Longshot question. Is that a USB 1 or USB 2 drive?
Bob
The Maxtor is a USB 2, Bob,
Is it possible for the secondary and tertiary swap disks to cause this problem?
Thanks for taking the time to review my problem.
Jim (|:{>
Any USB drive is still too slow to use as scratch space.
But you should be looking at the file browser (disable background processing) or system problems that might cause a major slowdown.
That’s happening to me to! I’ve tried everything – Even replacing the motherboard, chip, and RAM. (I just built the computer so all the parts were returnable.) I’ve reinstalled windows XP and it still happens. PS7 doesn’t do it PSCS does.
You paint and it after a bit it pauses and the length of the pause varies and it’s driving me crazy!!!! Will someone at Adobe please comment? I don’t know what to do –
Since my career involves painting in Photoshop this is WAY more than an inconvenience.
More specifically: I’ll paint for a while and the ink just stops coming and the sytem stops. If I minimize Photoshop, everything else seems to be working fine. But if I click in Photoshop the panels go to white and it locks up for a while – then it works fine if I’m patient (between 10-20 seconds).
I figured I’d send you info on my current system to see if we can find something similar to get to the root of this problem – I won’t be returning this hardware again:
Motherboard: Soyo P4I865PE Plus Dragon 2
Chip: Pentium 4 2.80E
Ram: Patriot Dual Channel 512MB (PDC5123200LLK)
OS: Windows XP Home
Input Device: Wacom Intuos 9×12
Graphics: ATI Manufactured Radeon 9600SE AGP (128MB)
I have four IDE drives and my Photoshop and Page file are on different drives.
David – that sounds like Photoshop might be waiting for scratch disk access.
But it’s something specific to your (and a few other users’) system. We haven’t seen any delays like that.
It’s so wierd – How would I go about troubleshoot something like this? I have four drives (all IDE 7,200RPM 8MB cache) so I could do some troubleshooting with configurations if you have any suggestions.
It’s just totally wierd that Photoshop 7 works for both of us, but CS doesn’t. Does that make the problem make more sense or less?
make sure your memory settings aren’t too high. try setting them around 50%. Also make sure you do as chris suggested with the file browser.
Will someone at Adobe please comment?
click on chris’ name…
Any USB drive is still too slow to use as scratch space.
My USB 2.0 Maxtor writes 50MB file 6 sec QUICKER than either of my IDE Western Digitals!
Mac
Here’s what I’m running:
I don’t know the Motherboard details. According to my Dell invoice, the system is "1.90 GHz/400 MHz Front Side Bus, Pr, Dell Precision 340"
My Processor is: GenuineIntel Family 15 Model 1 1.9 GHz Stepping 2 My RAM is 512 MB, PC800 @ 400MHz, ECC, 2×256, RIMM, Rambus Memory, Dell plus 1024 MB added later, also from Dell, so I assume it’s the same.
OS is Windows 2000, 5.00.2195 Service Pack 4
Input Device is a Wacom Intuos 4×5
Judging from the lack of hardware correlation, I’d suggest it might be something else: software, plug-ins, what???
Chris, what do you mean by:
"But you should be looking at the file browser (disable background processing) or system problems that might cause a major slowdown." Where do I "disable background processing."
Peace, Jim (|:{>
Where do I "disable background processing."
in edit> prefrences> file browser
make sure your memory allocation is around 50% in
edit> prefrences> memmory & image cache.
see this faq:
Ian Lyons "Optimising Adobe Photoshop Performance" 2/29/04 3:08am </cgi-bin/webx?50>
Thanks, Ian,
Background Processing WAS NOT enabled.
My "Available Physical Memory" is generally around 70-80 MB when I’m working. Here’s a screen dump of the Task Manager taken while I’m waiting for PS to come back and render my brushstroke. <
http://www.bpib.com/test/memprob.gif>
One other potential "symptom" I’ve experienced is when I try to run the [Sytlize][Glowing Edges] filter, the system takes forever to bring up the Filter Gallery (which I don’t really want to invoke) and it brings it up full screen (which is overkill). When I run [Stylize][Find Edges] the result is instantaneous and it does NOT invoke the Filter Gallery.
Jim (|:{>
again, did you turn down memory allocation to photoshop?
and what’s you windows swap file set to? it should be about 2 1/2 times physical ram, and preferrably on a different drive than the photoshop scratch disk.
dave
do you have the histogram palette showing? some users said that their brush strokes were odd with that palette open.
good memory pierre. i had forgotten that one!
cheers! 🙂
Thanks for all the suggestions – To add some closure at least to my end, and possibly give you another troubleshooting route if this happens again, here’s what fixed my problem:
So, I had a computer with just Adobe Photoshop CS and a clean install of Windows XP Home. And, (again) when I painted CS would lock up for 8-12 seconds at a time –
Well, what fixed my problem was installing the XP SP1a. So you may ask the others in the handful whether they’ve updated their XP, although their problems may be completely different than mine.
Thanks! AND HOLY CRAP I LOVE ALL THE NEW AUTOMATED FEATURES!! PHOTOSHOP CS ROCKS!! SOME OF THOSE SCRIPTS HAVE ALREADY SAVED ME HOURS AND HOURS OF TIME!!
Glad you found a fix, David.
I’ve looked into the memory settings and here’s what I’ve got (along with no respite from the delays in painting):
Photoshop Memory set to 50% (= 700Mb)
Histogram Palette = Off
My scratch disk is set to my boot disk. (It’s either that or to my external USB2 Maxtor – and I’m getting conflicting input as to whether or not to use the Maxtor as my primary scratch.)
Total Paging File Size is set to 4095 MB (I assume this is what you mean by "Windows swap file" and I don’t know how to allocate it to a specific disk.)
Jim (|:{>
Hello?
Anyone have any other ideas? I’m still experiencing the problem and would dearly love to regain brush sensitivity and response.
Help, please.
Jim (|:{>
No idea, but the cause is on your system, and you’ll have to let us know what you find.
Hi, Chris,
I purchased and installed a secondary hard drive and moved the PS scratch disc to the new one. It seems to have solved about 85% of the problem.
Is it possible that the remaining sluggishness is a function of the size of the brush and the resolution of the file? For instance I’m painting with a 100-400 pixel brush at 15% opacity in a 350 ppi file. This doesn’t seem too extreme to me, but I’m no expert (obviously). I’d really like to get full functionality back in PS CS.
Thanks for your time. Jim
Tweaking the amount of memory I gave to Photoshop fixed a similar "sluggishness" problem I had. I backed off the amount of memory given to Photoshop in 5% increments until the problem went away. The magic number for my system was 45% (I have 512MB memory and Win XP/SP1).
It seems (this is my interpretation) that Windows is forced to page (to disk) code that is involved in screen redraws if you give Photoshop too much memory. Giving PS less memory means that all-important code is not paged out, and you then don’t have to wait for it to be paged back in again.
Cheers,
Mathew
