CS2 so slow

Bobby Edwards :

CS2 seems to get progressively slower as I work on. I have 1Gb of RAM and
30Gb free on C drive, my main scratch disc, and 23 Gb on D. But it becomes
more and more constipated.

What should I do to avoid this, other than re-booting evry hour a la Painter?

As a hint: Cleanup your plugin-drawer, avoid ‘overscaled’ pictures.

—
….

Bobby Edwards wrote:

CS2 seems to get progressively slower as I work on. I have 1Gb of RAM and 30Gb free on C drive, my main scratch disc, and 23 Gb on D. But it becomes more and more constipated.

What should I do to avoid this, other than re-booting evry hour a la Painter?

Thanks

Bobby E

Spend some time in Adobe’s Forums. There is a lot of discussion about the slowness of CS2. In short…

Don’t leave the "File Info" tab active. Keep it on Navigator or Histogram.

Turn off font previewing in the menu.

Turn off Hardware Acceleration in your video driver settings of your OS.

And the one that Adobe recommends, have a video card with 128 MB of memory or more.

Clyde

You didn’t say what you hardware or OS is. If you’re using Windoze 98SE or older, I would upgrade to XP. Some older versions of Windoze suffer badly from memory leak, and the amount of that 1GB available to PS will keep decreasing until you reboot.

Also. make sure that you have PS’s page file set to a different drive than Windoze’s. If your drives C & D are separate partitions on a single physical drive, you may want to add a second physical drive.

Increasing to 2-3 GB of RAM wouln’t hurt, particularly if you save many undo depths or work on large images.

The last resort of course is to upgrade the hardware. The new dual-core processors, particularly the Athlon 64 X2 series, have been shown to be quite fast on Photoshop. The lower end of these, e.g. the 3800+ is very fast on Photoshop and not too pricey. You may have to assemble your own or have someone do it for you, though, as they’re hard to find in a brand-name computer.

"Bobby Edwards" wrote in message

CS2 seems to get progressively slower as I work on. I have 1Gb of RAM and 30Gb free on C drive, my main scratch disc, and 23 Gb on D. But it becomes
more and more constipated.

What should I do to avoid this, other than re-booting evry hour a la Painter?

Thanks

Bobby E

Turning off hardware acceleration is a royal pain in the butt because I need it for so many other things. Are you SURE you need to do this with XP Pro?

If it is helpfull under XP Pro, then is there a command-line to turn off, then on hardware accelleration? Windows click-clicking away through windows, buttons and taps is a royal pain in the ass. It would be easier to have a command-line execution of on/off, then invoke CS2 and end with turning it back on.

Command-line for the same?

And the one that Adobe recommends, have a video card with 128 MB of

memory or more.<<

This is bunk. Although most modern cards come with this much memory and more, I am running CS2 on dual monitors with a Matrox G550, 32Mb card. Works flawlessly.

Lorem Ipsum wrote:

Turning off hardware acceleration is a royal pain in the butt because I need it for so many other things. Are you SURE you need to do this with XP Pro?
If it is helpfull under XP Pro, then is there a command-line to turn off, then on hardware accelleration? Windows click-clicking away through windows, buttons and taps is a royal pain in the ass. It would be easier to have a command-line execution of on/off, then invoke CS2 and end with turning it back on.

Command-line for the same?

No I’m not sure. In fact I have it turned on in my XP Pro. Then again, I do have a video card with 256 MB on it.

CS2 slowness isn’t consistent with all systems and users. There are a lot of people with CS2 that have no slowness at all. There are a number of people who do. Some in both camps seem to have the same configuration and settings.

If you don’t have any slowness, don’t change anything. If you do, you might want to try the workarounds that others with slowness have found. Any one of them or any combination of them might work for you. I would recommend that you do some reading in Adobe’s Forums and don’t just take my summary as the final word.

Then again, Adobe’s recommendation of more video memory isn’t that expensive. My card cost about $70. If you got one with 128 MB, it will be even cheaper.

Clyde

wrote:

And the one that Adobe recommends, have a video card with 128 MB of

memory or more.<<

This is bunk. Although most modern cards come with this much memory and more, I am running CS2 on dual monitors with a Matrox G550, 32Mb card. Works flawlessly.

As a statistical population of one (1), I’m sure Adobe will jump on your declarative pronouncement immediately. You should see their retraction of their recommendation any day now.

Hey, I was just passing on Adobe’s recommendation. You can argue with them. There are a fair number of people in Adobe’s Forums who have serious slow down problems in CS2. Many of them have found workarounds that seem to help. Adobe’s recommendation seems to work too; I found no message from anyone with 128 MB of video memory who has a slowness issue.

It is obvious that Adobe changed the way it handles video in CS2. It seems that the 2D commands that Adobe is sending to the video driver are not properly handled by all video systems. (From Adobe Forums) They are getting handled just fine by many video systems. It is widely known that Matrox has some of the better video cards and drivers out there. We shouldn’t be surprised that Matrox systems are not having problems. Therefore, don’t change anything on your system.

As for those who really do have a problem, there are things that can be done. I’m just trying to actually help them.

Clyde

Clyde,

Chris Cox has stated that the 128Mb requirement is in error. Although his word carries some weight (since he is a PS programmer), anyone with common sense should be able to understand that PS is a 2d app and, as such, needs only enough memory/processing power to write a 24bit display at a reasonable resolution and refresh rate. Video cards are not the bottleneck. Video card drivers can be.

And yes, there are those who have 128Mb+ of memory *and* have slowness issues.

"Don" wrote in message

You didn’t say what you hardware or OS is. If you’re using Windoze 98SE or older, I would upgrade to XP. Some older versions of Windoze suffer badly from memory leak, and the amount of that 1GB available to PS will keep decreasing until you reboot.

with older operating systems, you’ll find that Cs and Cs2 won’t run at all – minimum spec is win 2000 or win XP

Rich
www.digitalmood.co.uk

Lorem Ipsum wrote:

Turning off hardware acceleration is a royal pain in the butt because I need it for so many other things. Are you SURE you need to do this with XP Pro?

Um, I think they mean the hardware acceleration setting in Photoshop’s preferences, not the card’s hardware acceleration.

Andrew

wrote:

Clyde,

Chris Cox has stated that the 128Mb requirement is in error. Although his word carries some weight (since he is a PS programmer), anyone with common sense should be able to understand that PS is a 2d app and, as such, needs only enough memory/processing power to write a 24bit display at a reasonable resolution and refresh rate. Video cards are not the bottleneck. Video card drivers can be.

And yes, there are those who have 128Mb+ of memory *and* have slowness issues.

Then Chris Cox needs to work with his team. The official recommendation is something other than what he is saying.

Clyde

Andrew Morton wrote:

Lorem Ipsum wrote:

Turning off hardware acceleration is a royal pain in the butt because I need it for so many other things. Are you SURE you need to do this with XP Pro?

Um, I think they mean the hardware acceleration setting in Photoshop’s preferences, not the card’s hardware acceleration.

Andrew

There is not hardware acceleration setting in Photoshop. It is only in the video driver. That is where you have to make the change. Photoshop doesn’t and shouldn’t be directly controlling hardware; that’s what operating systems are for.

Clyde

wrote:

Clyde,

Chris Cox has stated that the 128Mb requirement is in error. Although his word carries some weight (since he is a PS programmer), anyone with common sense should be able to understand that PS is a 2d app and, as such, needs only enough memory/processing power to write a 24bit display at a reasonable resolution and refresh rate. Video cards are not the bottleneck. Video card drivers can be.

And yes, there are those who have 128Mb+ of memory *and* have slowness issues.

I don’t really give a damn if it is the driver or the hardware. In practice they are one system and they can’t be divorced.

Please continue with that "common sense" a bit farther. If CS2 doesn’t work like CS, then something has changed. There are a lot of people trying workarounds trying to find out what has changed. The only official message from Adobe is about the increased need for video memory. Therefore, Adobe thinks that CS2 has changed in relationship to the way it handles video.

Adobe’s official recommendation may be wrong. I have no way of knowing. If it is, they will have to tell us what is right or they will have to fix it without telling us anything. If Chris Cox tells us that it’s wrong, he should tell us what is right. Otherwise his declaration is useless.

Now as to why Adobe changed the way Photoshop addresses the video system, I don’t know that either. It does seem strange, but they may have plans for greater speed or expanded functionality of Photoshop. They also may have inside information on what video card makers are planning for the future.

Clyde

Clyde wrote:

Andrew Morton wrote:

Lorem Ipsum wrote:

<snip about hardware acceleration recommendation>

Um, I think they mean the hardware acceleration setting in Photoshop’s preferences, not the card’s hardware acceleration.
Andrew

There is not hardware acceleration setting in Photoshop. It is only in the video driver. That is where you have to make the change. Photoshop doesn’t and shouldn’t be directly controlling hardware; that’s what operating systems are for.

Now I actually look, the setting I was thinking of is
Preferences->Transparency & Gamut "Use video alpha (requires hardware support)". Not the same thing after all.

Andrew

"I don’t really give a damn if it is the driver or the hardware. In practice they are one system and they can’t be divorced."

In practice, one can update the driver without touching the card.

FWIW, Chris has been a absent from the Adobe forums lately. That *may* mean that the CS2 fix is coming soon.

"I don’t really give a damn if it is the driver or the hardware. In practice they are one system and they can’t be divorced."

In practice, one can update the driver without touching the card.

FWIW, Chris has been absent from the Adobe forums lately. That *may* mean that the CS2 fix is coming soon.

wrote:

"I don’t really give a damn if it is the driver or the hardware. In practice they are one system and they can’t be divorced."

In practice, one can update the driver without touching the card.

FWIW, Chris has been absent from the Adobe forums lately. That *may* mean that the CS2 fix is coming soon.

True, true. That is a saving grace. Alas, I can’t change the driver or the hardware. It may be impractical for Adobe to work with every video card and driver manufacturer to change just for them too. It may not be their fault either.

You mean that Chris actually works at times? 😉 Most of the time I think his comments are mostly to make himself look good. They are grating, impolite, and not at all professional. However, it is much appreciated that he does take the time to grace this newsgroup at all.

What is amazing is that Adobe lets him spout off like that. Almost everywhere I’ve worked you could get fired for doing something like that. It says something about Adobe’s internal culture that is very appealing. May that culture continue to produce the wonderful products that they do.

Clyde