu access issues. To test, I went back to a that was edited in CS3—>file processing seems identical. basically 15 200+Meg files in process at once. But that is the FC talking, could not do that single spindle.
Issues around memory management and interactions with LR remain.
NOTE: Solution to Color Efex thing: Download the latest version off their website. Version 3.100 totally breaks CS4, causing greyed out menus, and any changes you make not to show up until you either resize the window or zoom in/out. Their version 3.101 fixes this moronic, insane behavior.
i’m currently experiencing the photoshop cs4 vs. nvidia 8800gtx bug.
i’ll be watching for a solution. in the meantime:
– if you aren’t currently experiencing the problem, yet feel the need to post your "theories" … please STFU.
– if you aren’t currently writing code to fix the problem, yet feel the need to post your "theories" .. please STFU.
come here to find answers. even if that means "right now, there is no answer." diatribes on how clean my system should be and how the development process is rolled out in a dynamic pc world are counterproductive, at best. thanks.
I attached Photoshop to the Visual Studio Debugger and once the brush starts to lag (Rough Round Bristle 100) I see hundreds of this error and it happens with or without OpenGL enabled: First-chance exception at 0x7c812aeb in Photoshop.exe: Microsoft C++ exception: photoshop_error at memory location 0xXXXXXXXX.. (there are always two different memory locations but they change each time Photoshop is run).
When you Google your video card the sites make note of some cards shipping out with defective capacitors. CS4 gives video cards a pretty good workout. That said, do you think your video card might be one of the defective ones thus causing your problems?
You wanted facts and not "theories". So here is something you can work on.
After reading Hugh’s post, I disabled "Documents as Tabs" and this sped up Photoshop CS4 significantly. Documents still open as Tabs with this option unchecked, but now brush strokes, screen redraws, menus, etc, are working much faster in comparison to the excessive sluggishness that was before.
Earlier I had disabled OpenGL and allowed old graphics cards, using Adobe’s registry patches. I also set cache levels to 8.
One or more of these is responsible for the speed boost. Photoshop CS4 is usable now. It’s not as fast as CS3, but usable.
I would be careful with cache of 8 — you may chew-up a lot of memory if you open more then one large document at a time.
Consider, do you need 8 levels of live zoom per image? If one small image at a time, ok… If several large images at a time, probably not a good use of available memory…
It seems the slow down while adjusting color curves is related to resolution.
On a 30inch LCD, 2560×1600 native resolution and working on a photo with a resolution of 2592×3888…
If I zoom 100% and adjust a color curve (adjustment layer color curve). I get very slow feedback while adjusting color curve.
If I zoom out to 50% and do the same, I get realtime feedback on color curve adjustments
If I create a 1024×768 image and zoom in at 100%, I get realtime feedback on color curve adjustments.
Photoshop seems to not be performing well at high resolutions.
This is with a Geforce 8800GTX and a Intel Quadcore.
Note if i dont maximize the photoshop window and I make the entire window a lot smaller, It will improve performance in GPU mode.
So resolution is certainly a factor but what i dont understand is why i can run opengl apps at 2560×1600 without problem and not something as simple as a color curve correction on a 2d image.
Yup, I tried the different screen sizes, and that did make a dif. But then again, who in the business doesn’t use large monitors? Shouldn’t Photoshop be able to work at high resolutions (CS3 did)
Intel Core2 Quad 2.66GHz N512MB nvidia 8800 GT (driver ver. 7.15.11.8048 – the latest one at the time of this writing) 8GB RAM Vista 64 Dual monitors (1920×1200 each)
I took over 2 hrs to go through every post on this thread yesterday. So far I tried everything suggested, but no help. CS4 is still unusable. Faster @ Cache level 6, but still unusable.
It seems the slow down while adjusting color curves is related to resolution. On a 30inch LCD, 2560×1600 native resolution and working on a photo with a resolution of 2592×3888…
That’s what I surmised a couple of hundred posts ago!
Exactly the same thing here! PS CS4 is extreeemly sluggish and choppy with redraws and various inputs. Even small documents handle like they we´re 10 x 10 feet large. It´s beyond ridiculous. I´m testing the trial version atm, but boxed version is on the way…
I´ve tried every possible checking and unchecking of what preferences have to offer but to no avail.
My GeForce drivers are the very, very, latest and Vista home is automatically up to date.
I keep my system neat and tidy with registry aids, defrags etc. Needles to say that PS CS 1 ran smoothly.
Are you a software engineer ar Adobe? I was just wondering if you had an update on the progress.
If not, any of you that are and do? I know you’re working hard on this, I just thought an update would be cool.
I contacted nvidia today; I’ll post here if I hear anything back from them. So far I’m seeing a number of configurations similar to mine that also have this issue, so I’m hopefull the solution is on horizon.
As far as Erbs’ comment, I think his post may help educate the new users on the existance of the issue on other threads. I don’t think it was malicious (it wouldn’t hurt if you link to this thread though, Erbs)
Yes John, I behaved a bit like a raging noob in this forum because I am. Just didn´t want to see this topic getting lost in the mist of time prematurely. And with CS4 coming my way (and my cash going their way)I can´t help wondering: Will I get a sufficiently working piece of software ?
iVan B. is spot on: As far as Erbs’ comment, I think his post may help educate the new users on the existance of the issue on other threads. I don’t think it was malicious (it wouldn’t hurt if you link to this thread though, Erbs)
The weird thing is, as I explained in detail in another thread, my installation seems to be working fine despite having 11 errors show up! Not only that, my system isn’t exactly the top of the heap. It’s a single core Athlon 64, 2G processor, only 2G of memory and the video card is a PCI, not PCIe card! (PCIe bus went down so I grabbed a $50 PCI card until I rebuild). Needless to say, I have no problems with graphics as the Open Gl is not functional.
Cox is right. Solve the video problems with an ancient card!
Yes, Lawrence, but then you wouldn’t be enjoying any of the new OpenGL features that you paid for in the upgrade. Might as well just go back to CS3, which is what I’ve done. 8(
I don’t need the 3D stuff, and in some ways, CS3 is better. How can anyone prefer the tiny windows for Layers? I haven’t looked for a way to make them bigger, and so far, the graph in Curves is the crude less accurate one. Combine the two and the appearance to a user inexperienced is "these don’t matter much".
But there are some real advantages. Auto Tone is one.
OK, some of the comments on this thread are getting inane.
The nVidia FX series has been out for what, five years. The card I am using was "top of the line" (i.e. $3,000) three years ago. The Open GL spec has not changed during the beta test phase of CS4
I apologize for being rude, but if you do not know what you are talking about, please do not speculate.
What kind of OpenGL can you do with CS4? Is this in the basic or Ext.?
Yes, Lawrence, but then you wouldn’t be enjoying any of the new OpenGL features that you paid for in the upgrade. Might as well just go back to CS3, which is what I’ve done. 8(
First off, thanks to the Adobe engineers for paying attention. I’d like to affer an insight that may help them/us resolve the issue(s). Also, sorry for the arguabley long post!
As pointed out in another thread, networked printers can wreak havoc on performance (not to discout video card problems). It was implied that perhaps there was an issue with Photoshop code but I sort of disagree. In fact, the issue may involve more than just networked printers. Qualifier, I am using an HP C6180 so this may not apply to other manufacturers/models.
I recently reinstalled Win XP SP3 and other programs systematically for general troubleshooting purposes (a bunch of weird system errors and so forth that have begun since SP3). All worked well until I installed the printer drivers. I am hard pressed to say if this is a conflict because I tried various software combinations and came up with the same errors related to system files. Perhaps there is a hardware or driver issue (RAID controller conflict?) but it doesn’t appear anywhere as such.
Obviously, if OS system files (.dll errors among others not addressed by Microsoft) are being affected then it is reasonable to assume that Photoshop and other programs become susceptible to problems. It appears that CS4 and new versions of other resource intensive software applications are particularly so.
Here’s the killer thing: if I uninstall the printer/ drivers and even clean the registry of all HP entries, the error problems continue to appear until I reformat and start over with a new installation (without the HP drivers). Ditto for SP3. So, something related to the HP installation (and SP3) must be occuring in the MBR/Track 0 or perhpas some other hidden "closet" that is irreversible. This issue occurs only if I reinstall the Microsoft security packs/updates, as well. If I’m not mistaken, the MBR is also where the Adobe activiation code resides.
In conclusion, it appears that HP, at least, has not kept up with changes made with the various service packs and security updates (arguabley MS may be at fault). I also tried Vista and the problems were significantly worse including extreeeeemely(!) slow performance and so forth (despite upgrading to so-called Vista compatible printer and video drivers). The Microsoft upgrade advisor had said everything was hunk dory for an upgrade to Vista but after installation Vista said my Promise RAID controller and high end sound card were incompatible (may explain the performance issues). I also recently discovered Asus has posted my board (P4C 800E Deluxe) is incompatible (or unsupported) with Vista so it is no wonder Microsoft is taking so much well deserved heat in the press. But all of this leads me to conclude that apparent hardware/driver issues and conflicts that are obscure and deep rooted are becoming more critical as our favorite programs evolve. Unfortunately, the never ending security updates seem to be playing a central role, as well.
I suspoect Adobe engineers can figure a few things out for us but I suspect Microsoft is at the heart of the problem. They keep changing the playing field with service packs and security updates without assesing the impacts on the myriad of existing hardware and driver combinations. I’ll save the Mac comments until I can afford one (issues for sure but far fewer).
Printers and associated monitoring SW can have a negative effect on Windows performance… I can think back to the bad old days of Epson’s original monitor agent Now that was a real disaster It could cripple an entire system…
Actually, I can think back to my graduate school days when I wrote some of the original Postscript drivers for Adobe Just thinking about the red book brings shivers.
However, it must be noted that this is squarely an Adobe PS issue…. Not Windows… Not video card manufactures, not chip sets, not drivers, not anything but PS.
Personally, I have the Master Suite. The other apps run well (including AE CS4 –> which is far more intensive then PS.) I also run FormWorks, AutoCAD, various 3D modeling, 3D shading, and NLE SW and HD Video SW. Again, all far more intensive then anything attempted by PS. None of these apps have any problems, and neither did CS3…
It’s just CS4 PS and 2.1 LR. The issues with PP CS4 have largely been fixed with the 4.1 upgrade.
I am sure that Adobe will shortly release a PS CS 4.1 — I have some work-arounds in place for my system and will stick with CS4, but hoping for a timeframe on the 4.1
The nVidia FX series has been out for what, five years. The card I am using was "top of the line" (i.e. $3,000) three years ago. The Open GL spec has not changed during the beta test phase of CS4
And I suppose there were no driver updates in all that time either, eh? If everything tested fine for them on the particular setups they had available at the time, what is it you want from Adobe?
Writing the drivers for adobe is pretty impressive. Maybe you could offer to look at their code to see what is up and provide possible solutions to where the break down may be?
Ya, I know you may have a lot on your plate but this will help a lot of people out.
I’m not an expert and am not attempting to speculate<SM>.
I rebuilt my HD and loaded XP SP3 and my MB drivers(Asus M2NBP-VM CSM w/ Athlon 64 X2 5600). My onboard audio (SoudMax Audio I) and my Nvidia video card (Geforce 8600 GT) were not recognized. I simply formatted my HD again and loaded XP & SP2, all was well.
There appears to me to be something obnoxious with SP3 (JMO). I was told MS would not recognize my devices because the OS couldn’t control my coping DVD & audio CD, who knows.
G
On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 11:06:02 -0800, wrote:
First off, thanks to the Adobe engineers for paying attention. I’d like to affer an insight that may help them/us resolve the issue(s). Also, sorry for the arguabley long post!
As pointed out in another thread, networked printers can wreak havoc on performance (not to discout video card problems). It was implied that perhaps there was an issue with Photoshop code but I sort of disagree. In fact, the issue may involve more than just networked printers. Qualifier, I am using an HP C6180 so this may not apply to other manufacturers/models.
I recently reinstalled Win XP SP3 and other programs systematically for general troubleshooting purposes (a bunch of weird system errors and so forth that have begun since SP3). All worked well until I installed the printer drivers. I am hard pressed to say if this is a conflict because I tried various software combinations and came up with the same errors related to system files. Perhaps there is a hardware or driver issue (RAID controller conflict?) but it doesn’t appear anywhere as such.
Obviously, if OS system files (.dll errors among others not addressed by Microsoft) are being affected then it is reasonable to assume that Photoshop and other programs become susceptible to problems. It appears that CS4 and new versions of other resource intensive software applications are particularly so.
Here’s the killer thing: if I uninstall the printer/ drivers and even clean the registry of all HP entries, the error problems continue to appear until I reformat and start over with a new installation (without the HP drivers). Ditto for SP3. So, something related to the HP installation (and SP3) must be occuring in the MBR/Track 0 or perhpas some other hidden "closet" that is irreversible. This issue occurs only if I reinstall the Microsoft security packs/updates, as well. If I’m not mistaken, the MBR is also where the Adobe activiation code resides.
In conclusion, it appears that HP, at least, has not kept up with changes made with the various service packs and security updates (arguabley MS may be at fault). I also tried Vista and the problems were significantly worse including extreeeeemely(!) slow performance and so forth (despite upgrading to so-called Vista compatible printer and video drivers). The Microsoft upgrade advisor had said everything was hunk dory for an upgrade to Vista but after installation Vista said my Promise RAID controller and high end sound card were incompatible (may explain the performance issues). I also recently discovered Asus has posted my board (P4C 800E Deluxe) is incompatible (or unsupported) with Vista so it is no wonder Microsoft is taking so much well deserved heat in the press. But all of this leads me to conclude that apparent hardware/driver issues and conflicts that are obscure and deep rooted are becoming more critical as our favorite programs evolve. Unfortunately, the never ending security updates seem to be playing a central role, as well. I suspoect Adobe engineers can figure a few things out for us but I suspect Microsoft is at the heart of the problem. They keep changing the playing field with service packs and security updates without assesing the impacts on the myriad of existing hardware and driver combinations. I’ll save the Mac comments until I can afford one (issues for sure but far fewer).
"However, it must be noted that this is squarely an Adobe PS issue…. Not Windows… Not video card manufactures, not chip sets, not drivers, not anything but PS."
I’m not sure this statement addresses the discrepancy in performance that is obviously present among users of PS. I’ve managed to get PS (and Windows) to behave quite nicely but it has been an ordeal and is definitely related to hardware/driver and service pack issues..at least for me. No speculation here.
Les, I agree in part. However, I only got PS and LR to work well when I started to disable functionality in PS. For me, it currently works fine (similar to CS3). I will stick with CS4. I bet that PS CS4.01 will be out in the next 3-6 weeks. And will fix most of these issues. If the Adobe Prod Dev staff can comment on timeline it would be appreciated.
However, it I were a betting man, the culprit would be is either system calls or the parameters being passed. That would explain almost everything. If an individual has a a different config, then they may get different results (and acceptable). I used to write OS code and low-level drivers for a living, and this simply smells like the problem. No evidence, but one of those "been there, suffered through that". In my time, I am sure users were cursing me for something similar…
David, sorry, I no longer have access to source. This was a long time ago and is actually a pretty funny story. I was trying to output my thesis on occlusion algorithms (a subset of graphics theory) and the doc would not print on the U’s RIP. The problem came down to the RIP’s implementation of the red book [this was before the release of the blue book]. I was forced to re-write the postscript driver for the mainframe to get my thesis to print (and get my degree—not a small incentive). Worked many long nights with the folks from Adobe. They were a bunch of good guys. This was before e-mail, so it all came down to phone calls, diet coke and chips.
Well, I decided to take the proactive stance and test a theory. I found a shop that was willing to open a box and try a different video card in my system; if it doesn’t fix my issue, they’ll take it back. I’ll report the results tonight.
Yeah, I know; it took me over 2 hrs to get myself up to date with this thread when I first read it the other day.
I got nvidia 8800 gt 512MB. The idea was to try a better card from a different vendor and see if that makes a dif.
It didn’t. So the guy suggested running a diagnostic. Turns out that my power supply was maxed out (3 hard drives, 8GB or RAM, 512 video card, quad core cpu, etc…). He actually said he fixed someone else’s Photoshop issue that way back when CS first came out. So he swapped the power supply and called me to tell me my ‘shop is running smooth. Went to pick it up only to find out he lowered the resolution so he could read stuff on the monitor. I bumped it back up, and it’s the same old song. I suggested swapping the cards again; perhaps it was the issue of low power AND nvidia card. He’ll try working on that tomorrow (it’s kind of nice to have someone else sweat over this for change)
I got dual monitors at 24" each; perhaps I’m overtasking my video card (although I doubt it given the card). He’ll try swapping the card again now that I have a skookum power supply (pardon the BC jargon). We should know by the end of the day tomorrow. I am willing to throw money at this problem till it goes away. Well, to a point anyway…
I subscribed to this thread so I get every post delivered to my phone, and I read everyone’s inputs. When the issue is solved I’ll post all the details here – the hardware/software configuration I had and any changes that I make. I’ll make sure we try one thing at the time so we nail this sucker down.
I know Adobe is working on this as well, although I haven’t seen any recent posts from the tecs. Wrote to nvidia – no reply so far (it’s only been a day though). So, Adobe guys (hope you’re reading this), any discoveries on your end so far?
And guys, be nice to Adobe techies. Pissy attitude is only going to make them not want to reply here. When a problem like this happens, you better be sure they’re working on it.
And guys, be nice to Adobe techies. Pissy attitude is only going to make them not want to reply here. When a problem like this happens, you better be sure they’re working on it.
iVan, if I’ve sounded pissy, I apologize. Sometimes it’s hard to hear the same old stuff from the techs about "latest drivers" when I already have them.
I will say, though, that the power supply issue rang a bell with me early on, so I upgraded to a 620W Corsair unit. No luck, no difference, nada. My old one, which still works fine, was a 520W Corsair. Maybe I can somehow rig it to make popcorn. 🙂
Power supplies are cut and dried. They either work or they don’t. I doubt, except for spiky ones, that they would make any difference in these sorts of things.
Now, if you were having these problems intermittently, or a funny startup that is cured by a quick reboot, (or you smell smoke!), I would look to the PS. Other than that, they should be fine.
That’s just the thing, Lawrence. When the guy at the shop told me about the power supply being an issue with slow PSCS, I too was skeptical. But then he called me to tell me my machine was working. I was getting ready to buy him doughnuts; power supply – who knew!!! Pure genius!!!But then I found out the problem wasn’t fixed after all.
So I dunno. Maybe he did fix the other dude’s machine with a new power supply, maybe he didn’t; I’ll never know. But I promised I’d relay the score (Photoshop-1, me-0), so I just passed along what he said. I will keep the pwr supply though.
He seemed beat when he realized he didn’t solve the issue. But he seems determined to make this thing go away, so I’m hopeful.
And Nick, as I stated in the other thread, I wasn’t talking about you in particular. I did feel pissy about that other dude’s replies to your posts, though.
There was an issue in the past (around ’99) with Asus P2B -D* series motherboards, in their first revision, as Photoshop was taxing the memory path so much that it crashed on the older revisions of the mobos.
The crash in Photoshop was a symptom , not the cause of the problem.
Hugh, thanks for the post and I agree with your assesment for the most part. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones who’ve been able to make CS4 work very smoothly withpout having to disable features. As a bonus, CS4 GL features work flawlessly on my dual monitor setup (Dell 2005W) even though the read me file says this is unsupported in WIN XP:). BTW, I’m using a vintage NVidia 6800 card w/512 MB RAM.
Ivan, I can relate! I’ve spent the better part of three weeks (as time allowed) troubleshooting not only PS but other issues related to Windows. Ultimately, HP printer drivers (and a dying processor!) were found to be at fault. The failure of HP to update drivers and related software since the initial release (and dealing with marginal outsourced tech support) is frustrating to say the least.
As an aside, I did eliminate a bad RAM module from consideration as per very good (non outsourced) tech support from Crucial. You’d never know a stick was bad unless you go through a systematic testing process. Symptoms are similar to a dying processor (in my case ultimately caused by malfunctioning cooling fan) so a RAM intensive program like PS can be very much affected in strange ways.
I’ve certainly had my share of specific issues with CS2 when it first landed on my desktop several years ago. Fortunately, Adobe engineers, especially Scott Byer, were responsive and ultimately released an update that addressed my issues, as well as others. Thank you! I suspect we’ll see an update to CS4 that addresses the performance problems some folks seem to be experiencing.
But I further suspect Adobe will *in part* be creating work arounds to buggy harware drivers and a bogus Vista operating system which was highly touted as a cure all for everyone, including folks such as myself who are still running vintage machines. What a fraudulent dud!Even my Dell laptop which was sold as "Vista Capable" (and followed by a "free" Vista upgrade) won’t run it properly. Obviously, Adobe has their work cut out for them but based upon past experience they’re up to the task.
Even my Dell laptop which was sold as "Vista Capable" (and followed by a "free" Vista upgrade) won’t run it properly.
there’s a lawsuit in progress over the whole vista capable debacle and emails from intel and microsoft are taking current stage. google if you’re interested…
-Successfully eliminated the video card as an issue; we tried cards from different vendors (all from the Adobes safe cards list), and made sure we loaded the latest drivers. So its definitely NOT the video card (at least in my case). We even flashed the motherboard and tried both video cards again, just in case its a combination of a motherboard driver/video card in the system. Still slow.
-As suggested by the guy at the shop (he said he fixed someone elses issue this way), I installed a new power supply as the previous one was somewhat on the wimpy side. By somewhat I mean a LOT, and by wimpy I mean it was crap; it was a surprise the machine was even running (and to think the shop actually sold this computer with all the hardware and not put a power supply that can run it???). It did solve the problem of my pocked hard drives not having enough juice to power up from USB. Now theyre running faster then a chicken through Ethiopia. However, CS4 is still slow.
-Ran a heavy cocktail of virus checks. I was surprised to discover that 13 viruses were identified, especially given the fact this was a 10 day old Windows installation and I have Kaspersky running on it. However, it turned out that some of those viruses werent viruses, but bona-fide system files operating some of the add-on hardware (like my monitor calibrator). I had an erronious detection and a premature deletion. And now that hardware doesnt work. SC4 still slow.
-Reimaged my hard drive to an early installation state. Updated the drivers, installed CS4 – nada! Slow as usual. The only thing that speeds it up is lowering the resolution; then it runs fine. But I want my pixels back, dammit.
-Now, the only thing I never tried was to completely reformat the hard drive, install Vista, load the drivers, update and then install CS4 ONLY. The thing is that my computer didnt ship with a restore CD; instead it has that factory partition thing HP puts on with a ton of crapware. So I got myself a copy of Vista 64 Home Premium (what I got with the machine in a first place) and Im installing it now. Once its done, Ill load the latest video card driver, update Vista and install Photoshop.
If that doesnt fix the issue, Ill start pulling out my RAM modules, one by one, and look into that.
If that doesnt work, Ill start pulling my hair, one by one, and see if that works. If not, then teeth, then eyeballs, etc, etc
Now, Im determined to at least locate the source of the problem. I may not be able to fix it, but Ill find what the culprit is cause I want to tell Adobe so they can fix it. It smells like motherboard teen spirit right now, but Ill know for sure once I tried everything else. If you guys have any suggestions on what else I might try that I havent thunk of, I wanna hear about it. So keep posting; I get the replies to my phone and I read them all.
Streak of bad luck I guess. I didnt want to install the windows from the factory partition as its full of HP junk, so the guy gave me an install CD with a clean copy of Vista. I installed it using the key that shipped with my machine, only to find out its a 32 bit, not 64 @$#&!@^%#$
Another two hours wasted.
The shop is now closed, so I called Microsoft to see if theyd tell me where I can download a clean of copy Windows, since I already paid for it. Basically they said good luck.
So I found a torrent, but the damn thing is going to take me till morning to download, and I was hoping to get all this figured out by then.
Anyone know where I can get a legal copy of Windows Vista Home Premium edition 64 bit? I have a key, so I need a legal CD image or an install file. I couldnt find it on Microsoft site, and I’m looking to get it from a server, so I don’t have to wait forever to DL it.
Again, I cant stress this enough; its LEGAL copy Im looking for. Dont send me links of sites with cracked stuff, I have a key that has been paid for. The version must be Vista Home Premium 64 bit cause thats what I had; I dont want to introduce too many variables or Ill never be able to tell where the problem was.
BTW, I got Photoshop to work fine on 32 bit Vista, but then I had no video card drivers installed, therefore no high-res and no 64 bit Photoshop. God only knows if the problem would be there at higher resolution, but I can’t load the driver to test since it’s for a 64 bit OS.
Those trying to catch up, start from a post # 297, and youll be in the loop.
The last statement in my previous post got me thinking; well, why dont I try loading the 32 bit driver for my card and try Ps at full res; see what happens then. I mean, what better thing can I do on a Friday night while waiting for a 64 bit OS?
So I downloaded the driver and installed it. Fired the Ps, made sure I check the OpenGL option in prefs; restarted and WHAM! Its running slicker than deer guts on a door knob!
OK, dont get yer hopes up; I havent figured out what makes it go ka-ka-coo-coo yet. As soon as I get a clean 64 bit Vista on my system Ill try the same, but something tells me itll be OK.
Then all I have to do is install one driver, one piece of software at the time and test till I find the culprit. This may take a day or two; it depends on how fast I can get my hands on a clean OS, and then Ill install, test and image; install, test and image. And on, and on, and on
It could be many things, my Wacom, Spyder calibrator, any of the myriad of cards I got in my machine (wireless, TV & radio tuner, card readers, etc ), a bad piece of code in some software; well see.
The reason for imaging the Hard Drive is so I can compare the results of uninstalling the offending driver/software vs clean install once I know what it is. Given that so many have tried uninstalling suspicious stuff, maybe there is a bad registry entry that stays on even after the uninstall, hence the need for a full format.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel!
Oh, and Russell, doubt its relevant now, but my motherboard is an HP 5189-1080.
Since my last post I found a clean 64 bit Vista iso online, and its almost fully downloaded (for those that havent been following I have a legal key). In the meantime I decided to test out the image that shipped with my machine and try that out.
Yeah, I said I didnt want the junk that ships with those, but since I had to wait for the download, what the heck. I figured Id try as Ill be reformatting in the morning anyway.
Well, I needed to install some updates and a service pack 1 to install Photoshop. Holy crap that SP1 takes forever!
But once I did (drum roll, please) I got speed!
Were on the right track. Ill reformat in the morning regardless (I dont want the trial anti-viruses and rectal enemas), and once I do, Ill take my time loading and testing to find the culprit.
At this point – still no clue what causes this. But Ill post as I narrow it down. At least something worked
I asked about the motherboard because I had a LOT of problems getting 8gb RAM to run stable on my system. I resolved the problem by switching to a motherboard from a different manufacturer. Try pulling 1/2 the system memory to see if that helps (once you get Vista64 reinstalled). Note that there are motherboard bios settings (memory remapping) on some systems that need to be enabled to work properly with more than 3-4gb RAM, though some mobos do it automatically without a bios setting.
iVan, so you had a slow photoshop CS4 in Vista 64 bits oem (SP1?) from HP, I guess, then installed a 32 bits version of the nVidia drivers, and it works flawlessly. Ditto with a "standard" Vista 64 bits SP1, and what videocard driver in that case?
As Russel points out, there are still obstacles in the path that may trip up others, even if Ivan gets it up and running. I got mine up and running by ignoring the messages that I have 11 errors in the Download that now appear to be non-issues, but how do I know for sure? The two systems (one with no errors) run essentially identical. In fact the Dell, which had no errors, is slower than the one with errors, but it always has been slower.
These problems should be rarer than lipstick on a bear’s butt, however, as Barry has suggested, they aren’t.
I also want to thank Ivan for his persistence and for keeping us informed. 🙂
There were a number of other steps I did in between, but in short I had a fairly new installation of Vista 64 Home Premium (OEM) with a 64 bit nvidia 8800 GT driver and Photoshop was slow. That being said, while OS WAS a new installation, I also had a ton of other stuff (both hardware and software) installed along with it. Tried flashing BIOS – no luck.
Then, through a turn of events, I ended up with a 32 bit Vista Home Premium with a 32 bit nvidia 8800 GT driver. Short of having that driver, Vista was clean as a whistle; I didn’t even have the LAN and audio drivers on. Installed Photoshop – bang! Fast.
Then, since I had no clean Vista 64 Home Premium DVD, I found a download (must stress it’s legal, or someone is going to get on my case – I know it). And while I was DLing it, I thought I’d go to play, and install Vista 64 Home Premium from the (dirty) OEM partition image. Sure it has bloatware, but I had time to kill and I was curious. It should be noted that this image had drivers for almost all hardware I have in the machine (no card reader). Installed Photoshop and it’s running fast.
In all cases above I made sure OpenGL checkbox was on, and I used the same doc size every time with same settings to do the test.
In all cases I had 8GB of RAM loaded, so that’s kosher too.
So, right now, it would seem that it’s either a newer driver for a piece of hardware I have, or another piece of software.
My decision at this point is to take my downloaded Vista 64 Home Premium and load it using the key on a computer box. Crapware-free! Then create a hard drive image, install Photoshop and run the test. I expect it to run fine given the results so far.
Then I’ll repeatedly cycle through creating a hard drive image, installing next driver or software and installing Photoshop to test it ’till it fails. I know it will, since I will eventually end up with the same configuration I had when it would fail every time.
When it fails, I’ll note what piece of code made a difference, and load the very first image I created. Then I’ll load the offending code and check if it craps out when that’s the only thing installed before Photoshop.
And then I’m planning to continue up the ladder to test other software ’till I get everything on my machine. I want to make sure there aren’t other things that might also make it slow.
Thanks for the word of support guys, you are the ones keeping me going.
Just fyi I had an Intel D975XBX2 motherboard (during the beta testing) that could not use 8GB RAM no matter what I did to it. Intel even sent me a newer REV replacement board and it was just as bad. Vista would hang, apps would stagger along (not just CS4) and I ended us with the conclusion that the 975 chipset was just not up to doing it. I got an Asus P5E-WS-Pro and it’s worked flawlessly. I think CS4 still has some issues that we’ll have to wait to be resolved with a ‘dot’ release. But all the Open GL stuff works with a cheapie Sapphire/Radeon HD2400.
You might try the system with 2-GB RAM installed with Vist64 and see if it makes a difference. If it does then your system is simply not working properly with the RAM and no brand of RAM will change things if it’s a motherboard limitation.
Most 64bit apps don’t push the RAM as much as CS4 will so you’ll see issues that are not evident when performing less demanding tasks.
Google ram testing software for utilities that do this without painful cut and try ops.
I am not at all convinced that taking code out of sequence and introducing it at some other place arbitrarily determined will work to give answers. There are dll’s and Registry entries that can generate dependencies. But see what happens. If mine runs without all the code, well then…!
Russell, I have a d975XBX2 "Bad Axe 2" board and its running 8 GB ram perfectly. I use the ram mostly for 3D work and i push ram usage a lot and have no problem at all.
Its possible you had a ram that just didnt like the board or had a defect.
I think you may have misunderstood me; I got the problem fixed, my system is running as it should now. I was able to resolve the issue AND speed up my overall performance. But I still don’t know what caused the problem in a first place
So what I’m doing now is loading things back, one by one, to recreate and identify the problem.
Earlier we ran the machine through a full systems test; RAM, MoBo, hard drives, all the cards, etc. Turns out that the power supply was crap and we changed it. The guy @ the shop swore that it can make a dif with regards to speed. While skeptical about that statement I decided to get a better power supply anyway. However, that didn’t solve the issue as expected (had my hopes up for a moment).
What eventually did solve the issue was a full format and installation of OS with nothing but the latest video card driver. I didn’t even load the sound card drivers the first time I did it.
Since then I have reformatted my hard drive several times as the first breakthrough occurred with Vista 32 as opposed 64, and the second was with HP factory-shipped image. Photoshop CS4 worked flawlessly every time. However, I don’t want that stuff that HP ships their machines with, so I found a clean Vista 64 Home Premium, and that’s what I’m using now.
Since I eliminated HP bloatware as being part of the problem, I can now start building a nice clean image from scratch. CS4 worked fine with all that junk installed after a full format.
I appreciate everyone’s input and I’ll report as things develop. Once I got this figured out I’ll write a full report (it won’t be short, I can promise you that).
I have the D975XBX2 board with 4gb currently and want to go to 8gb. Since I have read several comments about this particular board not liking 8gb, would you mind sharing the type of memory that you are having success with. I am running the Q6700 processor.
So when you went on line and activated your Vista 64 bit download with a OEM serial number that was assigned to your OEM Windows software, Windows activated?
I have a d975XBX2 "Bad Axe 2" board and its running 8 GB ram perfectly.
Well I tried everything including a special order of Crucial RAM which was the only 2GB sticks on the Intel tested RAM for this board and it would not run stable. Intel sent me new mobo it too was not stable. Numerous calls to and from Intel failed to resolve the issue so I just gave up. The Asus board worked 1st time, no problemo. You are using Photoshop CS4 64bit?
Aw man! I got through the full installation with all the drivers and settings just right when I read you post. So I wobbled back to my computer (which never prompted me to validate so far) and manually ran the validation.
Dagnabit!
I guess you can figure what happened then.
Back to the restore partition it is. Good thing I saved the image of the entire hard drive.
I thunk all Vista disks should be the same as long as its the same version of OS. Obviously you have an idea what happened here, and Id like to hear about it. Care to enlighten?
Call Microsoft at the number on your screen after the activation denial. I’ve done this in the past and with different installation media and it got a new activation code in about 5 minutes.
Call Microsoft at the number on your screen after the activation denial. I’ve done this in the past and with different installation media and it got a new activation code in about 5 minutes.
ditto. it’s a pita reading off numbers to them and copying them back, but it works.
just for some background, i have an original version of XP Pro. no service pack. won’t install on a pcie system at all. just bombs out. i downloaded a full copy with sp3 slipstreamed in from MSDN and was denied activation when entering the serial i got with the original disc. got a rep on the phone immediately (at about 11:00 pm my time) and the whole deal took about 5 minutes, including my explaining what i’d done (formatted and install an MSDN version rather than the copy on my disc).
Your OEM version preloaded on your computer generates code numbers that match your motherboard, CPU and other things installed on your computer. That version can only be used on that computer. Plus there is code that identifies OEM from Retail copies.
From what I have read in the past people have used their OEM numbers for "like" vista items in 32 bit and 64 bit. So in other words you can’t upgrade from your Vista home premium to Ultimate. Problem being with OEM factory installed is that the factory is the owner thus the trouble shooter.
Gets worse if you build a system and buy a OEM disk. It may be cheaper however you are now the owner and troubleshooter. Microsoft won’t help you. Buy regular retail and microsoft will help you.
So when you installed your downloaded software windows was looking for a number not associated with OEM. I just assume this because the software you downloaded might have a retail code associated with it? Thus it locked you out and you should have gotten a screen telling you to activate on line or call in? Maybe so.
I won’t keep writing as you can go to microsoft website or other sites to read about it.
Like Robert wrote: Call Microsoft up and tell them what you are doing as it won’t hurt to try.
I have never had a pleasure of installing the OS from a disk other than what came with a computer; I thought it would be the same as long as the OS the computer and the code are all the same.
STATUS UPDATE:
OK, back to the issue; I installed Vista and all the hardware I use with the latest drivers to go with it. I installed Photoshop, checked the settings and ran the usual test. She’s running fast.
I think I have successfully eliminated any hardware/drivers as the issue. Unless, of course, I had an old driver for something unrelated that was causing the problem in the past. Thatd be a bummer, but I think I have a way to figure that out as well.
The next step is to start installing programs back. I’ll install three or four at the time and then install Photoshop to test it; that way I’ll narrow it down faster. If I were to do it one at the time, the in-between imaging would take forever.
The way I see it, two things can happen. One, I’ll install the offending software(s) and figure out what it is.
The alternative is that I won’t be able to reproduce the problem. Luckily I kept the image of my system when I couldn’t get it to work no matter what I tried (at this point I have something in the order of a dozen images all in all). So if I can’t replicate the issue, I’ll revert to the time Photoshop was slow, and then check the drivers. If that doesn’t do it; I’ll start uninstalling stuff ’till it does work.
As a matter of fact, why dont I get a show of hands to see which software should I try first. Any of you with the slow Photoshop use any of the following? Im curious to see if there is a something that shows up with consistency across the board:
Acronis True Image v.11 (Im currently running it from a boot disc, so its not installed yet) Wacom tablet Nero 8 Kaspersky anti-virus Google Earth Office 2007 Audacity Daemon Tools 4 lite (64) Spyder Pro Diskkeeper 2008 Efficient WMA MP3 converter DNG converter HP Photosmart printer D7260 Logiteck quickcam TeamViewer APC uninterrupted power supply ES 750 WinRAR 3.something Garmin Mapsource And several browsers (IE, Netscape, Opera, Safari and Firefox)
I dont recall what versions were for most of these programs, and I may have missed a few, but its a start.
Following you thread, I cant quite piece-together exactly what HW and SW configurations you built.
It appears that some combinations of video card/driver and motherboard failed, and you worked to get one HW config to succeed. And at this point, you are tweaking the SW install? Forgive me if I have this wrong, because it sounds like a lot of work I believe that detailing the HW/driver configurations that failed and the one that succeeded would be of great help to the Engineers at Adobe.
Also, many motherboards have tuning options. For instance, I could not use hyper threading for a six months because my graphics card freaked-out. I believe one poster also mentioned memory tuning options.
One other thing, do you have any fancy disk interface cards. Both my SCSI and FC cards have independent BIOS code that interferes with some motherboard operations. These BIOSs had to be jumpered-out to increase my system stability.
Office 2007 was my 1st install after ps cs4. No problems what so ever.
Also I noticed you had a wacom listed. I just read in another thread where someone installed new x64 drivers from the wacom website and they they work.
Glad to hear Microsoft will help people will Dell OEM. I remember 4 years ago when I had a Dell and called Microsoft support they refered me to Dell.
Gets worse if you build a system and buy a OEM disk. It may be cheaper however you are now the owner and troubleshooter. Microsoft won’t help you. Buy regular retail and microsoft will help you.
Not true. I have a sample copy of XP Pro and I recently was told I had 2 free help calls, of which I promptly used one. No matter. The advice was bogus and I had to solve it on my own, and actually, with a comment here in these forums concerning a specific AV and their "extra added features".
Lawrence, It is been 3 years since I chose a xp pro retail over OEM. It is good that Microsoft has since given 2 free calls for OEM. Maybe the shop owner who told me this was wrong? Anyways….
I run a Intel quad core 6600 with 3.2 gigs of system ram and an Nvidia 8800 Ultra 768 megs of ram. Running on Vista 32 ultimate. I believe my machine is within Adobe’s specs to run the program, yet I am experiencing the slowness like others. I have the latest video drivers, but I get a little bit better performance with the advanced/3d performance taken off in the preferences. CS3 runs as smooth as ever however. I am seeing very strange behavior leading me to suspect I may have a bad install though:
I can’t even just "open" something, it’s greyed out, I have to choose "open recent" and then "clear recent" to get the "open" option to appear.
Changes made to a photo or a project require that I either zoom in or out or resize via mouse drag to see the change.
Example: Once I go though the whole "open fiasco" and finally get a photo open, some strange things happen……I sometimes don’t get a thumbnail in the channel/layers section. If I do get a thumbnail and I go to alter the photo like say levels or curves, the change won’t happen until I either zoom or resize. Although I can see the change happen in the thumbnail if it’s there.
Also, when I make a change, most of the time the "undo" is greyed out, which is weird. I can still do the "undo" via keyboard command though, but again, I have to zoom or resize to see the change.
Example: I will open a photo and have the channels/layer thumbnail there. Then switching to lab color I sometimes will lose the thumbnails, then after picking the lightness channel and bringing up unsharp mask, the display will just be checkerboarded and only when I hit the zoom percentage just under the display area in unsharp mask window will the picture come up. Then when I hit ok to that and it goes back to the main, I lose the thumbnails for RGB and Lightness, yet color channels A+B thumbnails are still there? Sometimes I will see the sharpen change, sometimes I have to do the resize/zoom thing. Then again, I’m still not out of the woods. I have to switch back to RGB now and guess what, all of a sudden "mode" is now greyed out?
Sorry for the long post, but this is very, very bizzare behavior and I’m wondering if anybody is seeing this? At this time I’m starting to think I have a bad install, even though no errors or messages came up in during the install other than that it was successful and finished. Also, I do not get any crashes or codes, so it seems stable from that point of view for me.
Hugh, Ill make sure I include the full description of the software and hardware configurations (before and after) in my report when Im done. Ill also make sure Adobe gets it too. I dont want to do it now, my posts are getting kind of long already with all this work, but I can point you to my posts #270 and #322 where you can get a rough idea. In short, my hardware is now the same as it was before (short of power supply, but we know that wasnt the issue now). Ill cover more about software and drivers. No firmware changes to anything, just a flashed BIOS.
Lawrence, I would prefer not to do this, but seeing no solution from Adobe as of yet I felt compelled to do something. Besides, some time ago I had a problem with CS3 (paragraph below) that I solved reading Adobe Photoshop forums. Time to give back.
Dave, the thing about the HP printer – that totally echoed with me given the whole thing with Photoshop being slow to open files when default printer is on a network. Which is that thing I would have never found out were it not for these forums.
Richard, you mentioned open fiasco. Do you have a network printer set as your default one? If you do, close Photoshop, open printers in Control Panel and change that to something not on the network. Then try Photoshop. That is likely going to speed up opening and creating new files dramatically.
If you have to print something, just choose a network printer from the print menu.
With regards to your other issues, you have something major going on there. How does your CS3 run in comparison, and has CS4 been like this from day one, or is this a new issue?
Erbs, Hugh, David, Dave and John, thank you for the feedback!
I just installed Daemon Tools Lite, some 1200 fonts, WinRar and ran an HP update. Installed Photoshop, and it’s slow again. So it’s one of those things. Perhaps more than one; we’ll see shortly.
If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on a bad font due to the fact only some of you use Daemon, WinRar and have HP stuff, so I’ll look into that first.
Don’t go removing stuff of your computer just yet, folks. Let me see if I can pinpoint it first, and then whether removing works or if a format is necessary.
I’ve noticed just flat out disgusting performance using the stamp tool. It just doesnt work right. Its so slow and delayed that after you alt click an area to define your clone source, that PS actually doesnt register that input. It will simply ignore it and use either the next place you regular click or the previous clone source.
Its so ridiculously slow that i’d rather eat my own face than use it.
First, I realized that the reason Photoshop ran slow on my last test was due to the fact I loaded wrong hard drive image (the sluggish one). So it wasn’t any of the stuff I mentioned in my previous post.
Second, this far into an install I realized that SP1 placed an important dll onto a wrong disk. Since it’s a disk I regularly format, I have to start from scratch. Tried to find a quick solution online first, but Microsoft wants $$$ for providing me with a hotfix or "talk to your OEM" they said.
Called HP, but after 2.5 hrs on the phone with them, they ended up hinting they don’t know how to do it, instead I should just reinstall the OS from scratch. I flat out refused, so she was going to hook me up with remote assistance.
RA session was being blocked by security settings in iExplorer so she asked me to start turning on some real nervous checkboxes in the settings panel. Sure enough, that screwed the browser up to the point I couldn’t see the buttons she was telling me to press.
Just around the time I realized she had no idea what she was doing (she was trying to tell me how I can’t run more than 2 hard drives in my machine @ one point), we got disconnected.
Another day wasted.
Now I’m PO’d! I’m starting from scratch now, and Im determined I am not going to give up.
EVER!
At least I know what steps I can simply blast through; I don’t have to create so many images along the way.
CS4. Maybe not a disaster, but certainly a hardship.
The more I use it, the less I like it. My workflow is busted big time by all the glitzy stuff added. For instance, the Layer Menu: Why do I have to use "Show All Menu Items"? Over 50% of all the Layer items I use are buried under that button. Rises neear to 100% if you factor in the ones I use constantly. What a waste, and what a gumption drain.
The palettes. Cripes, I hit (after hitting "Show all..) Curves and I get a second palette, offering me a bunch of alternatives. If I want Vibrance I’ll choose Vibrance. I want Curves dammit! An Extra step and time wasted. Gumption drain again.
Then there are the imports from CS3. None for Custom Curves, yet, thankfully, my hot key arrangement followed over.
I can go on, but I’ll stop here. Maybe I’ll have to write all this in the Suggestions thread.
Oh, the one redeeming quality so far is Auto Tone. It saves me from going back when I go too far at the beginning. Is it worth the extra money? Not if I have to migrate back and forth between CS3 and 4 to get my work done.
Speaking of migrating, you have to outsmart the default settings that wants you to use CS4 automatically. More time wasted.
The beat goes on….
The gumption being drained is the one that would lead me to spend the money. And fight the installation.
just got a new computer and i reformatted it so computer is clean. quad core 4gb ram 512mb 9600GT and CS4 is so slow. CS3 runs faster on a lot slower computer. newest drivers for everything…what’s the fix?
i’ve been reading the forums and no one has a fix 🙁
Kay, that is correct. There is no fix yet. There really is nothing "WE" can do. This fix requires Adobe to dig deep into the code and figure out why performance is so poor compared to CS3.
That is why we have no fix. It takes time. Adobe is working on figuring out exactly what is going on. They were active on the forum from the start of all of the complaints and now it appears they’re a little less active on the forum… perhaps because they’re being active in the office and figuring this out.
So i would say to everyone to continue to post their problems and experiences regarding performance.
CS4 is a radical change for Photoshop. Adding GPU display code, more than likely required a lot of changes in the PS code that introduced many problems.
I would say its not worth "reformating your system" over. Its more so about waiting for Adobe to fix the program.
Essentials uses up a huge amount of screen real estate
So make and save your own Workspace. It will always appear by default if you have the appropriate item checked in preferences.
Also, just customise your menus and save the set. You can also suppress the ones you never use and add colours to the ones you want to pick out quickly.
Menus and panel/palette visibility can be set independently to your own taste.
Lawrence, Hang in there pal. This is a new version and changes have been made. Some good, some not so good. In the last thirty days this old dog has needed to learn a lot of new tricks. Got a Vista 64 system and had to learn that. Got Office 2007 had to learn that. PsCS4, had to learn that. In all cases "had to learn" means "am now learning". At times I feel like Kelly Bundy. By that I mean my brain can only absorb so much and then it has to throw out older information. Only so much room up there…
PsCS4 really does have some great features. Again, hang in there. Q
David- i have XP 32bit, i reformatted because i got a new computer and hate the bloatware it comes with. directx was updated from microsofts website and scratch disk? what’s that?
Q Photo, I agree that there are some good features, but the improvements so far to my work has come down to one set Auto tune and sometimes the other auto features. It gives me a quick comparison to a really different way to present the image, which I like. The bigger changes for me came with CS3, particularly B%W conversion. It not only gives damn good control to the conversion, by choosing Luminosity instead of normal, you now have a set of adjustments to fine tune your color. Couple that with the color controls in RAW and you have an unbeatable combination. My druthers would be to see those controls refined, not a bunch of 3D features which mess up the rest of PS by virtue of the need for Open GL.
JJ, I suspected that there would be a way to customize the menu choices as you can customize hot keys but until now, I saw no need. Further, at times when I am messing with an image, I do get curious about menu choices I haven’t used, and seeing them all with one click is an incentive.
What I am saying is nowhere should a program like this encourage dis- incentives by way of increased complexity at those fundamental levels.
I’ve referred to National Instruments before. I follow their upgrades as they are released,and every time I open an upgrade, it’s like an old friend, with increased talent.
Scratch disk extends Photoshop’s usable memory far beyond the few GBs of installed RAM, which is never enough. This extra memory is mapped to the computer’s hard drive, in what is known as a scratch file.
Obviously, going to the hard drive is much slower than fetching the data in RAM.
Incidentally, Windows is doing the same thing, but there it’s called a pagefile. The main thing to consider with Photoshop’s scratch disk is to avoid competition with Windows’ pagefile. This can happen if they are both on the same physical drive, and it can slow things down even further – right down to a virtual deep freeze.
John,
I seem to remember one more… Photoshop is running faster than a chicken in Ethiopia. Naturally, I found that very…mmm…tasteless.
Let’s collect them and have a good laugh and a beer when this is all over.
When your ram is used up photoshop cs4 puts your files in a scratch disk. Scratch disk is the like virtual memory. It is recommended, if you have 2 hard drives, to put the scratch disk on a different drive then your operating system and virtual memory. This will keep your main hard drive from thrashing around and speed things up.
oh no i only have one HD. i heard read somewhere someone saying that adobe told pple to ugprade their video (ati/nvidia) card drivers and that a fix would be included for cs4…guess that was a negative
It is true that we were told to update our drivers. Lots of people don’t update drivers. It helped some but not all issues were fixed. Lots of people on these boards have written ATI/Nvidia/intel with their issues. So we just sit and wait while Adobe and the card companies iron things out.
The only reason I used a second hard drive was that it was just sitting around, not used, from a re-build. To be honest: I have seen no performance difference.
Although this does not help, I would like to point out that I have a Xerox Phaser 8550 network printer as my default and this does not affect the speed of PSCS4. The only point I can make is that sometimes it is driver issues, the print drivers from Xerox are obviously of a better cut.
By the way, I have the CS4 Master collection installed, if you want slow, start up Premiere, AfterEffects or InDesign, they are definetely slower starting up, but still perform quite well once up and running.
I just have ps cs4 ext. When I click the icon it takes only 3 seconds to be up and running. Pretty darn fast in my opinion. I have a Artisan 800 on USB. Works perfect. No driver conflicts. I am happy.
i’d like go off topic for a second to clear something up… sorry.
When your ram is used up photoshop cs4 puts your files in a scratch disk.
typically that’s the definition, however in photoshop, the scratch is used more like "main memory" and real physical RAM is used like we would normally think of as "cache memory", to speed up operations. so everything really goes through the scratch disc, which is why you get that huge scratch file whenever you open ps and start to do any work.
My Dell XPS 730 H2C is overdue — delayed twice. Apparently, there is a problem acquiring Nvidia’s GTX 280 card.
By comparing present 730x . . . 730 H2C offerings by Dell cannot be found online anymore, except by virtue of Google cache preservation — difference between what Dell offered to me as a "limited time only" offer to get rid of their 730-whatever inventory has everything to do with the newer 730x machines which uses the Intel® Core i7-965 Extreme processor. Good for me. Couldn’t afford the new machine.
Mine will come with Vista Ultimate 32 and 4 GB DDR3 RAM. Maximum 8 GB DDR3. (Did not have a choice) The 730x bought by others will come with 6 GB Trichannel DDR3 running under Vista xxxxx 64.
The 730 H2C and the 730x H2C are Gamer’s machines. I am not a gamer. I don’t even own a game. Not one.
What the Dell offerings share in common is an option I’ve exercised: SLI Dual GTX 280 (total) 1 GB cards with supporting nvidia motherboard.
I’m presently running CS4 MASTER COLLECTION on an XPS 400 with minimum inconvenience . . . IMHO.
When my new machine arrives . . . anything you guys want me to try and report?
I also noticed that Adobe reader 9, saves a page of a pdf in a folder on my hard drive where my scratch disk is. I downloaded a pdf form, saved a copy to C drive documents, and printed a copy off the web to fill out and mail in. There was 6 pages to print and only the last page printed is in a file on the scratch disk.
Also what ever file I open in bridge it saves a thumbnail copy of each item in the whole content of the file on my scratch disk.
Also pdf files I have saved on a usb stick, that I left plugged in a usb port, is also on that scratch disk.
Weird how all this gets on the scratch disk used by photoshop.
I guess when you select the cache file for ps cs4, the same drive is auto selected for bridge. I never told bridge to use what drive. But I looked in bridge and it was set to the same drive. No biggie.
I am sure adobe 9 reader has the same reaction. I did not see any option in prefernces though.
From the testing I have read the only thing mentioned was that the video cards can’t keep up with cpu demand. This is on serveral websites and different tests.
So maybe this puppy made by Nvidia can boost things up. Only $3,499 each. It does dishes too…….. lol
so I hate to be a nay-sayer to all of you complaining about CS 4’s speed, but I have it loaded on 2 machines. one is a macbook with 2 gig of ram and a dual core 2.3 ghz processor and the other is a mac pro with 2 2.66 ghz dual core processors and 3 gig of ram, and on both machines CS4 runs like the dream that CS2 and CS3 never was.
I have tested the start up and shut down times of all three versions of CS and 4 outperforms the others by 10-12 second and the processing of the images I am working on is great.
I am most happy with bridge and adobe camera raw, the new features added there are so fantastic i nearly wet myself.
It seems to be a little slower even though I have 4 Gigs of RAM. Does anyone know how to get rid of the "welcome" screen with all of the Adobe CS4 team members?
20 seconds isn’t a problem for me, I was used to it with CS3. In the grand scheme of things, start-up time is not one of my burning priorities.
Now, I have another report to make: I ordered a new machine from Costco on Black Friday, and it finally arrived today. Pretty good specs for the price; Intel Core Duo Quad 9300, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB hard drive, Vista Home Premium 64 bit installed, for $600. My thought was that I would replace my surfing machine, which was getting a bit long in the tooth, with this new one.
I fired the new one up, had a look around, uninstalled the Norton trial that came with it, and installed CS4. Bingo! Everything works quickly and as advertised. And, the GPU (GeForce 7050) is built in to the MB. All of the GPU acceleration stuff seems to be working fine, no lagging on text typing, etc.
This doesn’t get me any closer to figuring out my problems on my work machine with CS4, but it’s nice to see CS4 run the way it’s supposed to.
What I may end up doing is using some of the components from the new machine to build a new work machine, but that’s somewhere down the road, after (or if) Adobe gives us any solutions/updates.
About 20 secs here – was 3-4 secs until I added the few plugins I have, and in light of comments elsewhere I’ll blame the Nik one – DFine 2.0 – for that. As it appears to have no other effect on the running of CS4, and is a useful way to quickly reduce noise, I’ll suffer the loading slowdown gladly.
What’s the hurry, anyway?
Nick, Chris hinted that iVan hit the mark blaming AV in another thread
There are probably multiple causes, as well as people describing different things (blind men, elephant), and people with different tolerances for "slow".
It’ll take a while to work it all out. But we want to rule out the known problems so we can move on and find the rest.
If you are experiencing a performance lag using CS4 (especially with OGL features disabled) and are interested in helping test a change that may mitigate the issue, please email me directly: travlin_adam at yahoo dot com
Sorry for the long absence on my part – I have been following this and other threads and we’re still on the case.
I am doing a series of tests across multiple platforms and OS. I have a utility that takes over a minute on Vista Ultimate 64. On Vista 32 bit, it opens in about 2 seconds.
here is confirmation of these times with different folks.
I would make sure it’s not the software incompatibility issue, as it seems to be in most cases. If you can create an image of your hard drive first so you can later go back to where you were if need be, do that first.
Then reinstall only Windows, service packs and the latest drivers and NOTHING ELSE (not even antivirus). Then install Photoshop and if it runs, it’s software. Then you can start loading one program at the time (biggest suspects first) and test Photoshop in between ’till it starts being slow again. That way you’ll know the culprit.
And just to be sure it’s not more than one thing, uninstall the offending software and continue installing everything ’till you have everything tested.
The reason I’m suggesting this is because that’s how I solved my own issue. Mind you, I assumed this would apply to most people here, so I went an extra mile (or ten), but in the end I did find out that (in my case) it was Kaspersky that did Photoshop in. Got a new AV (AVG, to be precise),and things are snappy.
In your case it may be different software that is causing the issue. Adobe even states this in one of the threads here (forgot where). It would appear that on different platforms, different softwares cause this very same issue. But you have to try to find out what it is on your own system.
Ultimately, if you load OS, latest service packs (SP3 for XP or SP1 for Vista – necessary for installation) and the latest drivers, once the Photoshop is installed you’ll know if it’s hardware or software.
I wouldn’t expect Adobe to go an extra mile to tell us what the issue is, as there are as many hardware/software configurations out there as there are people with computers; it would be impossible for them to test it all.
BSOD is generally an HW issue. If you are not getting those, your HW is probably not the cause. The caveat here is the ram. It may be problematic yet not cause a BSOD. So run a ram test first.(Assuming a problem on a fresh install.)
Also, as I mentioned before and this is especially true for Vista, what oder you use to install software can affect it’s startup time, for openers.
The HW has to crash to generate a BSOD. Yes, you can force the crash through software manipulation. That’s how HW is tested in certain circumstances. Push it till it crashes, then look at the data.
It’s the HW that crashes, not the software. The SW brings on the crash, but as you both have experienced, the same SW crashes one computer but not another.
Lots of interactions yada yada yada, but in the end, the HW simply gives up.
yea, but the poster was speaking specifically about the bsod errors. a bsod reports an unrecoverable error that the operating system encountered. it has nothing to do with hardware, per se. it MAY be related to a hardware fault, but it doesn’t have to be.
Can an os have an unrecoverable error that causes no problems at all?
Actually a reasonable question, as I often encounter statements that indicate something serious happened, but the computer goes merrily along.
Or does it?
Then there are the messages that simply close the app, but not the os. The os does try to keep a distance from those events, and when we have dueling software, well, I would concede your point.
Here’s some feedback on the i7 system with respect to video cards and the brush performance.
I’m running it on Vista 64 Ultimate with no other apps.
First of all, Brushes. On my home machine, an AMD single core with XP pro 32 bit, I have two problems. One is the truncated circle, the other is the bad gray value when cloning in an 18% gray range. It would switch automatically from a black circle on white, a white circle on black, and an unfortunate, fixed gray on gray.
Different matter on the i7 machine. No truncation, but there is only a black circle no matter what the background color is, until I hit caps lock, then hit it again. The circle now changed to white, no matter where it is placed, but tries to shift to another color when the cursor is moved. Exit PS and open it up again and the brush reverts to the original condition. Not very promising!
As to the video cards, I found a rather startling result, given the wide spread nature of performance among video cards/drivers. I have none.
I have my own card on hand, an nVidia 7300. At the lab, we have 7200 and 7100 versions laying around. I have the latest driver installed for the 7 series. What was starling is that it didn’t matter which card is installed, the system showed none of the problems discussed throughout this forum. That is, I could substitute any of them and if there are subtle differences, the drivers reload for that particular card (or corrected for the card) and I see no change in anything, including the a fore mentioned brush problem. IOW, the system is completely stable with respect to swapping 7 series cards, and if the brush problem is video related at all, it follows the card as well.
This is true also when trying out different platforms/cpu combinations. All I need to do is swap the HD among them, assure that BIOS is set at default (and in one case, set to a significant overclock) and run.
So, there you have it. So far. If I absolutely had to have CS4, I would invest in the Intel board and the 2.66GHz processor. No need to spend for the faster ones, overclock is simple and pretty stable (up to a point!) But really, I didn’t even know that one of the boards was over clocked until I did a BIOS check before closing out the test.
Lawrence… Since you have no performance problems, could you try going to a high resolution to see how PS performs. My current theory is that screen resolution is effecting performance drastically.
I have been reading allot of post’s around these forums with people having problems with Photoshop CS4 running slow. I had the same problem hence why I have been here reading. Lagging brushes, zooming, scrolling, flickering images etc etc. I, of course cant say where the blame should be placed BUT I did manage to sort my lag issues. Ill state my current set up and then tell people how I fixed it for me. Hopefully it will help someone.
System – Windows XP pro (sp2) not installed sp3 yet. 100% clean install. (Installed last week)
GPU driver = 180.48 (the very latest) PhysX driver = 8.10.13 (the latest) DirectX = 9.0c (latest version)
Main monitor = 27inch at 1920×1200 res Second monitor (dual view) 22inch at 1650×1050
Ok so I have semi decent hardware but it was still lagging to the point where it was almost unusable but what I found was this. By using the "NVIDIA Control Panel", going in to "Manage 3d Settings" and editing Photoshops 3d settings the lagging problems stopped.
The main setting that seemed to make a difference to me was the "multi-display/mixed gpu acceleration" which I changed form compatibility mode to "single GPU multiple display" mode.
All texture filtering and antialiasing is turned off. "Maximum prerendered frames" is set to zero.
After changing and playing with the settings I now cant get Photoshop to lag other then on extremely large files. Brushes with color and opacity jittering with wet edges all at the same time on large docs are in real time. Images have also stopped flickering when using the hand tool or just moving the window itself.
Both with dual view and single screen desk top. With multiple files open at once and it lots of diff res’s.
The problems seems to have stopped so I can only assume that, for myself my GPU driver was trying to somehow process my images with extra 3d stuff even on 2d images and forcing these options off has done the trick. Its almost like the driver is seeing the whole of Photoshop as it would a PC game or other fully 3d program.
Whatever the max for the monitor. Today I used a 24" Samsung LCD Flat Screen, with the resolution set at max. 1920×1200.
I did no toying with the nVidia controls. Install OS, install nVidia driver, install CS4, run it.
I don’t like the Samsung, and perhaps all LCD’s because of the excessive contrast and brightness at default. It wasn’t calibrated, so I have to hold off final judgment.
I saw absolutely no lags, even over 100% mag.
What I am trying to establish is a baseline system that will run CS4 as expected. Because of all the work I have done using the i7 system as my job, it was only natural that eventually I set aside some time and run a test, as I did with my own 32 bit systems. The differences are startling.
What is sorely needed is a formal evaluation with a rather complete testing matrix; an an almost obscene cost. (not to mention the ennui on the part of the people actually doing the testing!) I lucked out in that I could setup a system that worked "Out of the box".
What might happen as I load up Vista with other apps can only be guessed at.
Which tab (Global Settings or Program Settings) did you make your changes to? If it was Program Settings, could you please confirm that you had "Adobe Photoshop CS4" selected as the program. Thanks.
I tried Firebomb’s advice in both the general and Photoshop CS4 tabs of the nVidia Control Panel. In my case I set it to "single display performance mode" in both, since I have only one display, so that kinda made sense. I’m sorry to say it doesn’t seem to have any effect. Sigh…and I was hoping someone had found the key to this problem.
I wonder what kind of setup nVidia used to test Photoshop, to come up with their default list of settings. It’s possible they also need to do further tests on various systems.
Re Adam Jerugim’s request for volunteer testers in Post #419 above
Is anyone using/testing Stonehenge (ver 11.0x001DEV) supplied to me in response to volunteering to test?
If so, have you had any improvement in OpenGL-enabled performance?
Stonehenge has all but solved my lag problems when OGL is disabled but made no difference to when it is enabled. I don’t think it was supposed to if all Advanced Settings were left at their defaults. However, I have tried all possible combinations of disabling individual and multiple Advanced Settings but to no effect.
Its the Manage 3d settings>Program settings> and then having Adobe Photoshop CS4 selected in the dropdown box of programs there. If u do it in Global setting sit will disable those fetures for ALL programs.
@David Nicol
its a shame it wont work for everyone. One thing i might have a go at tho it using "Rivatuner" which is a popular program to edit indepth settings of your graphic card. That program has loads of setting and tweaks u can apply to openGL and other bits and bobs if u have not tryed it. As long as u dont overclock ya card to the moon with it you cant really hurt ya graphics card playing with most settings.
It might be worth a go to anyone desperate. You can force alot of the openGL settings off at a lower driver lvl then ya can with nvidia control pannel if i remeber right.
Here a ful list of the settings that worked for me just incase.
Anisotropic filtering – OFF Antialiasing gamma correction – OFF Antialasing mode – OFF Antialiasing transprency – OFF Conformat texture clamp – USE HARDWARE ( could try the openGL option ) Error reporting – OFF Extension limit – none. Max preredered frames – ZERO 0 Multidisplay/mixed GPU – single GPU multidisplay proformace (set to your set up) Texture filtering – OFF Texture filtering Negative LOD – CLAMP Texture filtering quality – High performance Trilinear optimization – ON THreaded optimization – AUTO Triple buffering – OFF Vsync – FORCE OFF
Two things that brought down lag considerably here was: In preferences, Performance, leave OpenGL enabled, but switch off everything under the advanced button. .
Second, switch off the rulers in the document window.
CS4 is a disaster. It crashes no matter what I do. I added preset actions – they crash, I add clipping paths – it crashes. I had to go back to CS2 to get anything done. What a waste.
Andrew Hart:Is anyone using/testing Stonehenge (ver 11.0x001DEV) supplied to me in response to volunteering to test? If so, have you had any improvement in OpenGL-enabled performance?
The above is a 32 bit version. Adam didn’t compile a 64 bit version for me to test. Running on my Vista Ultimate 64 system the lag problems in both the brush and in dragging the windows have virtually disappeared. I cannot be certain of any difference in brush speed or the initial dragging of the window between the 32 bit test version and PS CS3.
Bigger Tiles has improved performance by about 10% on images over 200MB.
Generally, Stonehenge has provided some improvement in performance, but OGL is still a challenge… I get tile painting errors and slow rendering times compared to CS3.
Please note: these images can be perfectly managed in Ae or Pp CS4 with OGL enabled.
Without OGL enabled, I pulled a project from LR into CS4 that was completed in CS3 and received very similar performance to CS3. If I enable OGL, then I get rendering errors.
In some respects your settings improve performance in Stonehenge (faster-more responsive painting BUT there is still a very slight but nevertheless annoying lag of paint application following cursor location) but image flicker when moving images around the screen is still present. Horizontal Type Tool shows virtually no lag but it was the same (ie improved by Stonehenge) before adopting your settings.
In original (11.0) PsCS4 they made no improvements (image flicker persists, bad lag with painting, horrible lag with Horizontal Type Tool) but one noticeable change. With several (6) images open I used to get a ghost image (lasting up to 1 second) remaining behind when dragging one of the images from one screen location to another but the move was instantaneous. With your settings, no more ghost images but the move now lags behind the cursor and there is no movement of the image at all for about 1 second. Simply unusable.
Without incident, successfully installed CS4 Master Collection. No lags, no flickers, no ghosting. Thus far, no problems of any kind.
Dell XPS 730 H2C Intel Core2 Extreme processor QX9650 Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 32-bit Memory: 4GB DDR3 SDRAM, 2.5GB addressable Motherboard 7-slot ATX (NVIDIA 790i Ultra SLI chipset) Dual NVidia GeForce GTX 280 cards 1024MB (Driver version 177.40 CPU Liquid/TEC Cooling-ATX 1 kilowatt power supply X-Fi PCI Sound Card Two SATA 2 Harddrives at 7200 RPM Blueray RW Drive DVD-RW Two external USB drives
Monitor: Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP set to native 1920 x 1200
Pre-installed software: McAfee Security Center 9.0 Microsoft Office 2007 Professional Roxio Creator 10.2 Premium – Blue-Ray Power DVD 8.0 Blue-Ray Disk Playback
In my defense, poor as it might be, I copied/typed in every description from the Dell invoice. Those Googling stuff are on their own.
Good news is, for me and folks like me, Dell/Adobe products appear to be what I hoped they might be . . .
There are no installation problem with CS4 Master collection on any computer I own.
On my XPS 400 with a Nvidia 7900GS running under Windows XP SP3, things were kinda slow, but not so much as to universally support the perceived faults with Photoshop Cs4 or with 4’s support for GPU acceleration.
This is all so very technical stuff way beyond me. I only know what my machine does on the monitor in front of me . . . and what I report back.
Unlike CS3, I have experienced no monstrous installation problems at any time and no client use problems once the installation was sucessfully installed.
I’m really . . . so far . . . a really happy . . . Adobe customer.
blu ray discs to play in your hot new blu ray drive! 🙂
I copied/typed in every description from the Dell invoice.
I figured. it’s funny they can’t even spell the name of the stuff they’re putting in. wait… the drives themselves, they’re not really colored "blue" are they?!! 🙂
I guess that’s the answer then. If you want to run CS4, you need to install it on a brand new computer with little or nothing else installed on it.
Or to put it another way, when you upgrade your computer, that’s the time to upgrade the Adobe software. At other times, forget it.
However eventually you will want to use your computer for something else, or you will install some new hardware, or a new security package, and that whateveritis disagrees with the Adobe software and the Adobe software breaks never to run properly again.
Should we really need to run Adobe Software on a dedicated computer isolated from all other apps? It goes against the philosophy that computers should be general purpose tools running eclectic software that is resilient and tolerant and reliable.
I think the next step might be for Adobe to write their own OS especially to suit their own products. How much better would they run then??? Other conflicting apps could then be prevented from being installed.
Then they can control the hardware too.
Or maybe they should simply go back to the Macs they came from.
My point is that if you write software for PCs, it should run properly on all PCs meeting a general minimum specification, irrespective of the brand of computer or processor or graphics card or what other software or hardware is installed on it. That is what PCs are all about and it is what the software should be about too!
I’m not … a really happy… Adobe customer … not really, not … at all.
It would be interesting to hear what the Adobe engineers here really think about all this, but I’m pretty sure they have guidelines about what they can and cannot talk about.
I guess that’s the answer then. If you want to run CS4, you need to install it on a brand new computer with little or nothing else installed on it.
I’m sure that plays into it, but for most people it’s just not practical to have a machine completely devoted to just PS.
I have two machines in my office. One for work (PS and other professional apps, and one for play (email, web surfing, whatever). When I installed CS4 on my work box, I got (and still have) all the lagging, disappearing window content, etc. (Both are XP Pro)
Over Thanksgiving holiday, I picked up a good deal on a Vista 64 machine at Costco. 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM. The idea was to use it to replace my aging play box. When I hooked it up, all I did was uninstall a Norton trial, then install PS CS4. It ran like a champ. No lagginess, no window content problems. CS4 booted in about 3 seconds and everything about it is faster than CS3.
OK, so the next step was to migrate the contents of my old play box onto the new Vista machine. That went without a hitch (mostly) using an app called PCmover that came with the machine. Even with the addition of the rest of the contents of of my old play box, CS4 still runs fine. This, on a machine with only one hard drive and mobo-integrated (nvidia) GPU.
Unfortunately, the new play box won’t be suitable for pro PS work. It’s limited to 4GB RAM, and at the price I paid for it, it just isn’t very robust or expandable.
I’m not happy about the way CS4 runs on my work box, but I’m willing to give the guys a chance to fix it. If, after that, it still works the way it does now, I will be very upset to hear more of this "Update your drivers" stuff.
some of it is driver related, some of it may be Photoshop, and some of it we have no idea what’s going on (mostly because we can’t reproduce the symptoms on our systems).
In any case, Adobe can obviously not live with this situation, even the bean counters should see it’s hurting business.
We’ll probably see an 11.0.1 in a month or two, with more robust code.
Basil: I do not want all Adobe products to run on whatever machine a person decides it should run on, that would be an outrageous mistake. I am not having a problem on a machine that is eighteen months old (it was time to upgrade, the old machine was six years old and started showing its gums) with a graphics card that is not on the approved list but runs perfectly.
Honestly, if you think I want my installation screwed up so it can run on your lame machine, you’re nuts!
Honestly, if you think I want my installation screwed up so it can run on your lame machine, you’re nuts!
Actually I am saying exactly the opposite to what you seem to think I am saying.
Nothing should have to be screwed up to run anything. Its just that Adobe seem to think otherwise. They should be writing fault tolerant software, not stuff that works on Computer A but not on Computer B, or when the wind is blowing from the wrong direction, or whatever.
I have been running Photoshop on all sorts of boxes, since its virtual inception, and I have never experienced problems such as these. While computers have got better, faster and more reliable, Adobe software has been going doggedly in the opposite direction.
"They should be writing fault tolerant software" and then it would not run as well on my machine.
"What have we here, computer discrimination?" Not at all, I just expect that when running professional software for my business, I will need a machine with the appropriate power.
Last year I was working a brochure when IDCS2 stopped working to the point that I had to re-boot the machine while the client was on the phone, that was embarrassing. I didn’t get on the forums and complain that the software wouldn’t run stably on my dual PIII 1Ghz machine with 4Gb of RAM under WIN2K thinking the engineers were a bunch of lamers because it wouldn’t.
When I built the new machine with an Intel BadAxe II board it was my first ‘build from hell’. I had to replace virtually every part because the quality was not up to snuff and eventually had to get a refund from Intel for the BadAxe board and switch to Asus. I didn’t get on the forums and blame the software, but it took a lot of work to get the machine working like it does and it runs the Adobe Master Collection really well. I still have an ATI FireGL card that makes a really cool paper-weight.
I had pointed out earlier in the this thread that if you think Photoshop is a dog, you should try running the other apps in the collection.
Re Adam Jerugim’s request for volunteer testers in Post #419 above
Is anyone using/testing Stonehenge (ver 11.0x001DEV) supplied to me in response to volunteering to test?
If so, have you had any improvement in OpenGL-enabled performance?
Yes, I´m running Stonehenge. My impression: Redraw, Painting, animated zoom, moving objects around: VERY SMOOTH now, so there´s hope CS4 will be fixed. Moving Image & Zoom by mouseweheel: CHOPPIER THAN BEFORE, but tolerable, for the time being.
Turning the theme in Vista from Windows Vista to Windows basic completely wakes up CS4. Everything is fast.
Turning off ‘bells and whistles’ is always a good idea if you want a PC to perform to its full potential. FWIW I’ve got Vista 64 looking and behaving pretty well the same as XP. I even downloaded a pack of XP icons to replace the Vista ones. Vista performs VERY well (and very stable) once you get rid of the needless fluff.
just reporting that UNinstalling the cs4 trial (near time out) went smoothly and cs3 seems to be functioning properly with no ill effects. that’s a good thing.
My CS3 reverted to some default settings, like the cropping mask set back to 75% and other indications that indeed, CS4 did appropriate certain CS3 settings, and set them to default.
If you are interested in panoramic or HDR images, CS4 IS proving to be worthless for many.
I will not repeat my post here, but searching the forum for "photomerge" or "panoramic" will show several people running XP/XPP/Vista having problems –
– problems as in CS4 simply will NOT successfully merge files that CS3 has no problems with; even when using the ‘manually align’ tool copied over from CS3.
When done processing the images, CS4 either fails to save the resulting merged image, locks the app, or crashes the OS.
Installation problems here too. I upgraded from CS3 to CS4 and it installed with the entire top menu bar invisable (Desktop screen showing through in that space) and the entire top row of menus and commands non-functional. Adobe support said I needed an updated graphics board driver, so I got the latest one and installed it, reinstalled CS4 — same problem. Adobe support also said that if the most current driver didn’t solve the problem I would need a new graphics card, what I have isn’t sufficient to run the program. I’m out several hundred dollars on the CS4 upgrade and on the full version of Lightroom2 that I had also planned on adding to my system. I can’t afford to lay out more money to replace my graphics board and possibly set off a chain reaction of other hardware changes. CS4 has been uninstalled and lives in the filing cabinet, along with Lightroom2 and other assorted discarded software. Adobe support won’t even answer the e-mail to re-open my support case. I wish Adobe had been a little more upfront about CS4 being so hungry for GPU and graphics RAM. Like so many of you, I have work to do, so CS3 is back on the system; solid, functional and reliable …. sure could have found some good uses for the wasted money though.
Jan, I couldn’t agree with you more. We are told to update our video drivers by the Adobe engineers. We do that, and CS4 still doesn’t work. The vid card manufacturers don’t care!
IMO, CS4 is way too dependent on video cards and drivers. To get the stuff I upgraded for, I had to spend more money and it still doesn’t work right.
Yes, there are several people here who are having no problems, and I wish them well, but Adobe has dragged their dick in the dirt on this one.
I want my money back, but I’m beyond the 30-day limit.
I hope this update improves brush stroke responsiveness a lot. compared to other pen input based applications such as Zbrush, or Alias Sketchbook… CS4’s brush performance is just poor. Zbrush’s brush strokes on a blank canvas… doesnt lag at all. You can sit there doing an endless circle as fast as your arm will move… and no lag.
Zbrush’s default canvas compared to photoshop, is doing so much more. Its rendering your brush stroke in 3D, in realtime off the cpu and its still ridiculously faster.
What is all this nonsense about Stonehenge some forty posts back?
Anybody running any version of CS4 is running Stonehenge. Stonehenge was and is the code name for Photoshop 11, a.k.a. CS4. All versions, from alpha to beta to GM are Stonehenge.
If you don’t believe it, look at the alternative CS4 Splash Screen. In Windows, use either Alt or Ctrl (can’t remember which; it’s the Option key on a Mac) as you select About Photoshop
Landed here by mistake, but Merry Christmas to all.
The distribution gold code and the binary made available several weeks ago are not identical. I personally do not know the differences. It may compiler / linker options or changes in the code base. Without input from Adobe, it would take a hex editor to tell .
Stonehenge is the codename for Photoshop builds, generally not released to the hoi polloi. It is obvious that Adobe is releasing patched versions of the program to selected users who are having problems with the GPU-enabled features as a means of testing the fixes. The build number is the key. OK?
Well, code names do become public in many instances. Intel’s code names for cpus and mobos are bandied about in the press, even as we are, as employees or contractors, prohibited from using them in public. Yes, the build number is key in any case. Even there, you have to understand the build sequencing numbering
That’s the point. The code is not the same, but the name is: Stonehenge. It was Stonehenge from the beginning, and it will remain Stonehenge through the last build that’s generated for CS4.
If you want to differentiate different builds, you have to specify the version number. Just saying Stonehenge means diddly squat. All versions of CS4 are Stonehenge.
Reaon, you are correct. I was refering to the splash screen, not the build. I stand quite corrected. In furure posts I will refer to the particular build.
No Zbrush can not. I dont use Zbrush for photomanip. I sculpt film resolution 3d characters in it. My point was that on a 30inch monitor, at 2560×1600… Zbrush is performing a lot faster and more fluid than CS4 was running in software mode or GPU. Zbrush at full screen resolution will let me sculpt 16 million+ polygons realtime off my cpu alone with smoother brush strokes than CS4 running off GPU or software mode.
Zbrush uses a fancy software rendering system that runs off CPU alone and while pushing millions of polygons its still faster than CS4. I mean CS4 is quite slow at editing a 4 layer, 10 mp image. Especailly if you toss an adjustment curve layer in there.
Perhaps its just the texture bandwidth of my gpu but… I would expect better performance from 2D vs 3D.
<<Didn’t you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement? if yes, re-read it>>
I had my fingers crossed. There is also the thing about false advertising (much slower than previous versions), misleading consumers (it barely works and only part of the time), and outright fraud (they call themselves programmers – not), things for which Adobe needs to vigoursly defend itself. Open betas are required. Suck it Adobe. This is as the heading reads: A DISASTER, Irwin Allen style. I heard any patch for PS won’t be until the 2Q or even the 2H of 2009.
Expert Here: if "Adobe" releases an early patch that would uncovers other issues, users would complain.
It took time to replicate the issue, and as I said, there are many parameters involved. Engineers DID requests users with the slowness issues in the San Jose area to let them take a look at their systems.
Be proactive and patient, instead of waving the "I will sue" flag, that is downright counter-productive.
Expert Here: if "Adobe" releases an early patch that would uncovers other issues, users would complain.
Damn right and proper!
I certainly hope that the layoffs at Adobe did not include QA testers, and these folks have the power to hold up revisions if such "other issues" are discovered.
This is my first time on a forum I apologize in advance for doing anything wrong. I just bought CS4 and was looking for advice on what video card to get and stumbled on this disturbing forum.
My first question would be: am I screwed because I bought a dual core and not a quad core. I do have 4 gigs of ram. I can still return the computer if this simply wont work with CS4’s issues.
Second Question: should I return CS4 and somehow get a version of CS3 (I am upgrading from CS2 to CS4)
Third Question: what exactly should I get to have CS4 to run like it should. (money is somewhat of an issue but since this is going to be my profession I realize u must spend to make
I guess I am lost and don’t know what to do. Shame because I was so excited about my upgrades. – thanks, mark
I am using a dual-core Vista PC with 4mb and an ATI 1950X Pro graphics card with 512mb and Photoshop CS4 works perfectly well, including the GPU features.
-intel pentium dual-core processor e2200 Processor (2.2Ghz, 1MB cache, 800MHz FSB) -4GB RAM -250Gb Hard Drive -Windows XP professional Service pack 2(will update to serv. pack 3) – I will get one of the tested graphics cards
I went to that web site and found the tested graphic cards Thank you Mr Eilers. Thank you Anthony for the positive reply there was nothing but negative stuff about the lag issues which is disconcerting. I would still be intrested in some advice on if My setup is going to work. If people are having serious problems and staying with CS3 on better systems than mine what chance do I have. Is anybody besides Anthony having success with CS4 and NOT having lag issues?
Is anybody besides Anthony having success with CS4 and NOT having lag issues?
lots of people are mark! this is mostly a support forum. most people come here because they have problems, so reading this forum will give the mistaken impression that EVERYone is having problems.
I ran the trial for 30 days, no problem and uninstalled it, no problem.
e6600 core2duo, intel mobo (975bx), 2 gig ram, xfx brand nvidia 7600gtx graphics card, xp pro sp3.
Runs smoothly here on Vista Home Premium 64 & 8 gigs. Five gigs reserved by Photoshop. It’s faster than CS1 on XP Pro with 2 gigs. And I mean considerably faster, with nearly no lag. All options work.
Did I mention that Photoshop is set to use 5 gigs? Sorry, but I can’t get over saying "Oh, I have Photoshop set to use 5 gigs of ram". That is 5, as in five. As in 5 gigs. You know, used by Photoshop CS4.
Mark, you already bought CS4 so you might as well try it.
If you’re not sure still… try the Trial of PS CS4 first.
There are people who have no problems with CS4. However i suspect they’re running at low enough resolutions that they really arent aware of the performance shortcommings.
1280 by 1024 on two 19" CRT’s. Files can reach over 500 megs with lots of layers and effects. Very little lag and usually none at all. Seems like reasonable performance to me.
And I’m willing to bet that John Joslin and I are not the only ones impressed with CS4. Other-wise there would be a LOT more complaints here.
And I’ll point out again that my computer, while new, is not a real powerhouse. An off the shelf HP with a lot of crapware, most of which I haven’t removed, only prevent from running at startup.
Resolution is no problem on the i7 system either. I was limited to 6G of ram by availability and PS took about 4G. I did have to use scratch on a 280M file for Smart sharpen. Took 14+ sec to sharpen. On either standard HD or SSD. I wouldn’t spring for one of those.
But my home system, well the less said the better at this point.
Working the percentages has it’s value, but the fact that Adobe was looking for a local system that is afflicted as well as supplying specialty builds means the problem is endemic and needs a solution. We don’t know of major users buying multiple licenses experience.
The i7 was a lean machine. My home machine, while not bloated, is carrying a fair number of programs and app, plus the usual files for favorites, My docs etc.
Then, there is the difference between XP and Vista on how they start services. That makes a big difference to startups.
Talking with other programmers who work with major 3D presentations, I get the message that Open GL is the disaster. They much prefer DirectX. It puts MS in the business of validating cards, not the program suppliers. I would not have thought MS could be more reliable, but Autocad appears to prefer DirectX and eschews Open GL at the moment.
Thanks everyone I am going for it. In 20 minutes I am going to microcenter to purchase an ATI Radeon 4850 512 MB card. This is on Adobes tested list. If any of you savvy guys have a better suggestion please advise before I depart. Thanks so much!
Are you running CS 4 maximized across both of your monitors or just on one monitor?
I’m running at 2560×1600, and CS4 performed a lot slower than CS3.
CS4 could handle huge PSDs with lots of layers. Thats not really the issue. Thats all CPU for the most part. Turning on/off layers had some delays where you could see each tile draw on screen. Adjustment layers, while fast and didnt effect performance, were very slow to update while adjusting them interactively, such as the color curve adjustment layer. It would actually perform a lot slower when adjusting than then adjusting the regular old color curve.
Healing and Stamping were lagged and often resulted in missing your inputs when defining the source area you want to clone.
I’m curious if you would create a 4000×5000 (240 dpi) doc, zoom to 100% so it fills up your screen(s). Now on a new layer, take the paint brush and draw an endless circle very fast. Does the lag build up ?
Do you have figure drawing skills or are you mostly a photo manip guy? Figure artists will do a lot of quick guestures when drawing, and i found CS4 to have a slight delay, where it seemed that your strokes would display by the time you finished your stroke.
This slight delay builds up heavily the faster you move and the longer the stroke. Hence my request of you trying an endless circlular brush stroke.
Do you see performance differences if you do this endless circular stroke in 100% zoom vs 30% zoom?
Also try opening up one of your huge 500 meg PSDs. Assuming they are photos at large resolutions, try adding a color adjustment curve layer. Zoom to 100% and adjust the color curve. Do you get realtime feed back as you move your curve? Does the curve move fluidly or at 2fps?
I found it to move at 2fps and update only after i moved the curve point to a location. It did not update while moving teh curve (probably cause it was so slow)
Lawrence Hudetz:
A Mac version of CS4 would not be possible if adobe used Direct 3D.
OpenGL is still quite good. Most of the 3D animation/modelling applications depend on it on many operating systems/hardware. A lot of the major post production composting software depends on it as well.
Its not in the grave yet. Direct 3D has certainly come into its own though, but a lot of production environments run a lot of different machines for different applications etc. OpenGL still has the upper hand in cross platform support.
Perhaps Adobe has a the architecture in place to add direct 3D support in the future, giving 3 display options for windows users. I dont know if thats in their interest though.
ProArtist I hope this is helpful. Most interesting thing I’ve discovered concerns brush lag.
It is not possible to run Ps window MAXIMIZED and on two monitors. Window must be made smaller and then drag right edge to second monitor. I’m always using Ps on two monitors.
I have absolutely no drawing skills, sorry to say. Photo manipulation is my area. I stand by my statement that I have no (or very little) problem with lag.
Doing curves color adjustment was real time.Photo over 500 megs.
HOWEVER, I noticed a lag doing your continuous circle test. I was making the circle at a really fast pace. I don’t think in actual practice most people would move that fast. At any rate, there was lag that did increase. Doing strokes, long or short, showed no lag. This was all with a mouse, Microsoft Wireless Laser 5000. This lag was at 100% view. At 25%, 50% and 66% there was no real lag.
Now for the interesting part. When doing circles with a Wacom pen (low end) there was no lag at all.
I pretty much have only one complaint about this new HP computer. There is something strange about how the mouse works. That includes the original wired mouse and the wireless that I added. After closing a program there is often a 5 or 6 second period of time that the mouse is not responsive.
Good luck. I don’t like to hear that someone is having problems with Photoshop. Much like seeing a homeless person and thinking "There but for the grace of God…."
I have seen that unresponsive mouse at a number of places where a big transition is occurring. During bootup comes to mind, that the mouse will pause for short periods while the process finishes.
Thanks for info, Lawrence. It’s not a big deal to me but I was surprised to encounter that behavior on a new computer. Never experienced it on older XP machine.
As far as boot-up is concerned, I make it a habit to start computer and touch nothing until I’m sure it has completed booting. Just a habit of mine that probably has no basis.
With XP, when the first bootup after instal occurs, the mouse will freeze on the log in page until the initial configuration is finished. First time I saw that I freaked! It can take a while, which is why I became concerned.
This was all with a mouse, Microsoft Wireless Laser 5000. This lag was at 100% view. At 25%, 50% and 66% there was no real lag.
Now for the interesting part. When doing circles with a Wacom pen (low end) there was no lag at all.
Curiously, this is something I have found and have reported with the new test build of CS4. I have the Wacom Intuos 3 w/latest drivers and my mouse is the standard MS wireless mouse/keyboard. No intellipoint drivers installed.
Is Adobe close to a fix yet? Some entries that I read on this forum seem to suggest that the folks having the performance lag problem with CS4 are in the minority. No way can this be true. I suspect it is the other way around. We need to start an excel spreadsheet showing opsys and equipment, with the final two columns being CS4 RUNS GREAT and CS4 RUNS LIKE CRAP. I believe that there would be more checkmarks in the runs like crap column for sure. I have two machines, purchased last December from a small outfit called Dell that may have sold one or two of the same machines to others….a dell xps 1330 and dell vostro 400, each with plenty of processor and memory, both running xp sp3 … CS3 runs like a dream … CS4 has the performance / lag problems mentioned in this thread. I don’t want to do a bunch of testing, turning things on and off, etc. I want Adobe to fix whatever is wrong with CS4 so that it runs like a dream on these recently purchased machines the same way that CS3 does. Right now, the Adobe take seems to be that (probably) millions of machines out there need to be fixed to work with CS4. No, no, no … CS4 needs to be fixed to work with the machines. And please, no arguments about all the variables with all the windows machines out there … they managed to get CS3 to work didn’t they? They can do the same with CS4, even if they have to reverse their decision to mess with the GPU. I will check back periodically, but like many others I have given up for now and will not upgrade until they have things fixed. I am an Adobe stockholder so I really do hope that they come up with a fix soon because the sales decrease caused by this problem is going to cause further erosion in the stock price.
I found CS4 unusable, mainly because of enormous brush lag. I found a solution that works for me: enabling palette snooping in the BIOS. See my message <http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b76749>
"Most people not having problems don’t post on the forum"
Means nothing. It’s true most people don’t even know of this place, or if they did, wouldn’t know how to get here. The point is, most people here are having problems, and not "how do I", but rather, "it doesn’t work". It’s not isolated, but wide spread. It is a real problem for most people. I know, I am after all,
I begrudgingly agree with EH on this – there was officially "no problem" with CS3’s "fix" for CS2’s not broken printing, which was then "fixed" as an understated part of the CS3 0.0.1 patch which was only released after a howl of protest, and with this CS3 fix (and fix of the fix) having completely disappeared from CS4, which now runs like an improvement on CS2 printing.
Maybe I sound like a stuck record on this, but if nobody had complained – and had kept complaining – many owners of large format printers in particular would still be battling the unpredictable mess and materials attrition that CS3 printing caused them when they upgraded to CS4, and new owners of CS4 would be scratching their heads trying to work the unfathomable out.
While I’m not seeking to apportion blame yet, and note that my 5-year-old non gpu compatible machine runs what it can of CS4 quickly with stability, the company attitude that if a new software product won’t work with existing new hardware it is the hardware’s fault entirely just plain sucks.
It never used to be that way with Adobe in the early days when the customer always came first.
Well anyone with the word expert in their name most assuredly is not one.
And I must agree with John and the others that the few complaining of problems, whats the count now? Ten? eleven? out of the tens of thousands or more copies sold just means that there’s a few people out there with lemons for computers.
I’ll add my voice to the complaints. This is the first version of Photoshop I’ve ever had regular crashes with. It is also the first program in Vista I haven’t been able to remove from Task Manager – applications (I go to Processes). It crashes when I save files mostly. Jpgs, Tiffs. Whatever. I’ve only had it a week and am amazed how slow it is. It is so dramatically different than CS3, I’m surprised. I have a Nvidia 7600 GT 512MB vid card. Vista SP1, 2GB RAM, lots of HD space. DualCore2.6.
I’m not noticing much difference using OpenGL checked and unchecked. Not sure what to try first.
the company attitude that if a new software product won’t work with existing new hardware it is the hardware’s fault entirely just plain sucks.
Well said, Fred.
Adobe knows that there are problems, regardless of the Adobe faithful, that chime in that it’s working fine for them. They, the faithful, only have the right combination of hardware and software. Myself, I think they’re in the minority. Look around on the web, other than here. You will see that CS4 is up.
I’ve said it before. I’m glad that it’s working for some of you, but for me, with a machine that meets all requirements, it doesn’t work as advertised!
Nick Decker, "Photoshop CS4 is a disaster" #535, 1 Jan 2009 5:21 pm </webx?14/534> Adobe knows that there are problems, regardless of the Adobe faithful, that chime in that it’s working fine for them. They, the faithful, only have the right combination of hardware and software. Myself, I think they’re in the minority. Look around on the web, other than here. You will see that CS4 is up. ———————————————————— ———-
I don’t think adobe is denying it’s their problem; it’s just not hteir problem exclusively. They are trying to find out who is having trouble and why:
Chris Cox, "CS4 lag. What graphic card will it take?" #182, 17 Dec 2008 5:08 pm </webx?14/181> ; Adobe Photoshop Engineer ProArtist – I am saying that some of it is driver related, some of it may be Photoshop, and some of it we have no idea what’s going on (mostly because we can’t reproduce the symptoms on our systems).
"Most people not having problems don’t post on the forum"
I would counter with this:
Most people having problems with CS4 either don’t don’t know of this forum, or (most likely) don’t know that the terrible lag problems are not normal.
Quite a few buyers of Adobe suites are not buying it primarily for Photoshop. They may be web designers or video editors who only occasionally need Photoshop for incidental graphics. They may simply think that Photoshop lags by default, or that they don’t use it often enough to raise a fuss about it.
My own informal survey of Photoshop PS4 users, including 2 in Hong Kong, 1 in Toronto and 1 in New Jersey, is that all of us are experiencing noticeably poor performance compared to CS3. So that’s a 100 percent fail rate for CS4. Okay, a sampling of only 4, but if the problem in CS4 was somehow random, then at least 1 of us should be having no issues. Of the 4, only 1 of us is raising the issue on this forum (me), since the others know I’m kvetching about it, so they don’t bother.
I respectfully suggest to Chris and Adam that if Adobe can’t find a user with the problem within driving distance of their office, Adobe should find the budget to send an engineer to visit some of us who do have the problem, to inspect our systems and reproduce the issues. It’s been way too long now for Chris to keep reporting "we can’t reproduce the symptoms on our systems". So find some paying customer’s system who CAN reproduce the symptoms!
Sorry folks. I am not trying to belittle the problems a lot of forum users are having, nor to whitewash Adobe, who have obviously overlooked something serious in the testing and QA of the new features.
I just don’t like drawing conclusions about how widespread problems are, based on a skewed sample.
It does make you wonder about the integrity of some Windows systems though doesn’t it!
heartbreak ridge… maybe clint’s best movie. my fav anyway…
Colonel Meyers: What’s your assessment of this exercise?
Gunny Highway: It’s a cluster f&ck.
Colonel Meyers: Say again?
Gunny Highway: Marines are fighting men, sir. They shouldn’t be sitting around on their sorry as$es filling out request forms for equipment they should already have.
CS4 runs fast on my 3 year old cheap Dell laptop with 1/2Gig memory. CS4 runs slow on my desktop. My laptop has an old card so OpenGL isnt an option so its grayed out. My desktop is as follows:
Dell Dimension 2400 XP Home SP3 version2002 32-bit Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz Upgraded to 2GB RAM Replaced Radeon B200 which didnt have an OpenGL option. CS4 ran slow. Installed Radeon HD2400PRO, 256MB, 64-bit, which is on Adobes recommended card list. Updated driver dated Dec 10, 08. The 2400 is the best card my old PCI can run. Turned off all 3-D features. 20 monitor at 1600×1200 Open GL is working. All advanced settings tried on and all off. Turned off OpenGL. Direct correlation between redraw speed and number of square inches a brush covers monitor when window is as large as possible. Size of brush in pixels unrelated. Example: a 300 pixel brush in a window thats 4x4 does not lag. Uninstalled the following software that might form a shell: McAfee anti-virus and firewall, Spy Doctor, Startup Cop. No Photoshop plug-ins. The rest of the software is also on my laptop. Also: set windows not to open as tabs, set cache to 4 and then to 8, Desktop CS4 with Paint Brush with 4 rapid strokes edge to edge with a 7 diameter brush as measured on the monitor with a ruler with with an image filling a 9x13 window: Lag: 7 seconds Desktop CS2: same process: Lag: 0 seconds Laptop CS4: same process: Lag: 0 seconds
Ive been lurking here for a while waiting for a solution and in upgrading to win vista ultimate sp1 I made a discovery, with the "generic" Microsoft display driver for my 8800 GTS, CS4 runs like a dream, with absolutely no lag during the circle test, also tried opening a vector image with several hundred layers I had been working on, and it was open in a second, no lag in zooming or panning. This is all without GPU enabled, it was greyed out in preferences. After I installed the Nvidia beta drivers (180.84) everything got laggy and slow as it has been from day one when I purchased Master Collection.
Also I have done a few clean installations to try to see if that was the problem, installing Photoshop before anything and testing after installing things. The other place where I noticed a small performance issue is after I installed the Wacom drivers for my Intuos and Cintiq there was slightly more lag with the brush tool. This time around I upgraded from Vista 64 home premium to Ultimate to take advantage of my second processor (2x dual core xeons) for some reason Windows let me use all of the cores with home Premium until started tinkering to fix Photoshop, so I had to upgrade to get them back, unfortunately it having the extra 2 cores makes zero improvement. I’m holding off on buying more ram too, using 1GB sticks I can go up to 16GB, but right now it doesn’t seem like it will make CS4 move faster, so I am going to save my money, like I should have done with CS4 in the first place
specks: Vista Ultimate SP1 64 bit Dell Precision 690 2x Xeon 5060 3.2GHz 4 GB ram EVGA 8800 GTS 640 MB 21" acer (1680*1050) Cintiq 21UX (1600 * 1200) Intuos 9*12 300 GB Velocoraptor 10,000 rpm for system drive 36GB and 74 GB Raptor dedicated scratch disks AHCI is not enabled yet, issues with detecting them during install. Also no RAIDs or anything like that, maybe later with the 36GB Raptor as I have a spare.
Actually I have been popping in here about once a week, no I haven’t read every post, but I have spent quite a bit of time reading up here and other places, sorry I missed the generic driver comment, wasn’t trying to say I solved everyone problems, just made a discovery of my own.
guess again…brand new HP PC w/8 gigs of ram…CS$ works like shit! just because 10,000 people haven’t posted doesn’t mean only 10 people are having problems. plenty of people have problems with our government, how many people actually write their congress rep’?
dave, at work we do not use drivers from the video card for either, and I have to say that the behavior of the LCD on generics is better than crts on generics. Both are perfectly adequate for our needs, but the range of options in generic on crts don’t meet my needs in graphics. That has been a subject of interest some years back when crts ruled. I distinctly recall that when faced with generics vs drivers with the GUI for the card included, the advice was to only D/L the drivers. The generics were insufficient then, why are they sufficient now?
Maybe you are thinking of generics for the monitor.
I am reading through this forum and, while there is a lot of information and it is very difficult to cover it all, I can tell that many people are having problems with their mouse in CS4. Please allow me to join your ranks!! I have a brand new PC running Vista and I installed CS4 Premium on it the day I set the computer up. The rest of Creative Suite runs fine — I’m very happy with it. But Photoshop seems to be a complete wreck. There are features of the new Photoshop that I’m not happy with — for instance running actions that create a new file (copy then create new file then paste, for example) always assigns the file a name from the most recent previously named file instead of allowing for consecutive naming like Untitled-2, Untitled-3, etc… Then there’s the whole windows default to a tab arrangement thing, which is solvable I know, but annoying none-the-less.
The REAL problem I’m running into is with the mouse, though. It seems to have a mind of its own… When I use the Marquee tool, it creates a box on the first click that has my cursor as one of its corners the remainder of the size and location of the box is completely random. Click again, same thing happens with the box having different dimensions and location. Only maybe one in three clicks am I actually able to drag the marquee tool to select exactly what I want. It is almost impossible to do a lot of cut-and-paste type stuff, and for me that makes Photoshop CS4 unusable. I’m trying to stick it out and find a solution, but I’m getting very frustrated and occasionally have to return to my old machine running CS2 to get work done.
I’ve tried reinstalling my mouse drivers… I’ve checked to make sure I have the most recent versions of .net and DirectX… I turned of OpenGL in Photoshop… I’ve replaced my mouse and made sure the trackpad on my laptop is turned off… I just don’t know what to do now!!!
Will someone pleeeeeease help me make Photoshop CS4 a functioning program? I hate to be accused of whining, but need the application to work properly — so even it’s user error that’s making is suck so bad, lay it on me, let me know, so I can fix it!
I think it was about a thousand posts ago I suggested using the generic driver to avoid the cleverness of the ATI or NVIDIA software. 🙁
what is the point of buying a hi-end expensive vid card if you cannot get the advanced features from the manufacturer’s drivers? Windows come with drivers are never very good- remember Xp SP1? I do those of us who use our comp for gaming or other 3D apps or use more than one monitor need those features the color/gamma controls for LCD are also in that driver I always use the radeon drivers and get proper mouse drivers
I am very happy with CS3 on Xp SP3 I usually forgo one version upgrade and wait for the next anyway seems the even number releases have been bad all along I was happy I skipped CS2 I will not install CS4 at all at least not until I start hearing much better reports from users or wait till CS5
OK, I yanked out the Radeon 2400 which is on the Adobe approved card list and re enabled the old on-board graphics card. Result: CS4 still lags by the same amount. Of course, OpenGL is not available now. Great: my cheap Dell laptop circa 2006 plays CS4 just fine altho without OpenGL but my Dell desktop circa 2004 doesnt even when OpenGL is not an option and is grayed out.
My laptop is a Dell Inspiron B130 with Celeron{R}M 1.5GHz, XP SP2, one-half GB RAM. My desktop has XP SP3: I wonder if SP3 is screwing with CS4?
At any rate, editing my 80MB images with only 2 gigs of RAM is a joke so I am going to buy a new PC. I will install only CS4 and of course the crapware that comes with it and see what happens. The PC will come with a Radeon 3650 and I have seen posts elsewhere on the net that the 3650 doesnt have problems with those who have posted. Google: Radeon 3650 CS4.
Desktop is using a Pentiun4 2.4GHz. Maybe thats a problem.
Well, I just wanted to echo the sentiment that there are many others lurking here, but not posting about their problems. We ran the trial at work, and every machine we tried it on had lag issues with the brush and close tool. Additionally, the pen tool response was so slow as to be unusable. We have tried many of the potential "fixes" listed in this massive thread, and I even e-mailed about the request for help for a possible solution. We have, as yet not seen anything that has helped. We are not the only local shop with this issue, and I would expect that it may be more common then some realize.
A lot of people won’t post on a forum if they don’t have a productive solution. We haven’t found one, and neither have any of our colleagues, so none of us have said anything, but if this is what it takes then add my voice too.
Jason is right. There are many (like myself) who have one or more of these many problems and don’t post because we have no solution.
It is impossible to know how widespread the difficulties are. Only those with a problem tend to post, but not everyone with a problem posts.
What bothers me (apart from two days of time wasted combing this forum and other sources without any solution for the slow operation and corrupt displays) is that there is no simple way to turn off the "features" that are causing the trouble.
I bet many will simply give up and keep using CS3. GIMP is even starting to look attractive, despite being 2 generations behind PS.
Until two weeks ago I had a three year old 3.6ghz P4 (with 4gig of RAM). It ran CS3 very nicely. After anxiously waiting for CS4 to arrive, I was absolutely stunned at how awful the user experience was. I’ve been a programmer since 1968, and I’ve seen a lot. It’s perfectly normal for a product to require more horsepower from one version to the next. But not like this.
I was rather dismayed reading the first couple of hundred posts in this thread. I saw basically two camps. People with severe problems (as I had), and people with new enough hardware to run CS4 ok. The latter seem to regard the former as whining morons who are obviously doing all sorts of things wrong.
I decided my blood pressure wasn’t going to cope with getting into this fight, so I just threw a bunch of money at the problem. Now I’m running Vista 64 with 12GB of ram, a Core i7 920, and a GeForce 9800 GTX+. CS4 runs great, at least as much as I’ve had time to try after spending so much time and money upgrading, installing a new OS, and reinstalling everything.
I didn’t have any where near the patience to try upgrading one piece at a time to figure out just how much is strictly necessary for CS4 to run right. As a programmer, it’s my personal opinion that Adobe really screwed up. Turning off all the GPU options, for example, was not enough to get even minimally acceptable performance from my previous processor. All of Adobe’s developers (and all of the authors of the glowing magazine reviews) must have the latest and greatest systems. Adobe’s QA department, at least, should have tried CS4 on a more "normal" PC before they threw CS4 out the door.
Having seen both sides now, I can say that with the latest/greatest hardware, CS4 is really slick. Some of the new visual features are downright silly (spin your image around like a top??), but some of the new stuff really is nice. I can also say that if you don’t have new enough hardware, CS4 is truly awful. The fellow who started off this thread 550+ messages ago put it very well.
I grew suspect reading all those perfect, I just love it, PS CS4 reviews. Plus when you read those reviews not one of them (least the ones I found) list their computer system specs. My copy of CS4 extended runs ok but has minor issues already talked about on here. I just lerk and read now: Waiting for Adobe to sort it out with who ever.
Just to let you know I am one of the lurkers here and I have no problem with CS4 speed but it crashes a lot.
I am retired and only process a few images a day, but when it crashes I lose my work. Yes, I save a lot, but if I decide that I don’t want that image, I have several copies on my drive.
The speed (for me) is not an issue. I have a 4 core vista 32 system with 3 gig of memory and nvidia 8600GT 512 memory card with the latest drivers and GPU set to off.
Thanks to this thread I have made some improvements in speed.
Well, add me to the list. I followed forum, bought ATI radeon hd 4850 graphics card. It was on adobe’s tested list. Man was I excited! thought it was running great until I tried to paint on a levels layers mask. I was trying to darken a selected area. It was unusable at a 300 zoom F%#K I am so disappointed. I would paint a single click, nothing would appear until I clicked it again somewhere else then the previous spot would appear wtf! I am sorry just pissed I can’t get anything done. I switched off gpu it worked a little better but come on then all the features are gone. I spent an hour updating driver. I am not a computer expert just a wedding photographer. What do I do now. If anybody at adobe wants to know the rest of my brand new system I bought to exclusively run CS4. Let me know. I could call if u want. I really need to know what to do next. I spent over $1,500.00 For everything and now I am back to using CS2 on my old system I need advice.
I must say that when I installed the CS4 Design Premium suite a couple of weeks ago, I was pleased to note that I didn’t have any of the OpenGL problems. However, now I’ve finished the ‘playing with the new toy’ phase and started to do real work I find many of the same problems listed in earlier posts, i.e. lags using the brush and clone tools, pen tool lags and text lags. These alone break this version for me as far as work goes and now will revert to using CS2 full-time.
I have tried as many of the fixes that have worked for other posters, but obviously this hasn’t helped me.
Specs are:
Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz 4GB ram 2 internal HD’s Nvidia 8600GT Vista Home Premium
I’m sad to say that I probably will never trust another major version upgrade from Adobe again until it has been thoroughly tested in the marketplace for some months.
Surely given the volume of the problems now surfacing Adobe must of been aware of this before shipment (I now they can’t test all combinations of hardware/software) and therefore, were they forced into shipping a defective product by the marketing & finance departments?
I just had to add this post, to speak up for the silent minority/(majority)? of users having these problems.
"The latter seem to regard the former as whining morons who are obviously doing all sorts of things wrong."
That is absolutely incorrect. Many have offered suggestions to those having problems. Note that the original poster, ProArtist, asked that I run a test for him on Dec. 29. I did the test, as requested, and to date, Jan. 6th, haven’t received a reply.
I ended my reply to ProArtist: Good luck. I don’t like to hear that someone is having problems with Photoshop. Much like seeing a homeless person and thinking "There but for the grace of God…."
I don’t see how this indicates not caring or not trying to help.
There is an interesting thread related to graphics card settings the absolutely cleared-up my all my speed, windowing and drawing issues. With the settings that I posted a while a go in this thread, I now run CS4 significantly faster than CS3. The link is:
Wolf Eilers, "CS4 and nvidia 180.48 driver – disable PhysX GPU acceleration" #8, 6 Dec 2008 11:32 am </webx?14/7>
These settings only modify how the video sub-system interacts with the requesting program and not OGL. The example settings are for nVidia, but apply across all venders that produce high-end cards. Note: these settings are usually only applicable to high-end cards designed for 3D applications, so you may not be able to modify your settings.
A looong time ago, I wrote graphics drivers, so I could give an analogy as to what is happening, but I realize that folks are interested in solving the problem, and not techno-babble. Give it a try.
Adobe is aware of this issue and is working on it.
My OGL is still NG. I am running OGL 2.1.2, which is fairly recent I believe 2007 considering OGL has been around for about 17 years. Adobe includes an OGL compatibility tester with AE. AE, PP, etc are all OK. I have been trading e-mails with PS engineering on test data, so they are aware of the issues and working on it. Considering this is the first time PS engineering has included OGL code, it is not surprising that there are a few glitches.
Folks in this thread should really check-out about 6 or 7 other threads on speed issues. I have seen several suggestions that have not appeared here. You should also check-out threads on photo.net, digitaldarkroom, etc. There are some very sharp folks on the web that do not visit the Adobe forums and have posted work-arounds.
That looks like an amazingly helpful post!! I’m excited to try the routes you suggest. I will let you know if they resolve any of the issues that I’m struggling with on my machine.
I understand the "selling ponies" reference. The phrase actually predates the urban dictionary reference by several 100 years…
Are you mocking my post or OLG?
Have you ever served on a standards committee? Do you know what it is like? Agreed, not perfect?
I was on the original IEEE Ethernet and the X.25 committees. If you have not been there, its like Hell, but with drinks served between sessions to prevent any mass killings.
However, forums were created for users to ask questions and "hopefully" getting advice from those who have "been-there-done-that", and can offer constructive advice.
Posts that do not support that philosophy are simply a waste of bandwidth
no. not mocking at all! well, maybe mocking bart… a little… 😛
However, forums were created for users to ask questions and "hopefully" getting advice from those who have "been-there-done-that", and can offer constructive advice.
those who’ve been there done that and offer advice have to let off steam sometime. <max smart>sorry about that chief.</max smart>
im having no issues with cs4 master suit, i dont have recomended settings either, i have 512mb of ram and a 6 year old computer, although it may have somthing to do with the fact that im readyboosting a 4 gig sd drive and running windows 7 beta?
cs4 master suit…512mb of ram and a 6 year old computer…running windows 7 beta?
I have no idea how your computer could possibly be running the OS, let alone Photoshop. Either MS has worked a miracle or you are used to timing your Photoshop operations with a calendar.
Readyboost is a lot slower then RAM. Besides, assuming Envy has a 512 meg video card taking up the 512 address space, just exactly how is windows 7 running on readyboost alone? Also, having a 6 year computer means it has no e-sata so the SD drive has to be USB. Never mind the rest of the hardware and software. Very interesting indeed.
Took Hugh’s advice and mimicked Wolf Eilers setup. Photoshop is now plenty faster, and I can finally finish a couple projects I was working on and start a few new ones. It still isn’t perfect, CS2 was a little faster, but in CS2 the brush lines were less smooth if you drew quick circles than in cs4, so I guess that is a good trade off. The pen tool is still more sluggish than the brush tool on my system, but it is at least usable.
Now I get to fine tune it to see just how fast I can get everything running, and next is seeing if I can get Illustrator to speed up, on my large vector files with jpg background for reference, every time I hide or un-hide the jpg, everything goes white or black for a couple seconds, simply unusable for this type of work, guess I’m stuck with smaller files and free handing stuff for a while in Illustrator.
I am sorry. I did not make something clear in my post on settings:
The important point of my last post about card settings is not the settings themselves, they will be different for every class of card.
The point is that you need to disable PSs ability to alter the configuration of the video sub-system or place values in any of the settings.
There is usually a setting in the driver somewhere to disable an application from altering the cards / drivers settings. That was the key for me. Once I disabled PSs ability to change anything, then performance boost was achieved. I then tweaked with the settings to get what I wanted.
All card Mfgs have forums. You may find folks with optimized settings for PS. The settings do not have to be for CS4, just something recent. The Mfg may also have a FAQ on settings and even provide optimized settings for PS.
I’ve downloaded the trial version of Photoshop CS4 Extended on my XP Home system with 2gb of memory, AMD AthlonXP 3200+ @ 2.19 GHz on an ATI Radeon 9250 video card @ 128mb of memory. In short, a pretty dated system and I’m not having a single problem with the performance of CS4 Extended. My guess is there’s something wrong with your system.
Thanks for the info, but I’ve now tried everything I can think off including locking the settings for Photoshop, still no luck. I’m now seriously thinking of trying another more powerful graphics card, trouble is all this takes time away from paid work, which I seem to have a stack of at the moment – glad I’ve still got CS2 to use.
One thing if I turn off OpenGl in preferences the clone stamp and pen lags go away but the brush lag is the same (which is related to brush size and zoom percentage – as others have noted), so perhaps I do have a bottleneck somewhere.
I use the sony ex1 with XSX card that only cs4 can read but media encoder does not work. I have upgraded from cs2 and would love to go to cs3, I am stuck I guess. What other options beside FCP do I have to read those sxs cards.
save for web option freakin SUCKS!!!!!! the annoying "YES" confirmation is still there and now i CANT EVEN PRESS ESCAPE TO cancel the even more annoying picture preview loading. ???? ?? ????
Hugh – i understand what you are saying. i went into my nvidia control panel and went under 3d settings for photoshop cs4. i changed most values to the ones listed in the thread you linked to earlier. none of the features are program dependent and doesn’t seem like cs4 is able to change anything
I will add my experience with a new install of PS CS4. I installed the CS4 Design Premium suite on my computer that already had the CS3 suite installed as well as numerous other programs, all of which work well. The installation completed without problems. All comments are preliminary representing a first pass through the application.
My system contains the following items: Asus P5Q-E board Intel Core2 Duo E8400 3.0 GHz 8 GB RAM 320 GB C drive for sys and CS4 50 GB partition on a 2nd physical drive for scratch Intuos 3 tablet not yet tested, using mouse for initial eval.
Vista Ultimate 64-bit , Aero enabled Photoshop CS4 (64 bit), Open GL enabled No plugins
Nvidia GeForce 9600GT 512 MB Driver 7.15.11.7813 (Sept 2008, not the latest) Eizo CG222W display 1680 x 1050
After verifying that PS performed its elementary operations, I took a brief look at brush lag and I experienced some at large brush sizes. I then kicked the tires of some of the other apps in CS4 to verify their basic operation and all was well with them. I then went to Bridge and set many preferences, did some e-mail and other things as well. When I reopened PS to check it out in more detail, the lag I had seen previously was gone or much reduced. I cannot explain why.
Currently, all PS tools are working OK and all the new CS4 navigation schemes behave well. There is, however, some occasional, unpredictable behavior with the tool tips and the history states. I’ve now determined that the brush lag is real, but only for large brush sizes. While that sounds like bad news, the exact same test using PS CS3 on the same system yields comparable results, maybe a tiny bit less lag, but within say 20% of the CS4 performance. The comparison was made on a 4000 x 3000 image and quickly moving the rough round brush of diameter 1000 pixels. I’ve also seen stuttering cursor movement (only on CS4) when a brush diameter is approximately = or > 20% of the image width, but this effect cannot be consistently produced and may be a pathological finding.
My bottom line is that PS CS4 is working on the above described computer and working well enough to get work done and not force me back to CS3. It does have some defects and most likely I will find more. Tablet issues have not been addressed yet. Additional effort to give a real review needs to be done, but with all the reported CS4 problems I thought my initial experience may be useful input. It demonstrates (at least) that with the right (unknown) configuration details the above hardware and software produce acceptable, if not yet great, results.
I’ve just looked again at my anti-virus software and Photoshop CS4, now when I installed CS4 I didn’t look beyond the fact that my anti-virus software (Kaspersky Internet Security 7) didn’t disable OpenGL, as so many users had reported happening at the time.
However, I just disabled it (Kaspersky) and the brush lag for me has completely disappeared (I tested brushes up to 1800pt in size), also the lag with the pen tool has gone. The lag I was experiencing with the clone stamp tool is probably better but still exists (it’s as though the source point is on a rubber band attached to the brush), this is brush size dependent.
Now obviously I can’t can’t run without AV software, but at least I’ve now got the option of pulling the plug on my internet connection, disabling my AV software and using CS4 for work, – might be beneficial, at least I won’t be plagued with email from clients that way!
That’s good to know, my licence runs out in a few days, I might a well upgrage to the 2009 version then.
I wonder though, if there is going to be performance difference with PS CS4 Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 compared to Kaspersky Internet Security 2009? i.e. will Anti-Virus 2009 work well with PS CS4 (as you reported) and the Internet Security suite won’t?
When an AV suite delays PS it shouldn’t need to be completely disabled. Try to find a way in the AV-suite’s configuration to "ignore" PS, instead of monitoring each step.
OK – I am another unhappy CS4 user. Same issues. I would like to know if there is any offical word from Adobe about this and when a patch will be available?
I’ve set Kaspersky to ignore the PS executable and the scratch disk, but there might well be another setting I’ve ignored, Kaspersky can be a be of a maze (to me anyway!), once you step outside of the standard configuration.
From a bloody freezin’ Suffolk – I’ve never seen such a frost such as we’ve had this morning.
From various posts on the forum we know Adobe is aware of the problems, are working on them (and have (seemed) to have identified solutions to some of the issues.
Has there been any official comments? No. When will a patch be available? When it’s ready.
Mike, I had Kaspersky Antivirus 2009 and had no problems with CS4, as my license for Kaspersky recently came up for renewal I took the opportunity to upgrade to Kaspersky Internet Security 2009. I havent seen any difference in performance of CS4 (or any other application) since changing to KIS.
I did see that after installing KIS it had recognised that I had CS4 on the PC and added the Adobe applications to the Trusted Applications group for the firewall/registry access rules etc. You are best completely uninstalling KAV before installing KIS and always remember to disable KIS before installing any Adobe applications.
Thanks for the info – I’ll then go with the Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 option, I agree about always uninstalling the previous Kaspersky version before upgrading.
Out of interest I went with the slightly cheaper AV rather than the Internet Suite because the former does include malware and phishing detection and I wasn’t bothered about the rest.
I have an instinctive distrust of "Suites". Yes, even Creative ones. 😉
Just ordered the suite from Amazon (3 user licence).
Amazon had a promotion for this, if you ordered £30’s worth of other items, Kaspersky was half price. The 3 user suite was listed at £17.36 (which was already cheap) and I ended up getting it for £8.68.
Even if the suit doesn’t work too well for me, 8 quid isn’t too much too loose!
I work for a nationwide NYSE company. At least a dozen of us in our corporate headquarters have upgraded to CS4 from CS3. We’re now begging the poor network department to switch us back because Photoshop runs so poorly that we can barely do our jobs! I’ve tried many suggestions listed here (except for uninstalling my programs…those of us who work in a strictly regulated corporate environment can’t install/uninstall virus scanning programs on a whim) and have experienced minimal improvement, if any.
My PC specs are apparently irrelevant, because there isn’t a SINGLE INSTALL OF CS4 IN OUR CORPORATION that is working any better. We all have some variety of IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads (T60, T61, etc) or IBM desktop machines. Each of them easily exceeds every requirement of CS4.
Since Photoshop CS3 worked like a dream and Photoshop CS4 can’t even display a sentence of text I typed within 10 seconds or let me move a selected rectangle across the screen without stuttering like a 386 trying to run Windows Vista, I hope Adobe has stopped blaming other programs for their problems and are working to fix their own buggy stuff.
Question, who here is having problems and also has a 8800 NVIDIA card? I’ve seen all types of issues in other CS4 and CS3 products because the 8800 card.
D. Rutledge, Google: after I read several websites on the T-60 and T-61 do not support opengl 2.0 the CS4 requires. I also question if the thinkpads even support shader 3.0. You can Google the information you need and give it to your IT people then have them call Intel and see if they are updating their card drivers. Good luck.
D. Rutledge – you need to read the rest of the thread, because many people have found that the primary cause of their CS4 performance problems are drivers or third party software. Adobe can’t fix third party drivers or software.
As already noted here and elsewhere: Adobe is working on the problems in the Adobe code.
Adobe has not once blamed third party software for all of the problems. But the majority of the problems have been traced to third party software. So, if you are having problems, doesn’t it make sense to fix the ones under your control (or request your vendors fix the ones that they can fix and Adobe can’t)?
If all installs within your company have the same problem, your IT environment is still a common factor. You need to work with your IT people to fix that environment – or at least rule it out as a likely cause of the problems you are seeing.
Wow! This is a large topic. I have just loaded a trial of CS4 extended and compared it to my CS3 ordinary, using the ‘Retouchartists’ image and action benchmark.
CS3 with 83% of 2Gb of ram did the action in 3m.00s CS4 with 83% of 2GB of ram did the action in 2m.28s. All other parameters the same. Pentium 4 2.53Ghz and Win XPpro SP2 I built the machine in DEC 2002. I won’t be buying CS4 as I don’t think it offers a great deal, but it runs pretty damn well.
So Photoshop CS4 requires OpenGL 2.0 support even if you have the OpenGL features turned off? Because turning them off has no effect on the performance on any of our machines.
I understand that Adobe can’t fix third party problems. My point was that they somehow managed to get CS3 to fly under the same conditions, so it doesn’t seem reasonable that many of these suggestions would solve the issue.
Wow. Well it sounds like you know what you’re talking about ProArtist. I don’t know what half of what you said means. LOL. But maybe I should return this book "Adobe Photoshop CS4" and look at getting CS3 instead!
D. Rutledge – CS3 didn’t use all the same APIs that CS4 does. Thus CS4 is exposing more problems than CS3 did. Also, we never fully understand why some third party software has problems with one version and not another — they rarely give us details about their bugs.
I want my money back, but I’m beyond the 30-day limit.
Give your credit card company a call. Typically, they will go to bat for you if you’ve been ripped off within 60 days. Federal law governing interstate commerce may also apply in your case.
Alternatively, Adobe has been good in the past about addressing issues with PS so it might be worth hanging on until they release an update. As opposed to the unacceptable problems with Lightroom (submitted my letter of destruction), Adobe has acknowledged that a problem exists and is apparently working on this issue.
Apparently I’m one of the luckier ones running CS4 (and CS2). Problems with "sticky" adjustments and so forth are pretty minor although sometimes noticeable. I am 99% certain HP printer drivers that have not been updated by HP since the dark ages are responsible for this as well as some unrelated issues (Windows Recovery Console doesn’t work following HP driver installation, etc.).
Thankfully, CS4 runs fast overall and no crashes thus far even working on multiple large 16 bit files with many layers and actions running. Curve adjustments (and other adjustments) can be a bit "jerky" at times but for me the ability to zoom smoothly at any percentage is very helpful. Saved me upgrading from a 20" to 27" monitor which would have cost a great deal more (still on the wish list, though!).
Have sent specs of my well worn system and so forth to Adobe engineers. I suspect they are correct in suggesting conflicts with third party drivers and/or programs are the root cause of the variable problems folks are experiencing. This is a huge challenge of course but patience will likely be rewarded.
For me CS4 is a killer application and will be truly awesome when the bugs get worked out. Thanks to Adam and Chris for responding in this forum.
Wow! This is a large topic. I have just loaded a trial of CS4 extended and compared it to my CS3 ordinary, using the ‘Retouchartists’ image and action benchmark.
CS4 Standard:
About 2:30 on a Toshiba laptop Dual Core 1.73GHz/2MB Windows Vista SP 1.
Thanks for your reply. I set about the comparison, because I also loaded the trial on A Dual Core HP at my work.This only had 1GB of ram and uses the main disk as Photoshop temp file. I got 2m30m out of this. I was considering upgrading my machine, but it does not seem worth it. I would be interested in other results with machines with say 3Mb/4mb DDR2 ram,separate hardisk and a Dual Core/Quadcore with up to 8mb of cache on XP pro. I will very likely buy another Intel motherboard.I am not bothered about fancy video cards. They seem more trouble than they are worth at the moment.
Sorry i have been quite busy lately and just tried to read up on the thread. I did read your response and I’m thankful for you taking the time out to do a test.
I cant really add much in terms of a response other than I did a complete system reinstall recently and tried out CS3 vs CS4 again.
On default settings, CS4 was still horrible. It had the same exact performance issues as it did before doing a clean install of OS etc.
Anyways, i did read your message and decided it was a good time to try to compare CS3 vs CS4 again with your input in mind.
I was able to get CS4 to perform better by changing some OGL settings but CS3 is still more responsive. However on a positive note, CS4 has become more responsive and brush lag has improved greatly but not its not perfect.
I found that the best OpenGL performance came out of doing the following:
OpenGL – ON
Vsync – OFF
3D Interaction Acceleration – OFF
Force Bilinear Interpolation – OFF
Advanced Drawing – ON
Use for Image Display – OFF
Color Matching – ON
These settings helped with brush lag. Doing the same "endless fast circular stroke" test that i asked you to do, I saw a lot less lag than with default opengl settings or any other configuration of opengl settings. HOWEVER… There was a slight lag and over time it did built up… but on the good side, it kept up fairly well. Now I know no one will likely do this kind of stroke often, but it helps to show the performance of the brush stroke. With the OGL settings i mentioned above, I was able to now draw with faster short strokes that many sketch artists are familiar with while gesturing a figure etc.
So those settings helped brush stroke performance. NOW… Its important to note that, with CS3 now on the same system, CS3 had absolutely ZERO lag. It was ridiculously smooth and still a lot better in every way BUT… atleast its now possible to draw a stroke in CS4 without it feeling "off" and annoying.
CS3 is virtually instant. With the same endless circular brush stroke test, CS3 keeps up perfectly and never lags. CS4 builds up a lag over time (with the OGL settings i provided).
To reiterate CS4 on default OGL settings had significant brush lag that made drawing impossible, painful and frustrating. With the above settings, It made it tolerable and usable… BUT still slower than CS3.
This was all tested on Quadcore QX6700, 8GB ram, Vista 64, GF 8800GTX at 2560×1600, full screen, intous3 tablet, etc.
I cant comment on any improved clone tool performance yet. (i havent given them a good run through on a photo). I was more concerned with brush performance because it was just in your face bad on default settings and all other variations of the OGL settings being on or off. I’ll continue to compare and see what comes up, good bad or other wise.
I will also add this… I also tried overclocking the video card, and I did see some performance increase. Take that for what you will. It may be something to consider for those that are interested.
To all, i do recommend trying those settings to see if it improves your brush lag. It did in my case, but its still not as fast as CS3. CS3 is instant, while CS4 is now instant at very start of stroke and responsiveness retains fairly well for a moderate length stroke, but the longer it gets, a slight delay is present but it tends to keep up just behind your pointer. (Its just not instant like CS3). Its far better than it was at default settings, where from the very start, the stroke would draw on screen after you drew it.
With those OGL settings above, short quick strokes are now responsive enough to use. But i do have to stress that CS3 is still faster.
Q: also these were at 100% zoom. The zooming out performance increase was still there, but atleast now at 100% performance is better, dare i say usable.
Again i cant comment on the other issues cause i havent given them a run through yet.
Also… OPENGL ON or OFF… CS4’s performance was the same. CS4 with OGL off, performs worse t
There is an interesting thread on DVi for this particular topic.
There appears to be a nasty rumor going-around that nVidia is encouraging folks to step-up to the FX line by starting to disable some of more advanced features from the other lines. Several folks have reported that as they update to newer and newer driver levels, some features that they used to have are no longer available — not that they dont work, simply not available. INW, the card can do it, but it is patched-out from the driver. The 8800 is mentioned as a target. It is also supposedly happening at different rates for different platforms. PP overlay is also specifically mentioned.
I have no idea if this is true; I have used FX cards since their inception, so absolutely no first-hand knowledge of the other lines.
I should have clarified my earlier post on the speed test. I was interested in a real-world scenario, so I simply downloaded the files and ran the test on my existing system in its normal state and got a time of 53 seconds. After turning-off a few things (Bridge, LR, PP and stopped iTunes from blasting Depeche Mode), I got the speed test to 41 seconds. I still have some very invasive stuff running (AVP, Ghost, etc), but I seldom disable them.
I have noticed some very long times being reported in this thread. I just tried this on my laptop and get a time of about 1m.20s.
In a previous post, I mentioned that for those PS folks who are not into NLE or compositing, you should visit some of the sites. These folks have made an art out of sucking every last ounce of performance from a system. After all, a 60 second fully composited broadcast commercial can take 4 hours to render. The documentary I am working-on takes 43 hours. Every minute counts.
There are some excellent 40+ page PDFs on tuning. Adobe has also published a pretty good one. When I install an XP setup, I can disable about 20 services just dont need them. I also need to make about 20 registry entries. It all adds-up. Google is your friend.
This is all CS4 and it all works fine (and this is important, for me) some glitches along the way (I am working with AE engineering on one now). To be clear, there are problems with PS OGL does not work at all (for me). Many of PPs problems are addressed by some patches. The engineering teams are working the issues.
Now, if you want to see truly hostile threads, just visit the LR forums.
I ran the test and got 31.1 sec using the 64-bit app and 31.8 sec using 32-bit. Not much difference really. Both with OGL enabled. Latest 180.20 drivers for Quadro FX4500 (posted yesterday). Outlook and Opera and AV/firewall running in the background.
My system is over 2 years old.
I don’t think this test is valid for the brush/clone issues since it doesn’t push pixels around my 2560 x 1600 monitor. On some files, some relatively small 2500x2500px with lots of adjustment layers and layer effects, I have to make the image the size of a postage stamp to get anything moving with any speed.
We have almost identical systems. I disabled HT because I was having problems with some apps. My card is a newer generation than the 4500 — although I love the 4500 and am going to e-bay it this week. Should go for about $600 — considering what I paid, that is sad…
I use XP SP3-32 exclusively.
Same vid driver. Did you get OGL to work? Do you disable "Allow Application Settings" in the driver?
I am assuming with these numbers, you are splitting everything up to separate spindles. 15K SCSI?
BTW, I checked their site; it looks like 31s is close to the fastest time ever reported.
While we are on the subject of tuning and improving overall PS performance, I will share the utilities that I use. Some are freeware, some shareware and some commercial:
System Mechanic Pro Reg Defense Diskeeper Pro (you need to be careful here) ServWin XPepius Dirsize Driver Sweeper Empty Folder Nuker
I have no stake in any of these utilities. Just want to pass-along some tools that I have found useful.
Wanted to thank you for reminding me about HT. I have stopped using the app that was giving me problems, so I re-enabled. Overall system performance is greatly improved. Not just PS, but the entire system. I am assuming you are using the Intel chipset. What BIOS and driver rev for the chipset? What memory options are you using?
I can not touch your numbers for the speed test. Suspect some of my more invasive apps are in the way … just too lazy to reconfigure. Shaved a bit of time, but not much.
Although I have onboard perc/SAS etc. I actually have one 10K hard drive (SATA) for the operating system and programs, a 1TB hard drive for my working files and two 150GB 10K raptors in a RAID 0 configuration dedicated to PS scratch. My OGL is enabled but all the advanced settings are disabled.
I have tried just about every different setting in the nVidia display drivers and have settled with the following:
Ansitropic filtering – off Antialiasing – Gamma correction – off Antialiasing – Setting – Application-controlled Antialiasing – Transparency – off Buffer-flipping mode – Auto-select Conformant texture clamp – Use hardware Enable overlay – off Error reporting – off Exported pixel types – Color indexed overlays (8 bpp) Extension limit – off Force stereo shuttering – off Maximize texture memory – off Maximum pre-rendered frames – 0 Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration – Compatibility performance mode Stereo – Display mode – Use on-board DIN connector Stereo – Enable – off Stereo – Swap eyes – off Threaded optimization – Auto Triple buffering – off Unified back/depth buffer – on Vertical sync – Force off
OGL is working great, really fast zoom and rotation. Typing text is smooth and fast.
I use blackviper.com to help trim some of the services. I have 26 processes running after startup (3 of them are for the Wacom intuos 3)and no errors in the event viewer.
Snoop filter is on and HT is enabled.
I use a free disk defrag utility (JKdefrag64)I also have Ad-Aware SE, Qimage, Office 2003, Quark Xpress 7.3 and Corel X4 along with a heap of plug-ins, AutoFX Dreamsuite and Page Edges, neat-image 32 & 64 bit, HP print drivers and Epson scanner driver. Opera, Firefox 3, IE 7 (32 & 64 bit)CS4 Design premium, Lightroom 64, FotoFusion, PowerDVD, Roxio, Silkypix and ESET smart security.
Many newer systems should be faster than this – I purchased this system in September 2006.
We have the same chipset and drivers. I’ll enable Snoop.
dedicated 4GB/sec FC array for scratch raid 0 dedicated 4GB/sec FC array for images raid 3 dedicated 15K SCSI 320 spindel for page same for programs and system
I’ll try your video settings.
Would you mind doing a print screen of your processes, or dump from the services startup? I am impressed, I have never been able to get it that low — not even close. Would like to see what you were able to accomplish.
Do you have Adobe’s utility to check OGL compatability? Could you send me the version of OGL on your 4500? I could not get any OGL on my 4500.
Thanks, your OpenGL settings helped a lot with my performance issues, brush lag has improved immeasurably, pen tool is now perfectly usable but still experiencing some lag with the clone tool.
All in all, your settings will allow me to use CS4 for work.
smokes crack. Download SmartClose or similar app and shut down services and processes selectively. I run SC before I have a heavy duty session in Photoshop (also invoke the 3G switch).
I also give thanks for your OGL settings. They helped enormously. Currently running DEll M1730 with 8800M SLi; RAM = 4G, using /3G switch; 2×200 7500 HD in Raid 0; Wacom Intuos 3; and use Windows XP SP3.
All OGl-based functions work well on laptop. I have a DELL 24" external monitor running as well and all functions work well except truncated cursor. So, I defer to Nvidia to help with that issue since the laptop cursor runs well.
I will try Jacqui’s Nvidia settings to see if they provide further improvement. I am using Nvidia’s 179.28 Beta on my machine (from Nvidia site).
Almost forgot. I saw a 50% improvement (at least) when I removed McAfee AV Suite and replaced with free AntiVir program. Then I applied Pro Artist’s settings. In combination I now have a system that can wait for Adobe patch and that ever elusive, "upgraded driver" from Nvidia (oh, let’s throw in Microsoft as well until we get Windows 7).
Thanks to all in this forum for sharing your experiences.
I don’t have Adobe’s utility to check OGL compatibility, but I know that the 4500 is listed on their website as compatible. It is my understanding that the limiting factor is the operating system as opposed to the video card. I don’t know how to find the OGL version but here is a screen print of the driver details with OGL driver at the top:
I can spin images around from the 1Ds MKII so fast it makes you dizzy, but getting the brushes to work at a reasonable speed on some much smaller images with adjustment layers and layer styles is quite slow unless I reduce the size considerably. Like others have reported, the lag builds up and I have had some strokes take 9 seconds or more to catch up. Good luck with your tweaking.
Me too. Note that of the 20 running processes, one is Task Manager and two are from Eset (NOD32 antivirus). I could kill the Eset service but I just disable scanning instead. So, a workable minimum for me is 19 running process thanks to SmartClose.
Your services are similar to mine except that I have Acrobat, my nVidia drivers and my Wacom drivers up and running (can’t do without them). On the other hand, you could possibly lose ALG service? The uphclean too unless you are having shutdown issues/Userenv events occurring. MS sent me a 64-bit version of that utility because I get a Userenv warning at shutdown if I have been printing. I chose not to install since it doesn’t interfere with the shutdown process.
I must admit I prefer to be in control of what services I allow to run as opposed to handing control over to software. I’m paranoid 🙂
You really have to be careful over starting and stopping Services. There are dependencies involved (what starts and when) in the mix, as well as overall timing issues, (exacerbated in Vista, BTW). Some services start before the GUI and some run whether or not the GUi is actually running.
I leave ALG alone because it has such a small footprint in memory that I don’t think it matters much. Plus, I sometimes use Windows firewall and my understanding is that WF requires it.
I installed uphclean when I *was* having shutdown events. I haven’t had any since and, again, another small amount of memory resources are required so…
As to being in control, the software I use allows the user to configure what does and does not get shut down, so there’s not really much to be paranoid about. I did the Black Viper thing back in the W2K days and the tweaks were OK, although I would sometimes run into something that didn’t work and then I’d have to sort out why.
There is a thread on OGL [specifically nVidia] settings, but transportable. I posted a link to it about a week ago.
I agree, this thread is now getting too complex to navigate. Maybe the moderators should close this one and folks split the topics into sperate threads.
I have now seen four sets of nVidia settings. I used the ones from the other thread and they were helpful.
Maybe a comparison experiment against the various settings?
Hugh, I’ve not edited the ini, just selected apps and services from the available menu. There’s really nothing left running when SmartClose is done that I want to terminate anyway.
There are other utilites that perform the same sort of function, some more aggresive than others. Here are three more that you might want to check out (I can’t endorse them because I haven’t used them).
Hello Apologies for returning to this, but I have just done the benchmark on my son’s tiny Samsung laptop with a 12in screen. It uses Vista, has a 2.4ghz core 2 dual and 3 gb of ram. It did the benchmark in 47secs, using the internal 5400rpm drive. 83% of available ram used by CS4. Vista uses over 1Gb of the 3GB. I’m amazed. I might as well buy a little laptop!
I’ve got a room full of DELL workstations ranging from Optiplex 745’s to DELL Precision 690’s with 4 gigs of ram. ALL boxes have NVIDIA cards including several with Quadro FX 3500s with the latest drivers. ALL installs of CS4 show the same (terrible) slowness and choppiness when moving images over top each other. All settings have also been toggled with no change.
As a test, we have one system with an ATI card and performace is just as bad as all the other machines.
As another test, I pulled one of our machines from the network and also killed every single process including McAfee. Performance still very poor.
I’m reluctant to spend more time troubleshooting this for one simple reason: CS3 works perfectly on every single machine we have and CS4 doesn’t. That tells me that the problem is caused by something Adobe did. Whether or not the new GPU coding uncovered an existing underlying issue with video cards is not my concern. I’m loath to change our corporate environment to attempt to fix a problem we did not cause. An easier solution for us would be to just return all 20+ copies of our CS4 suites.
Do any of the engineers have any more updates for us?
Systems are WinXP SP2/SP3 with latest direct X updates and latest Video drivers.
C.Morley: Here’s an update, we’ve been working on the issue since it was first reported and we’re still looking for volunteers to help us test a change that may improve performance. If you’re interested in helping you can email me directly.
Also, we found a possible workaround (nVidia only) for the issue of images not redrawing or drawing incorrectly when moved:
In the NVIDIA Control Panel:
Advanced -> Geforce/Quadro tab -> Start NVIDIA Control Panel -> Advanced Settings -> Manage 3D Settings -> Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration
Set to Compatibility performance mode
Note that in my case this setting is on by default for PS CS4 after installing the latest drivers for the 8800 GT (YMMV).
Adam, I would love to help troubleshoot this. How to I get hold of you? (I’ll try your NVIDIA settings)
ProArtist, I tried your settings and while they helped a bit on the chopped graphics when dragting one image over the other (still not usable though) the pen lag and other general slogginess remains the same.
I’ve begun to move away from my ‘old faithful CRT’ and try out dual LCDs. My previous videocard (ATI Radeon HD-2400) had 1x VGA and 1x DVI outputs and I suspected the slight difference in colour behaviour from one screen to the other identical model was due to this difference in connection. So I picked up a Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Video Card with the hope that this more powerful card might also improve CS4’s lag.
In Vista 64 the card works fine and there seems to be very little lag when cloning or drawing. But with XP it’s very sluggish and the delay is unacceptable for any real world work (sticking with Cs3 for now).
Tomorrow I’ll poke at the OpenGL options that have been recommended in this thread to see if they help. But just to let folks know that it works better with Vista 64 than XP at this point. I’m using the latest 8.12 ATI driver in XP and 8.11 in Vista64 (8.12 has a known issue with Vist64 that’s not yet resolved by ATI).
Is it possible that when you disable or modify some OpenGL settings in order to get CS4 to redraw faster that you are sacrificing the new CS4 feature of its providing a finer screen presentation at odd zooms other than 100%?
At this time, I have no way to test this since I had to remove my OpenGL card because of unrelated issues [dont ask] well, OK: my power supply was insufficient for the card upgrade making the card make a terrible noise for 30 seconds upon a cold start-up. Oddly hot-starts werent a prob. So rather than fool anymore with my 5 yr old PC: gonna get another but am afraid to until this screen lag problem is solved.
I migrated to fanless, big heat sink video cards for that reason.
I just finished grafted an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1(rev2) onto a Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 following the method outlined at <http://www.silentpcreview.com/article793-page1.html> and it’s totally silent, except for a 120mm fan set to low that was recommended by the same silentpcreview article.
Now back to XP with CS4…
If I go to CS4’s Preferences -> Performance -> OpenGL Advanced Settings and turn off some of the features the lag is reduced substantially to the point that I can work with the app easily:
1) Vertical Sync : Worse choice/ very sluggish drawing response
2) 3D Interaction Acceleration: Slows things a bit
3) Force Bilinear Interpolation: Doesn’t slow things down (might even help?)
4) Advanced Drawing, Use for Image Display, Color Matching: Doesn’t slow things down
All the bells and whistles of PSCS4 seem to be working fine with 1 and 2 disabled.
FWIW this card works fine in Vista64. Hope this might help some who use Radeon cards and for whom these simple settings changes might help.
To reiterate: My biggest problem with CS4, with OGL enabled, is dragging an open window around. When I do that, the content disappears. Chris Cox has said (somewhere in this never-ending thread) that Adobe has been unable to reproduce the problem. This leaves me with a very empty feeling, update-wise.
I know, without searching, that other people have seen this. Are any of you still out there?
This PC is XP Pro, SP3, Opteron dual-core processor, 4 GB RAM, video card is HIS ATI Radeon X1950 Pro which supports Shader 3.0 and OGL 2.0.
With OGL enabled in prefs, this happens with any image that is opened, from web graphics to poster-sized, and with Bigger Tiles enabled or not. I despise Documents as Tabs, so it’s been disabled from the first.
What version of OGL do you have? Have you started to play with the underlying driver OGL and 3D management settings?
I installed the latest v8.12 ‘driver only’ which I downloaded from the ATI.AMD.com website. I do not install anything from the CD that comes with the videocard as it’s usually old before the product ships.
I did not install the Catalyst Control Center as I’ve learned from past experience that it offers little benefit and just adds additional overhead with stuff that runs in the background. Much of the junk can be disabled (see: <http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html> ) but I find it’s just easier to avoid it altogether.
Here’s the card info link at Sapphire’s website:
What version of OGL do you have? Have you started to play with the underlying driver OGL and 3D management settings?
I installed the latest v8.12 ‘driver only’ which I downloaded from the ATI.AMD.com website. I do not install anything from the CD that comes with the videocard as it’s usually old before the product ships.
I did not install the Catalyst Control Center as I’ve learned from past experience that it offers little benefit and just adds additional overhead with stuff that runs in the background. Much of the junk can be disabled (see: <http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html> ) but I find it’s just easier to avoid it altogether.
I assume this page has the OpenGL version info you’re asking about. Though I have only turned off stuff in Photoshop’s own OpenGL preferences menu and without the Catalyst Control Panel I don’t think I can change anything else.
FWIW: When I move images around the screen (with XP) the image remains visible at all times. Though when I release the mouse at the end of the move there is a slight flickering that I’ve never seen with any pervious versions of PS. The flickering does not occur with the OpenGL feature turned off in PS Preferences. This is with an 11 layered RGB image (including 2 text layers) that weighs in at 308mb (40.9mb when flattened).
Russell, The CC Panel does have some openGL settings that can be turned on and off. Also heat generation wise your card is just like my 4870. CS4 really puts my card to work and it heats up fast. The CC Panel has a option to speed up the cooling fan on your card to keep it cool when you stress it out.
As mentioned earlier I replaced the fan with an Accelero S1 VGA Cooler as detailed at <http://www.silentpcreview.com/article793-page1.html> and it’s very silent (just a 120mm fan running a low speed) and seems to be running very cool. Anyway.. at this point CS4 seems to be running ok under XP with just turning off those CS4 OpenGL options. I hope the few hiccups that remain will be resolved with a ‘dot’ release.
Nick,
If the image is disappearing while moving it about the way you describe I’d probably suspect a hardware conflict. I’d look to see if the videocard could be moved to another slot on the motherboard if another PCIe slot’s available to try. I’d also pull out any other unnecessary cards that might be causing a conflict (just as a test). I’d also try running the system with only 2GB RAM to rule out any issues there.
It’s possible that it’s not a CS4 issue other than CS4 doing stuff that’s exposing a hardware issue.
I suspect that if one runs CS4 on Vista 64, running an Intel Nehalem processor on a good x58 board, most problems will go away, but not all.
I know that manufacturing techniques follow the basic pattern establishing interchangeability of components, which ought to lead to units that run within spec, but it seems to me that we are almost back in the handmade age, where each production was unique.
I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that Adobe sees problems at the deep level that we will never observe ourselves. That is, it ain’t perfect by a long shot!
It is my opinion that Adobe seriously needs two things:
Structured Exception Handling reports at the user level
A formal bug tracking system to which we can contribute such as Bugzilla.
I’d look to see if the videocard could be moved to another slot on the motherboard if another PCIe slot’s available to try.
Unfortunately, not an option. It’s an AGP card.
I’m seeing decent performance with OGL turned off in prefs, so I’ll probably just wait and see if "the fix" fixes my problem.
Beyond that, I have a copy of Vista 64 that I can install at some point on that box. As I mentioned some time ago, I have CS4 installed on my other box, which is already Vista 64, and CS4 runs fine on it.
Yeah, it’s several years old, but it was pretty much state of the art when I built it. I’ve been toying with the idea of building a new one, but all the research into mobos, CPUs, etc., is daunting. Back when I built it, I was going through a stage of actually enjoying all the tinkering, but I guess my geekness has worn off. Now I just want something that works without me having to get under the hood.
A few weeks ago I tried to install the CS4 upgrade (currently running CS3, with a large number of extra Gradients, Styles, Actions, and plug-ins).
CS 4 had so many problems I uninstalled it (totally unusable).
I have now upgraded my video card to a much more powerful, higher end card from the Adobe Tested List as well as swapped out my 300 watt power supply for a 650 watt. My system is running beautifully with the hardware. Within a few days I will be doing a reinstall of CS4 and hopefully things will go much better.
My question is this: CS3, with all of its extras is installed on the C (system boot) drive. I have two additional internal harddrives, can CS4 be installed on one of those secondary drives, or must it be installed on the boot drive (C drive)?
For business purposes CS3 must be kept operational and intact with all of its extras and plug-ins.
I would also like to be able to work with CS4, try out the many settings changes and suggestions that have been submitted to the forum, see what extras and what plug-ins it will work with until Adobe can provide enough fixes to make the program functional and reliable enough to handle my business projects.
I have both CS3 and CS4 installed to the same (C) drive, and CS3 still works fine. Like you, I must have a working copy of CS for business purposes.
Another poster here has suggested that installing programs on a different drive other than your system drive can cause problems. I’ve never tried it, so I wouldn’t know about that.
It is definitely inadvisable to install Photoshop anywhere but the default location on C:\.
Some people like to take control of where things are installed but, with so many dependencies on other system directories, it can often lead to malfunctions or poor performance.
That is a problem on the Mac side. I haven’t seen any issues at all on the Windows side but with the 64 bit versions I think you need to be a bit more careful.
I, too, have been installing Photoshop (and most other programs, except utilities and Windows components) in D:\Program Files\* for years without problems. It worked fine in CS, CS2, CS3, and CS4. Some versions insisted on installing some components (e.g., Bridge) on C:, but there have been no problems with installs on a drive other than C:. There darn well ought not to be any problems, because any installer that hard-codes a C: location will fail hard on systems that don’t have that location available. And while it is very common and indeed default behavior for a Windows install on a pristine machine to have C: be the system disk, that is far from being universal, so it is exceedingly unwise for an installer to make such an assumption.
I don’t think it has nearly as much to do with Vista or the video drivers or the other file updates as it has to do with a terrible code relase by Adobe with horrible QA or QA indifference. I can tell you that CS2 runs great on the same o/s and config parameters and CS4 runs terribly slow and has all the problems that users are experiencing like the Marquee tool way behind the actual mouse drag.
The solution by someone given a few pages back for reducing lag with the brush by selecting various OpenGL functions, reduced mine to 0 drag. Before there was huge drag, it would trail 1cm behind when I drew concentric circles, now none. I’m sooo bloody happy!!
Also tried out the retouchartists speed test: 30 seconds. Is that average?
Don’t know how current this thread is, and I’ve not read the entire thing, but the post on this page saying that Chris Cox says Adobe has not reproduced the ATI problem internally gives me reason to post.
CS4 on my ATI 4850 with latest drivers and 32-bit XP Pro also refreshes very poorly. After every window move, I have to zoom in and out or some other similar operation to get the window to refresh to see the contents.
If there’s no repro within Adobe for this, I would be happy to provide info or video or something of this happening.
Early next month, Adobe will be officially announcing a fix for all of the issues in this thread. The tentative release title is Adobe® Photoshop® CS5, with an expected upgrade MSRP of $199 USD.
Bogus Chris Cox:Adobe Photoshop Engineer Early next month, Adobe will be officially announcing a fix for all of the issues in this thread. The tentative release title is Adobe® Photoshop® CS5, with an expected upgrade MSRP of $199 USD.
I guess the forum doesn’t check for duplicate or forged names, does it?
Anthony, it appears that my earlier response to you was deleted along with the Chris Cox "imposter" posts. Anyway, nope, still no solutions.
Seems to me that the fact that you’re using the same card as me (is yours AGP? Mine is.) would indicate that the card itself is not to blame. Probably more likely it’s something to do with how that card interacts with CS4 and the specific combination of the rest of my hardware/software set-up.
Let’s put it this way: After working with Adobe engineers, as well as the good people who populate this forum, I am not optimistic that my missing-window content problem will be solved with this release of PS.
Nick: Although I am reluctant to dump long lists of specs on this forum, I thought it just *might* be of use to show some info on my 1950 card. How does this compare with yours?
Anthony.
Model : Radeon X1950 Pro VGA Compatible : No Chipset Model : R580 Bus Type : PCIe Version : 1.00 Width : x16 / x16 Speed : 2.5Gbps / 2.5Gbps Video BIOS Date of Manufacture : 10 November 2006 Version : 9XTB1EA.H1M Direct3D Capabilities Model : Radeon X1950 Pro Physical Memory : 512MB Total System Memory : 1.31GB Direct3D Capabilities Interface Version : 9.00 Model : Radeon X1950 Pro Video Driver : atiumdag.dll Library Version : 7.14.10.636 Has 3D Hardware Acceleration : Yes Hardware Transform & Light : Yes Heads : 1 Pixel Shaders Version : 3.00 Vertex Shaders Version : 3.00
Someone had pointed out that ‘Triple buffering’ was turned on in their nVidia prefs, when they turned it off, everything worked fine. Mine is turned off and it works fine.
In the last couple of months I have posted twice to this forum. My first attempt to install CS4 failed, there were a number of display problems. Tech Support recommended updating to the latest driver for my graphics card. I did, it didn’t help. Call #2 to tech support, I was told that my video card was not good enough to run the program, I would need to upgrade the videocard.
I was very hesitant to do that, I had already spent quite a bit of money on the CS4 Upgrade and on Lightroom 2 Full Version. Replacing a key piece of hardware in a system usually results in a chain reaction of other pieces of hardware needing to be replaced.
After completing some work projects that needed to be done, thinking about the video card issue (according to the product information on the Adobe website and product packaging, my video card was more than adequate), downloading and reading through all of the knowledge base articles on CS4 issues, and researching video boards; I decided to bite the bullet and ordered a Diamond ATI Radeon HD 3870 with 1 gig of ram I also had to upgrade my system power supply from 300 watt to a minimum 450 for the video board — I chose a 650 watt. My husband installed the new hardware, not the easiest job to do and the system fired up, running as perfectly as ever. After about 2-3 weeks of normal use, just to be sure the system was OK with the hardware changes I decided to try reinstalling CS4.
The installation seemed to go perfectly, none of the previous display problems were present. I thought I was home free. Then I opened Gradients and Styles, they were a mess, I had 1 Gradient that appeared in all of the Gradient Boxes and 1 Style that appeared in each of the Style Boxes (working with defaults only on CS4). I tried everything I could think of to fix this mess, nothing worked, and to make matters worse, CS3 Gradients and Styles (approx 150 of them) did the same thing.
Back to Tech Support, where I got a very nice agent who tried everything he could think of, with no resolution to the problem. His advice was to uninstall CS4, uninstall CS3 and start over from scratch with nothing more than the virgin disk installation — CS3 first and if it was working right, then CS4 — if that worked right start adding in my collection of Gradients, Styles etc with any CS3 Plug-Ins being added last, one at a time. I did the uninstalls and reinstalled CS3, it did not work, the same problem with Styles and Gradients was there.
The next morning I call Tech Support and started one of the worst tech support experiences I have ever been through. From the first Tech Support Agent, who transferred me to someone else — nobody could help. I was tranferred 6 times, disconnected several times and had to start over. Every call, every person, I had to repeat, name rank and serial number (mine) and the programs as well as restate the time-line and problems. My patience was at the breaking point and I really snapped at agent #5 so he hung up on me. Agent #6 was difficult to understand (accent) and that call ended badly with Agent 6 hanging up on me because I could not understand his accent and follow his instructions and asked to be transferred to someone with less accent.
Agent #7 — I hit the gold mine — his name was George and he was terrific, patient and knowledgable. He stayed with me on the phone for over two hours. We tried everything and could not get either CS3 or CS4 to work probably — the problem with Styles and Gradients remained the same, no mattter what we did. George finally admitted that he had exhausted every idea he had and that he was going to have to hand me on up the tech food chain to a more experienced tech support person. I should receive a call with in 2 – 3 days. If you see this George, thank you so much for your time and patience.
I received a call from Adobe Tech Support the very next day. I lost the note with this agents name, he was also terrific, patient and knowledgeable. He had read all of the tech notes from George the previous day, connected to my computer via DSL and started troubleshooting. All I had to do was sit and watch and answer an occasionnal question. Within 15 minutes, this agent had determined the problem and fixed it. There was one adjustment that needed to be made to my graphics board — hardware acceleration was sent to full and by slowing it down by just one mouse click, both CS3 and CS4 started working perfectly, all display, loading issues disappeared.
I know have both CS3 and CS4 installed on my system, both are carrying the full collections of Styles, Gradients, Actions and Brushes. Both are carrying all of my third party Plug-Ins (only one old Extensis Plug-In would not work on CS4 and had to be left out).
I have been trying out different things on CS4 each day and have experienced no significant problems. It is running at least as fast or faster than CS3, I have no lag, I can use Plug-Ins and the program has not crashed even once.
Since I was very down on Adobe and on CS4, I wanted to update the forum on my situation. The Adobe people canme through for their customer and got my problems fixed. CS4 is a beautiful product. Yes, it might need a little extra TLC for awhile, but what program release doesn’t anymore?
My system is a 4 year old Sony Vaio Desktop 24" Samsung LCD Monitor XP Pro with Service Pack 3 Intel Pentium 4 3.00 mhz processor 2 gigs of system ram 3 / 250 gig internal harddrives 1 / 500 gig External My Book Harddrive set up to receive Automatic Up To The Minute Backup of all file changes — and weekly Norton Ghost Backup of the System C Drive and the two internal data only drives new 650 watt Power Supply new Diamond ATI Radeon HD 3870 Video Card with 1 gig ram
The system is happy and running great with its new hardware and software additions ……….. and so am I.
CS4 Is A Disaster? ……. Not as much of a disaster as we might have thought …….
It’s strange, in the old days reducing hardware acceleration was one of the first things to try with video problems but, with so many OpenGL problems flying around, the old standby has been all but forgotten.
Pity you forked out for the super duper card. Might come in handy for CS6 though! 😉
When I started researching video / graphics boards I used the Adobe list of "tested boards". I also contacted Sony Tech Support for any information they could give me. The tech agent I got at Sony was very nice and very willing to help with motherboard and other compatiblity issues. I also had a lot of information that others had posted on this forum, and that really did help with the research.
I did an on-line search for several of the boards on the Adobe List and found the Radeon 3870 with 1 gig at a very, very good price. All things considered it was the biggest bang for the buck and a good long term investment. Should I replace this computer sometime in the near future, the Radeon board will simply migrate to the new computer.
This whole thing with CS4 has been a strange experience, I definitely learned that I will always be checking user forums BEFORE I upgrade anything.
I think the only thing that I would still condsider to be a failure on Adobe’s part is that the real graphics requirements of CS4 were downplayed and glossed over in the promotion and ads for CS4. None of the major computer magazines seem to have picked up on it either. As end users we were left a little too much in the dark.
Thanks, Anthony. I used to have Sisoft Sandra installed, but don’t anymore. I’ll try it again and report back.
Jan,
I think the only thing that I would still condsider to be a failure on Adobe’s part is that the real graphics requirements of CS4 were downplayed and glossed over in the promotion and ads for CS4.
I could not agree with you more. Glad you’ve found the right combination of hardware/software to run CS4, but a good many of us are still sitting here with an upgrade that is junk.
Anthony, our specs, according to SiSoft Lite, are similar. However, my date of manufacture is Feb. ’07, as opposed to yours, Nov. ’06. Your Library Version is 7.14.10.636, whereas mine is 6.14.10.6903. Your card has one head, mine has two. Everything else is the same.
Part two:
Chris Cox,
It still sounds like a driver bug.
It appears that you are correct, at least to some extent. This morning I discovered that ATI has released new drivers for my card, Catalyst Control 9.1.
I first downloaded only the driver, and installed that. Bad news. My second monitor was not recognized, and CS4 would not open at all. Got an error message and was told to terminate the program. I uninstalled the driver, downloaded the complete Catalyst Control Center 9.1 and installed it.
CS4 opened with the message about my video card not being capable, and that OpenGL would be disabled. I enabled it anyway, in prefs, and the OGL stuff seems to be working.
My biggest problem, that of window content disappearing after dragging a file, has gone away. I still get flickering of the image content while dragging, but the content eventually displays. This is annoying, but at least it is now a workable situation.
Bottom line: If you’re experiencing the vanishing window content problem with an ATI card, get the 9.1 CCC update and give it a whirl.
@Nick #700: Just to confirm, I am only using one monitor A NEC Spectraview 2690 on my setup. Maybe the difference is with two monitors versus one monitor? Glad you have found an improvement with the 9.1 driver version. I am using that too, although I have dispensed with CCC altogether.
Anthony, I wish I could get the new (9.1) driver to work without CCC. CCC tends to mess with my monitor’s profile at odd times, and it seems that the only way I can get back to the correct calibration is to reboot the computer.
It could well be 2 monitors versus 1. We do have a few problems in the Photoshop code related to that (sigh), but we’ve also seen a lot of driver issues related to multiple displays, multiple GPUs, and working on a non-main display. The GPU makers need to be informed when you find bugs like that, so they can get additional information to reproduce the problems in-house (and hopefully fix them).
As for CCC messing up your calibration – please inform ATI. We’ve already been round and round with them about that (over more years than I care to think about).
Nick: Only thoughts and ideas but when I wanted to get rid of CCC and the old ATI driver, I used a program called DriverSweeper, which cleans everything out. I then rebooted and of course the OS used the native driver. Then I downloaded and installed the ATI 9.1driver – without downloading CCC at all, rebooted and all worked well; but of course with only one monitor as discussed above.
The GPU makers need to be informed when you find bugs like that, so they can get additional information to reproduce the problems in-house (and hopefully fix them).
As I’ve mentioned before in this thread (or maybe it was some other one, I can’t remember), I have tried, tried and tried again to make ATI aware of these problems. As an individual, they don’t care one bit about my problems, especially since my problems don’t relate to gaming.
As a corporation, I would think that you guys have a lot more pull in this regard, especially since it concerns making your software run correctly. Myself, I’m done spending time trying to deal with ATI.
Nick – yeah, you’d think we’d have the pull. But they need to hear from real customers, not corporations saying "this happens in our lab". We are working with the GPU makers, and reporting bugs, helping them narrow down causes, etc. But, they don’t get the whole picture from us. It’s very different when they hear details from customers, especially when those customers aren’t just playing games.
OK, Chris, tell ya what. My email address is nick at nickdeckerphoto dot com. Send me some contact info that gets me to someone other than "please hold, and your call may be recorded for quality-control purposes" and I’ll be happy to tell them about my problems. I promise, I won’t mention your name, only that ATI/Radeon needs to be aware of the problems I’m having.
I have called them, I have emailed them and I have sent web mails to them via their web site. Not one response, other than an email that said that my vid card was not appropriate for graphics work with programs such as Photoshop (although the card does meet all the system requirements you guys publish).
Cripes Chris, if they cannot get serious about a lab finding problems, who can they believe? If your lab is like mine, a sighting doesn’t become a bug until it can be replicated, and the more systems that show it the better.
<I’ll give them mine in return for a new quad core. >
I wouldn’t bother. CS4 doesn’t work properly on my quadcore. Brand new machine, top card, loads of ram, latest drivers, all "enable openGL drawing" options explored (and I mean all)…
….and still I get menus that degrade (can’t even close the app down), flickering, jerky redraws on every move, etc etc.
I’m getting my money back. Anyone got CS3 for sale?
The feature set in CS4 is too addicting to give up: clone stamp palette, arbitrary canvas rotation, 3D object painting, it’s all good.
But the UI redraw, and the OGL issues with refreshing the screen, are indeed frustrating. I’ve played with a ton of settings in the ATI control panel to no avail.
Harry, the ATI control panel (Catalyst Control Center) won’t get you anywhere. Believe me, I’ve tried everything. Download their latest driver (9.1) and see if that helps. If not, you’ll be told by Adobe to download the latest driver.
Seriously, this is the most f’ed up thing I’ve ever gone through with PS.
When you built your computer did you update directx 9.c? Vista may use directx 10.1 (after sp1 update) but it also uses directx 9c to run a ton of software. Updating 9c does not effect directx 10 in Vista in any way.
Also .net update to 3.5 may help you. There is also a update for C++ for 2008.
Have you been reading this thread? There are 720 posts on here so far. I can’t take the time to count just how many of them are individual complaints about the same performance issues that render the software virtually unusable. The errors seem to have nothing to do with any specific hardware on the part of the user. ATI cards, nVidia cards, XP, Vista, laptops, desktops, you name it.
Just because you personally are not having issues doesn’t mean that there aren’t an inordinate number of people who are.
But they are isues pertinent to the HW/SW/FW combinations on that particular computer.
I installed on three: one had a major problem, one ran without 3D capability, the third ran marvelously.
The first one is a AMD macchine, several years old with a PCI card. The second, a Dell workstation. The third, an Intel i7 machine with nVidia 7 series PCIe cards. Any one of three versions.
In the best of worlds, an app would simply run. But we aren’t there yet. 🙁
Wow. I’m just starting to work with CS4 after CS2 (have already left a post or two) and using the text tool in the simplest way is horrendous: I go to make changes to a text layer (in this case deleting part of it) and I have to wait to see my changes long enough that I’m wondering if my actions have had a result. Why? Why!
d: I’ve been reading a lot more than just this thread, and it is related to certain combinations of ‘HW/SW/FW’ as Larry pointed out. You have one of those unfortunate combos.
I having been building my own systems for 14 years now and never had a problem, but when I built this new system I ended up replacing every component because they were faulty. I have an ATI FireGL card that is making a nice paperweight because ATI wouldn’t live up to its warranty. I also had a problem with Intel. So yea, it could be a faulty card.
Just because the problem is related to "certain combinations of HW/SW/FW" doesn’t relieve Adobe of the burden to solve this widespread issue. By that rationale, if the software only worked on one PC model that Adobe developed CS4 on and I couldn’t get it to work right it would still be my fault for not having that magical combination of HW/SW/FW. As it is, there are over a dozen people in my company alone — all of whom have different PC models with different specs — who are almost unable to work since we’ve been forced to upgrade to CS4. There is nothing unusual about any of our system (all Lenovo, some with ATI, some with nVidia), and most of them are quite new.
I’m being reminded of Microsoft’s "Red Ring of Death" fiasco with their Xbox 360s. They tried to pretend that the problem was not their fault or was being blown out of proportion for several years, and until it happened to my Xbox (three times!) I argued that people just weren’t taking good care of their game systems. It’s easy to dismiss a problem when it isn’t happening to you.
Nick, my drivers are current at 9.1. CCC is, as far as I’m aware, the only avenue to the various video driver settings that may affect CS4. Nothing I did there had any effect, of course: just saying that I did my homework before commenting.
D. Rutledge – nobody is dismissing the problems. Adobe is working on a dot release, and ATI and NVidia are working on driver updates. But we can’t guess at all the possible factors involved. That’s why the video driver writers need more information.
Chris, I would expect that during dev, you have debug log files enabled in several places in the system. Is it possible for the user to enable that logging and send the files to you?
Second, how about a bug reporting tool, customized for your needs from a source like Bugzilla? Debug log files, screen shots etc properly can be inserted there.
I go to make changes to a text layer (in this case deleting part of it) and I have to wait to see my changes long enough that I’m wondering if my actions have had a result. Why? Why!
Welcome to the club! I have managed to mitigate the slow appearing text by setting my NVIDIA 3D settings to Performance. The text still lags but previously it appeared molasses slow.
Why the GPU has any effect on the Text tool is a mystery to me. (Adobe documentation makes no mention of this dependency.)
Lawrence – nope, we don’t ship with that sort of stuff in the code. And we have a bug reporting web page, but no matter what we ask for – there’s never enough detail.
Nice name! I thought I’d see if doing the same with my Radeon X1650 would help … nothing. If I put my cursor in a line of text and hit the backspace key once, the cursor moves back to where it will be once the letter has been deleted, but it takes up to five (not less than three) seconds for the letter to catch up and disappear. It’s like working in the dark. I had no performance problems whatsoever with CS2 (I’m on Vista and if I remember correctly CS2 wasn’t designed to work well on Vista) so I’m finding this to be more than disappointing.
Complicating this for me is the lack of a manual. I bought CS4 on disk instead of download and was surprised and unhappy to find no documentation with it. I can’t take my desktop with me on a bus and I have a hard time working (or trying to) on my PC and at the same time searching through the online "help" and toggling back and forth between applications. Grrr.
It includes Disallow OpenGL Windows and Allow Old GPUS script files that are are also uninstallable.
On my machine at work (Windows XP Professional) Allow Old GPUS did not work Disallow OpenGL Windows got PS to work without crashing, but limits the features
On my machine at home(Windows Vista 64bit) Allow Old GPUS did not work Disallow OpenGL Windows did not work
my copy of PS CS4 crashes after start up and I don’t think I should have to go buy the CS3 version….that is not right.
It includes Disallow OpenGL Windows and Allow Old GPUS script files that are are also uninstallable.
On my machine at work (Windows XP Professional) Allow Old GPUS did not work Disallow OpenGL Windows got PS to work without crashing, but limits the features
On my machine at home(Windows Vista 64bit) Allow Old GPUS did not work Disallow OpenGL Windows did not work
My PS CS4 crashes on my Vista 64bit machine after start up and I don’t think I should have to go buy the CS3 version….that is not right.
Brad – crashing at startup isn’t a common problem. You should probably create a new topic so we can help you figure that one out (most likely cause is still going to be a driver, but it could also be a bad third party plugin, or a font if you’re on 64 bit).
Brad – a corrupt font could cause a crash, or a specific type of corrupt font is known to cause a crash in Photoshop 64 bit (because of a bug in our font handling code trying to recover from the corrupt font contents).
I have problems with Photoshop CS4..installed fine, but when i open any image its corrupt….i am running windows vista 32bit….could this be my graphics card thats giving the problem its a ATI Radeon HD2600XT?
I suspect that Adobe does not sell CS3 to customers who just bought PS and are having problems running the current flavour? Or will Adobe offer a downgrade to CS3 upon request?
I have a client who has just this week hired an in-house graphic artist and they use only PCs. I asked what version of PS they bought her and they said it was the CS4 suite. Now I’m worried that it will run poorly on their hardware and I feel sorry for the problems she might have to face. Perhaps it all works just fine. But it did get me thinking about this.
Dell continues to sell PCs that include a downgrade option to XP. A lot of software I use offers downgrades to previous versions for folks who have problems. I wonder if Adobe might consider doing the same for folks who can forego CS4’s new features/changes and can get their work done until a ‘dot’ release arrives.
Just a suggestion: Officedepot.com is still showing on their website CS3 suite for windows. Maybe your client, if they still can, return CS4 and buy the CS3 suite. Upgrade later on if they wish. I did notice all the PS CS3 window "upgrades" are no longer listed on the website. So your client will need to make the decision soon.
I did notice all the PS CS3 window "upgrades" are no longer listed on the website. So your client will need to make the decision soon.
David, that’s a great suggestion for some. But many large companies won’t (cannot) buy software online and/or cross-border (I’m in Canada) with the thought that perhaps the current version does not work as they expected. Imo, it would be better customer relations to say "Gee you’ve been bitten by a bug that we’re confident will be resolved very soon. But in the meanwhile feel free to download any previous version from Adobe and use that until the problem’s solved. Is there anything else we can help you with today? Thank you for shopping at Adobe.".
I don’t see why a PS11 licence doesn’t automatically accord a license for v10, 9, 8, 7, etc.. and that those versions are not available to paying clients if it means getting their work done. Most things that this company will need PS for can be easily done with CS2 (or less).
I feel less sympathy for those who upgrade as we can all just keep using any previous version we own to keep working. fwiw my CS4 works reasonably well. I’m more concerned for first time buyers who can ONLY buy CS4 through their authorised purchasing channels, and don’t have the safety net of using a previous version if there’s problems that they cannot wait to have fixed.
"But in the meanwhile feel free to download any previous version from Adobe and use that until the problem’s solved. Is there anything else we can help you with today? Thank you for shopping at Adobe"
"Gee you’ve been bitten by a bug that we’re confident will be resolved very soon. But in the meanwhile feel free to download any previous version from Adobe and use that until the problem’s solved. Is there anything else we can help you with today? Thank you for shopping at Adobe."
Agreed, that would be a nice customer-friendly approach on the part of Adobe. Unfortunately, it will never happen, especially the first sentence. Adobe is now, more than ever before, dependent on video card manufacturers making their drivers work with PS. We are now, what, six months into CS4? No fix yet, and if there is one, I’m guessing that it won’t address many of the problems that people are reporting.
Adobe might fix their bugs, but the vid card people don’t give a rat’s ass about PS problems. They are driven and supported by gamers.
Chris Cox tells us to contact our vid card people (I’m still waiting to hear how I might do that, Chris), and there is virtually no way to do that effectively.
I believe that the PS team is working with both nVidia and ATI on issues. Progress has been made. Several PS .release betas have been issued and tested. In my personal case, the second PS .beta resolved many of my OGL issues. Important issues remain and I am sure they will be resolved.
It will take time — just the nature of the beast. In my 17 years as an IT and Operations executive; for any/all SW, the X.1 will always be the safer route. You can always expect some pain with the X.0 release.
Gamers are a very important part of the market, but many of the very high-end cards are really not directed there. Look at the nVidia CX series as an example. Most typical gamers do not spend $2K – $4K USD on a card.
People can spend a lot on computers I have 14TB of RAID 3 FC in my house and another 14TB NAS for backup in a fire-proof closet in the basement My wife is going to kill me some day
Some gaming machines are really high-end… $1K for a processor can be a lot or a little depending on perspective
The first processor that I did serious imaging work with was a 370/600J. I think it was about $10M USD, but that was a while ago Of course, $10M was real money in those days We did some cool stuff back then The DASDE farm was larger than most shopping centers; and cost $12M a year to maintain. Not to date myself, the code was in Fortran…. and some card decks were involved.
Gaming is an interesting world When I was in graduate school, the local champ was the Charmin of the Mathematics department Go figure
Like most of the users here, I too had my problems with CS4. Luckily one of the suggestions from the good people here managed to make my CS4 tolerable.
I just noticed something very odd though. When I use free transform to rotate an image (arbitrary or using the shift key for increments), the image degrades noticeably. I tried duplicating a layer, rotating it CW by holding the shift key, press enter, free transform it again, and put it back to its original position, it is now very much degraded compared to the control layer. In fact, I started with a square selection and there are now bits of pixels outside the image’s borders.
Disabling OpenGL does nothing.
I would very much appreciate your thoughts on this. Thanks.
It tracked it down to an image interpolation problem and it seems Bicubic is the way to go. But there is still a subtle difference between the rotated and un-rotated image. Has it always been this way even in previous versions?
I was just making a remark that fell flat on its face…and damage control made it even worse… %D
Richard,
Yes, be careful with your transforms and rotates. But that’s real image degradation. This thread is about drawing and display problems – don’t get the two mixed up 🙂
hi! I’ve been looking foward a solution for Open GL problems in CS4 for weeks. I have the same graphic card that somo of you use, nvidia quadro Fx1500, as you say , it is a tested one, but i can’t use the Open GL pluggin or after effects crashes. Do you have de same problem?? Did you manage to fix it?? I’ve contact the support service of adobe, but they don’t seem to know how to fix it o what the real problem is. They only tell me to disable the pluggin, bla, bla bla…. Hope you know something about this… Thanks Marisa
Hey, hey! Adobe released the 11.0.1 Photoshop patch and it fixed the slow redraw problems I was having! I am now good to go. All is right with the world for me. 🙂 Thanks!
…. and this is why the old hands on the forums try to calm people down a bit and quit suggesting that Adobe doesn’t care. They do, a lot, and not because it is just a job.
But at least 4 months down the road while clients are tapping the pencil on the desk…..
And I know how long it takes to get some tasks done in software. The vast majority of the time we only have management to mollify when the schedule slips, but customers and their clients? At $$$$/hr?
Im glad I found this thread. Now I dont feel insane or mentally crippled.
Yes, CS4 has been a disaster on my PC also. I have Win Xp Pro, an Athlon chip and 2GB RAM, with an ATI Radeon x1650 graphics card. From the day I loaded CS4, it has crawled, slower than slow, with screen refreshes taking up to 20 or 30 seconds after resizing or moving an image.
After reading these comments, I checked Edit/Preferences/Performance, and the GLU was grayed out. Again taking tips from here, I went to the ATI website and downloaded the very newest drivers and installed them. No luck. Now when I go to Edit/Preferences/Performance, I dont even get the dialog box. CS4 instantly crashes and shuts down. If I dont open Preferences, it still runs, although just as slowwwww. I’m guessing CS4 is using the CPU for graphics, and not the GPU.
Everything else runs fine: Photoshop CS2, Nero, movies, flash, Nikon Capture NX, FastStone and many others just breeze right along. So now I know it has to be a fault with CS4. Groan!
So, Im using CS2 in the meantime. Any suggestions on what to do from here, Adobe?
Can anyone please help me find out how to get Open GL? I keep getting error messages when I try to do something in PS CS4 trial version about this Open GL. I have gone to preferences and do not see it anywhere. I am new to all of this and have no clue how to find this on my laptop.
I am not sure if this has anything to do with not having some of the tools (for example: Rounded Rectangle Tool), but to create a button I need for a site I need that tool and cannot find it anywhere.
I am getting very frustrated at this program. I need it for class for college, but don’t know if I want to spend the money if this is the case. Thanks, Penne
bob maybe it’s time to kill this thread and let a new one evolve… no one is coming in here reading all 800 posts. and if any issues still remain unresolved here, they’re being overlooked. let the posters start a new thread for each specific problem. i say set it to read only and let it float.
tom, have you updated your video drivers to the latest version? have you loaded the new 11.01 update to photoshop?
I am searching for an update to my driver as I write this. I did not know I had to load the new 11.01 update to PS since I just started the trial version 2 weeks ago. Is this necessary? Thanks for the help Penne
It’s not strictly necessary for CS4 to run, but it fixes a lot of problems people have had. Just download and unzip it, and run the setup (exit PS first). You’re all done in less than a minute.
I’ll add one more: I did start a new thread today, but no responses yet (OpenGL…). I wasn’t aware of how long this thread was! However, I have a new computer: quad 9650 3.0 GHz, RAID array (fast!), 32-bit xp, 4 GB RAM (sorry, but too many of my apps don’t run on 64-bit) AND ATI 4850 graphics card, 512 MB (tested and approved!). Works great with OpenGL turned off. With it on, brushes don’t work right (they don’t complete the line); preview on the stamp tool (there is none); images move jerkily; moving a dialog box or panel leaves a copy behind if it was originally over the image. And I haven’t even tried other tools like gradient, etc (can’t do it now, since my computer is in the shop for a graphics card overhaul).
Russell, you’re right and I didn’t read all the posts in this thread: does anyone know if there’s a solution posted somewhere for this problem?…
John Joslin:I only ask because I haven’t found anything yet that won’t run on Vista 64.
I have a whole raft load of software from the late 80’s and early 90’s that won’t run under Vista 64. Of course, it is all 16-bit software–most of it created by Turbo C or Turbo Pascal, but why should that matter……:) of course!
After reading all of you about CS4 and its problems, I guess I know what to blame, since I can’t apply a displacement map to a picture in order to get a reflection effect: I have saved a rasterized (greyscale) document as *.psd file. With the text or image layer selected I go to Filter>Distort>Displace and choose it. It doesnt work, all I get a few broken up letters in the middle of my document. I have it saved in *. jpg format for anyone prepared to help me on this one! Sylvaine Ruflet
I had really bad problems with CS4, it was incredibly slow and laggy to the point where it was not usable. However I reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled Vista to solve some other issues and now CS4 runs smooth as can be.
I do have some issues with the design of the interface though. I don’t like how it’s always full screen by default it makes it difficult to load a bunch of images in and put them all into layers in one file. I tried making them all floating Windows (about 20 images) but PS crashed. So I just have to do it in full screen mode with a ton of tabs.
I posted a couple here already, and this msg is a follow up to advice for some of my problems and other things I read in going through posts.
I updated CS4 to 11.0.1 and I got the most recent drivers for my graphics card — and they *were* recent, February 2009. Unfortunately this only seems to have made matters worse.
Editing text seemed to be a bit better, but images had grey backgrounds and selecting parts of the image turned the whole thing black. Calibrating monitor didn’t help. I dumped the preferences and now I’m back to what I expect as far as image handling goes (no grey/black issues) but the text tool is at least as bad as it was prior to the changes and possibly worse.
If I type a word at regular typing speed it’s a full second + before it appears. Highlight one letter in a word and hit the delete key — it takes even longer for this to happen: visually nothing happens a good second +.
Vista Business, Radeon® X1650 Pro 512MB AGP, 2 gig RAM (Photoshop can use up to 70%) and huge amounts of scratch disk space — four drives, the first of which has 350 gig. I’d say more but I keep falling farther behind on deadlines.
Running PsCS4 on Vista and Photoshop using 70% of memory. I think you may need more memory. Other than that, I would cut back on the memory dedicated to Photoshop to about 50%.
Using an 8800 GTX (Latest drivers: v182.08) on a brand new Intel i7 920, 6GB DDR3 and Vista x64 this issue is ridiculously painful. Phtoshop starts and runs beautifully except that it doesn’t redraw until I move/zoom an image.
James – if the Photoshop dot release and latest drivers aren’t displaying correct, you need to contact your video card maker and get them details so they can fix the remaining driver bugs.
FIXED. Our long national nightmare is over. After 4 months, Adobe or Nvidia or some combination of the two have fixed Photoshop CS4 on my two machines (Dell XPS 1330 with Nvidia Geforce 8400M GS & Dell Vostro 400 with Nvidia Geforce 8600 GTS, both running XP32).
The photoshop 11.0.1 fix plus 2009 drivers for both machines have CS4 in a useable state for me. On the 1330 laptop, there are still screen redraw issues with an image appearing in two places on the screen at once as I drag it from one side to the other, but the lagginess, slowness, unuseable-ness is gone.
I did not have to jump through any hoops, turn any switches on and off, de-install / reinstall any software, look for preinstalled bloat on my Dell machines, or uncover any other hardware or software culprits that may have been causing the CS4 performance problem. All I had to do was wait 4 months for Adobe and Nvidia to fix the problem, and they did.
The reality is that CS4 should not have shipped until now. My hope is that Adobe will learn a lesson from this big mistake and fix such widespread severity 1 problems prior to shipment next time. At this point they need to trumpet to the world that "CS4 is available and it really works now," because I know that many gave up and said to heck with this over the past 4 months. I would really like to see my Adobe stock move in a more northerly direction.
The reality is that CS4 should not have shipped until now. My hope is that Adobe will learn a lesson from this big mistake and fix such widespread severity 1 problems prior to shipment next time.
Perhaps the suite approach pressures the dev team to push it out the door within a fixed timeframe : ready or not..
The rot started with the introduction of the suite concept: a marketing idea to increase turnover, which didn’t take elementary engineering constraints into consideration. (ie you can’t develop totally different products to the same time scale.)
The rise of the "suits" from thereon guaranteed the fall in quality for the end user.
Bill Gates and the Office Suite. From that point on, MS owned the corporate desktop. Some argumnts can be made in the AS/400 world, but IBM was realy in the HW business at the time.
I remember getting "the let’s do this for the team" speach when I was a Systems Engineer in the 80’s. We were "requested" to work (a minimum of) 10 hr days, 6 days a week on a rotating 3-shift basis for one year to "make the schedule". You can imagine the burn-out and resulting quality. I personally logged 450 hrs of OT that year. And quit after the project was in the bag (well, almost in the bag…)
The problems only occur in 32bit while 64bit PS working wonderfully. This would be great except that 98% of all the plugins used are not 64bit compatible. Both the patch dot release and 182.02 driver release are installed.
Chris, I`d also like to contact nvidia about driver related bugs, but I cannot find any mail adress. Only one that seems to be related to Vista specific problems. Can`t you give us an email adress? Why don`t you put a thread on top of the PS forum with a nvidia mail adress?
