Why Adobe is tending to increase the boot time of all it’s products ? Why all user that may want use photoshop (and other Adobe apps) needs a "SUPER-MACHINE" ?
With the past version of Photoshop (CS1) the boot time was a nightmare, in fact, somewhere in the web there’s programs that improves this boot-time. At least, after the boot, the program works good.
Well, with deception (not only me, there’s other users with the same feeling), there’s no solution with this new version (CS2). But, this is not the worst part !!! … Now the program is SLOW in working time !!! Just minimze the app and maximize it again, look redraw times.
Welcome to the nightmare ? Yes, yes, yes… there’s no any other program like photoshop… but… that’s an excuse ? Pls. Srs. of Adobe, just think in the user experience… not all of the user machines have 2 processors and 2 GB of RAM.
Sincerely i’m scared of Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks.
Thanks !
PD. Other reflection… is Fireworks condemned to die against ImageReady ? Well.. let me tell you something… In it’s genere, there’s no any other program like Fireworks too !!!
My opinion, if someone has slow machine, he has to use pared-down Photoshop (version 4, for instance) 🙂 Now I think how do I have to upgrade my ‘steed’ for future MS Longhorn OS…. That’s awe-inspiring hightmare….
Had you included system info in your original post (as recommended in the forum header!) rather than your comment about ‘super machines’, maybe more focussed assistance would have been quicker coming. Simply state the problem instead of using this forum to have a rant.
So, let’s look at ways of speeding things up.
First Reset the prefs (as per the FAQs) just in case, by holding Ctrl+Alt+Shift whilst firing up Photoshop.
Then make sure your scratch disk is set to a drive other than that containing the Windows paging file – and make sure there’s plenty of free space. Do a system wide search for .TMP files and delete them (sometimes these can consume a huge amount of space).
Keep your Photoshop memory allocation down to around 55% (this is quite important when you’ve only 1Gb of ram), and make sure there are no other apps running in the background eating up processing power.
Set your Windows paging file to min=max= 2x onboard ram.
As for the redrawing issue: check you have the latest drivers for your video card.
Plus: generally keep your system in tip top condition. Regular defrags etc., and clear out the Windows XP System Prefetch directory about once a month.
All or some of these steps should show a marked improvement in performance.
Let us know if any of this helps – without ranting please! <grin>
Well, sorry, but, i’m not consider my "SUPER MACHINE" comment like a rant. When you write "… you’ve ONLY 1Gb of ram." aren’t u talking about a "Super Machine" ? 1GB. It’s not enough ? Take a look of the Adobe’s official System Requirements <http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/systemreqs.html> of the app. Just 384 MB and a Intel® Xeon, Xeon Dual, Intel Centrino, or Pentium® III or 4 processor are "recommended", and u consider my system’s configuration "unupdated" ?.
I can tell you that, in fact, except the regular defragmentation, all my system is configured like u write.
Aditionally, how explain the existence of that "improve startup" applications ? Just a system configuration matter or a real fact of time booting ?
Did you check Cris’ advice? Prefs file and memory settings? If all this were side effects of PS, then the software wouldn’t have made it to the customers.
…. except the technical answers (all accomplished in my system), i don’t see of your part any answer about the real fact of my post: the booting time from the perspective of a common system configuration.
I’m not looking for help or for friends… Sorry if i sound "sarcastic" or "offensive". I’m just only discussing a technical issue about Photoshop CS2.
Now, returning to the real discussion… if that are the "minimum" requirements, it’s better use a version from 7 or lower ? That’s the conclusion ?
When you reset the Prefs file, did you get the dialogue asking you to confirm?
Did you clean out the prefetch folder?
Sometimes it is actually better to navigate to the Settings folder and delete it directly. LenHewitt, "How to delete/reset Photoshop preferences" #1, 23 Jun 2004 1:05 am </cgi-bin/webx?13/0>
Have you checked for bad fonts?
Could one of your plug-ins be slowing things down? Try adding a tilde [~] in front of each plug-in’s file name. If this works, reinstate each, one at a time, until the culprit is found.
I’m don’t have any plugin installed, i have only a group of 134 fonts installed and (this point is for u) in honor to the truth i need to format my system. But, why if i reformat my system and the boot remains equal. Anyway, i will test this last option.
Thanks again !!!
PD. Rob, thus like i’m not looking for friends, i’m not looking for "enemies". Enemies from a "MINIMUM" technical discussion ? Pls.!! Take a look of the word !! We’re to bad for this kind of intolerance !!!
carlinhos, you said " I’m just only discussing a technical issue about Photoshop CS2."
Then, please do provide technical details: go to help>about photoshop and paste the top info (not your serial number line, and stop before the plug-in list).
Do include the video card you’re using, check if you are running the latest version, include the language of your operating system.
A major cause of slowown can be a bad printer/scanner driver, or a printer in the list that is deconnected from the network.
Another cause is some plug-ins (especially auto fx ones) that did not comply to certain rules. (this is not the case for you)
Having a huge list of presets (custom shapes, brushes, etc, can also slow you down)
That’s a normal system configuration, just like the mine. Did u read all the above advices ? Make the tests proposed by Chris and Pierre, and pls… tell us your results.
Chris, in fact i’m formatting now my testing machine. I will install PS CS2 in a "clean environment" without ANY OTHER PROGRAM INSTALLED in the PC. We’ll see the results.
Your system should be able to run CS2 comfortably according to the specs you’ve posted. Try setting the memory allocated to PS much higher, like 85%. I’m running on 90% with no probs on an Athlon 2800 with 1 GB of RAM and CS 2 flies.
You could take a small lesson from Marian’s statement here.
It’s quite alright if non-native speakers struggle to communicate properly here in English. We understand the frustrations. That you make the attempt is evidence of you sincerity. So far, you’re doing a whole lot better than many of us would if we tried to communicate in any language other than English.
But it makes you seem like a bit of an idiot when you spend all that effort to write in English, only to then belittle your efforts by using text-messaging/SMS/IM shorthand such as "u" when you mean the word "you."
Also Carlinhos, by now we are all properly aware of your frustration and anger about the problems you’re having. YOU DON’T NEED TO CONTINUE SHOUTING AT THOSE WHO ARE TRYING TO HELP YOU BY TYPING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS!
By your acting like a truculent and insolent child in the face of people trying to help you, even if I had answers to your questions (and I just might…you never know) I’d likely let you wallow in your own sorrow.
I just tried to offer you a little advice about how to get on well with the other people here. If you don’t want to listen to someone who’s been visiting here regularly for many years, then I’ll smile at you getting just what you deserve in the way of the bad attitude of others.
I’m exposing my opinion about the increase of the boot-time (and in the PS CS2, the work time) in every version of Photoshop (maybe not in your preferred terms). Have YOU (<== thanks again) any problem with that and with my afraid of the Macromedia Applications (in terms of performance) with the recent acquire from Adobe ?
Take it easy… relax and just think in Photoshop, not in me. That is my view point.. the your’s ? Where are those years of experience in this forum ? Please !
The problem is in "Info" pallete. When I turn it off – or just switch to other tab – i.e. "Navigator", all works just fine – similarly or even better than in PSCS1.
But if the Info pallete is active, the Photoshop is very sluggish.
….interesting Marian. I’ve read somewhere else about the info palette causing problems.
I’ve just tried some pretty demanding routines with and without the info palette. On my machine, however, there was no difference whatsoever.
quicker than PS CS was…
I would echo Len’s sentiments here. In my opinion CS2 does run much faster than CS.
I do believe, however, in keeping a well maintained machine. It will be interesting to see the outcome of Carlinhos’s fresh reinstall – especially if he follows the advice offered early on in this thread.
I would echo Len’s sentiments here. In my opinion CS2 does run much faster than CS.
me too. wix xp pro sp2. 2.8c (hyperthreaded) intel d865 perl (800mhz fsb), seagate sata 160, & maxtor 120 gig eide 100. 1 gig pc3200 (400mhz). nvidia gforce fx 5200 (128meg) & nvidia vanta pci as card 2. drivers updated 2 days ago. dual monitors. ran fine with mem % at default 55. still fine with it bumped up to 75%. the machine is about 2 years old, built from a barebones kit. (mobo, cpu, mem and case only).
The original poster has a point. The CS was slower then 7.0, CS2 is slower then CS. They didn’t make to many changes in CS2 comparing to CS but the user interface redraws MUCH slower. My PC could handle CS but now after user interface changes (why do I need those fancy-shmancy shadowed tabs?) I need to upgrade. Good option would be to have the switch in settings which turns off fancy interface and leaves native Windows XP controls. What if I am not in the possipion to upgrade? Just look at the requirements of the new CS2. It doesn’t require P4 3.2. But in reality it does.
My PC is Celeron 1.7G with 512MB RAM. PS 7.0 was fine. CS was OK, not major problems. CS2 is slow in interface rendering. That’s is a killer. In Adobe Premier Pro they use DirectX to render interface. Why don’t do the same for PS CS2? BTW, interface elements now look the same in Premier and CS2. But Premier has no problems in rendering even on my outdated PC.
We have many different opinions about the performance of the new PS CS2. As i see, we will need the PC Magazine or PC World benchmarks to test this.
Sorry, but i need to insist in one of my original arguments …
…. Why, since the CS1 version, there’re in all the web "boot improvement" applications for the PS CS and Acrobat 6 ? Just an enthusiast programmer playing with Adobe applicacions ? NO. It’s a real fact, the boot times are increasing, and now, the working times.
Anyway, i’m still working in a clean installation of PS CS2 in honor to this discussion.
I have been following this thread and there are some heated exchanges going on here, let me tell you!
My own take, on an older PC, is this:
On *my* machine, CS2 is *mostly* faster than CS. RAW processing is about 50% faster – thanks Adobe.
Given that I am running the same tests on the same machine, the only variable is the version of PS, therefore any variations in timings must be due to the differences between the two versions.
Launch CS 9sec CS2 8 sec ( varies but CS2 is usually about 1 sec less)
Open 275Mb file from RAID drive CS 5.5 sec CS2 5.0
90 degr. rotate same file, (memory at 55%) CS 57 sec CS2 45
Dust and Scratches on 60Mb file CS 10.4 sec CS2 sec 11.4 ( I said mostly faster 🙂 )
Lens Blur on 60Mb file CS 78sec CS2 53 sec
For me CS2 is slightly faster. My machine is an older P4 2.0GHz, 1 Gb RAM, RAID scratch, W2KSP4.
Thank you Nick for taking the time to run these comparisons and for sharing the results here.
There are going to be instances where CS2 runs slower than previous versions, but I am convinced that in the majority of such cases it is because a complete overhaul of the user’s system was long overdue.
Maybe if all posted here the tweeks, tricks, fixes, modifications and other things we have done to speed up our PCs. It could become a valuable reference point for others experiencing performance issues.
On my obsolete machine (P3 733 MHz), boot time for CS2 and CS is about the same: 30 seconds. Once it’s booted and running, though, CS is definitely faster, with one exception discussed below. The UI is just fine; no sluggishness in switching tabs or selecting tools/options, and I have the Info pallette open all the time. My graphics card is an nVidia FX 4200 with 128 MB and the latest drivers.
The one exception is that if I pick the "Adobe Dialog" (which is apparently a Version Cue dialog) instead of the "OS Dialog" for File Open, Save As, etc., it is DOG slow.
I’ve worked several jobs where I provided customer technical support of one kind or another, and I learned early that it was absolutely essential to get the person experiencing a problem to describe things using absolute terms, rather than relative ones.
That is, instead of "Photoshop boots too slowly" the complaint should be "Photoshop takes 90 seconds to boot".
The reason should be obvious: One person’s "slow" is another person’s "Acceptible" and yet another person’s "boy that’s fast". As long as relative terms are being used, you never really know for sure what’s going on.
The original poster may have a legitimate complaint, but so far we’ve heard nothing more than "O, woe is me, it’s so slow". For all we know, this guy may be seeing a total 2 second increase in boot time over PSCS and may still be getting better results than almost everybody else. Before we really know if there’s a problem, and how bad it is, we need to see some absolute numbers and get an idea of how it REALLY compares to what other people are getting.
Just did a timing to open a 140MB file in CS2. CS2 timing gives 2.0 sec,but my measured time was 7.0 sec. Also there is a different time if you run a filter using a dialogue, then if you undo and run the filter using CTRL F. Timing excludes redraw.
I will be running some comparisons,but CS2 boots faster than CS by 2.0sec
Slow runtime: 1) Update the video card driver 2) If the video card is over 5 years old, consider replacing it (because they won’t be fixing the driver)
Slow launch: 1) Look for networked printers as the default – that can be a problem (in the OS) 2) Look for an excessive number of files in the plugins directory or presets directory 3) Look for an excessive number of fonts in the OS 4) Look at where it slows down and give us some clue why your machine is so much slower than everyone elses.
Some comparison timings between CS and CS2 Open 140 MB 16 bit image 7.0 and 7.0 Rotate 6.44 CW 8.7 and 10.9 Image size 200% 5.4 and 16.4 CMYK 7.0 and 6.5 Unsharp 90 1.3 6 4.1 and 4.1 Gaussian 6.7 3.9 and 3.7
I purged the undo between tests and does not include redraw time.
I just wanted to say that I am giving the demo a spin and it is at least no slower than CS on my computer. It may even be faster in some areas; I won’t know for sure until I run some tests.
One question: Installing the demo nuked my thumbnail previews, which worked for me quite well despite the dire warnings. My hunch is that uninstalling the demo will not repair the damage. Anyone care to guess or comment?
Adobe Photoshop Version: 9.0 (9.0×196) Operating System: Windows 2000 Version: 5.0 Service Pack 4 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:11, Stepping:1 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP Physical processor count: 1 Processor speed: 1202 MHz Built-in memory: 768 MB Free memory: 599 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 674 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 70 % Image cache levels: 6 Serial number: Tryout Version Application folder: F:\CS2\ Temporary file path: H:********* Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled Scratch volume(s): J:\, 9.77G, 9.56G free Primary Plug-ins folder: F:\CS2\Plug-Ins\ Additional Plug-ins folder: not set Installed plug-ins: All CS2 plug-ins Plug-ins that failed to load: NONE
Installed TWAIN devices: Nikon Scan 4.0 HP ScanJet Source DeskScan II 2.9
I rechecked that all the settings were the same. They were. I redid the tests and got the same result. Ram is set to 83%, but CS has 30Mb more available ram.
While you are here, is there anthing that can be done for users of Large Fonts? In many of the tick boxes eg prefs, only the last letter of a line is missing. In others like for Lens distort and in the Bridge, the top and bottom edges of every line is clipped.
Some comparison timings between CS and CS2 Open 140 MB 16 bit image 7.0 and 7.0 Rotate 6.44 CW 8.7 and 10.9 Image size 200% 5.4 and 16.4 CMYK 7.0 and 6.5 Unsharp 90 1.3 6 4.1 and 4.1 Gaussian 6.7 3.9 and 3.7 Gaussian 85 7.7 and 7.2 Unsharp 200 5 6 5.3 and 4.9 Dust 3 20.4 and 21.5 FindEdges 9.2 and 9.2
I purged the undo between tests and does not include redraw time.
Adobe is totally at fault I’m sorry. I am running a 2ghz AMD with 1.5 gigbytes of ram and photoshop CS runs like a slug I mean a slug I still have photoshop 6 on here thank God. You think about all the new features adobe has added to CS and you know what it shouldn’t run so much slower. You guys should try opening a file in Photoshop 6 and then in CS the load time alone on that is disgusting.
Adobe is overly bloated code IMO which is slowing developers production time big time. ImageReady CS has a bunch of bugs which is mind boggling considering that its like version 4 already.
The answer isn’t a faster machine people its poor coding behind photoshop – bloatware thats the bottom line.
Very frustrated end user here and I have been working with photoshop since like 2.5 or something…many many years ago…
My 2.4GHz Celeron powered laptop with 480MB RAM of which 60MB goes to intergrated graphics returns a reasonable operating speed.
I should, all being well, invest in a 3800+ or 4000+ AMD powered computer and will see how things go.
One point I sort of agree with is a recoding from the ground up on the principle of compounded errors but this IMHO is a general observation rather than a practical one.
Dan – you might want to check your facts before writing something that absurd.
For most people, CS2 is running faster or the same as CS1. If it’s not, then most likely there is some sort of issue on your system.
The most common problem users have found is with video card drivers — there are a lot of buggy ones out there, and somehow CS2 seems to make them show up (and slow down) more than CS1 did. For most people with that problem, updating the drivers fixes it. A few people have had to upgrad their video card, since the manufacturer was no longer providing new drivers.
Some other people are having problems with the info palette – which we suspect is also video driver related (but we’re still gathering information about it).
And that’s about it. The code isn’t slower, and CS2 is just barely larger than CS1 – so there is no bloat.
I just deleted some 300+ fonts (still have 330) and changed my memory percentage to 65% (from 55%) set priority to ‘high’ for PS in task manager, and Bridge now opens in just over 2 seconds! (with 80+ folders in ‘my pictures’ dir; PSCS2 now opens in just under 8 seconds. Was Bridge – 15sec and CS2 – 12sec before, which is under what CS opened in.
Running a P4 2.2Ghtz, 1gig RAM, ATI Radeon 8500 (2003 driver), separate internal scratch disk on P drive, paging file 2x physical RAM on C drive. Both HDs 7200rpm.
You may wish to try the High setting on Bridge too unless you have tried so already.
This may be a wee bit off-topic but… for some organisations that may have dedicated as in almost single use Photoshop computers there may be an advantage to having a dedicated set-up routine.
Even in XP it seems the good ol’ DOS and Win3 tricks to eak performance have a significant part to play. btw this is to be expected on a multi-program OS platform
"You may wish to try the High setting on Bridge too unless you have tried so already."
No, I haven’t tried it – 2 seconds startup on Bridge was impressive, but I’ll try it anyway. Thanks. Since I did the deletion of fonts and raise to 65% and the ‘high’ ranking in TM at the same time – not sure which helped the most.
You may wish to try the High setting on Bridge too unless you have tried so already.
Hmmm… I would think not. As far as I can gather, Bridge likes to chug away in the background building its caches utilising any free ram which might be available. I seem to remember reading somewhere that it readily gives this up to the OS or PS should they make damands for more processing power.
Now I may be way off line, of course, and I’m sure a beta tester or Adobe engineer will step in and correct me if I’m wrong. My instinct, however, would be to just keep Photoshop’s priority set to high and leave Bridge well enough alone.
Chris, this may be of interest to you. My biggest performance complaint is the redraw/repaint times when dragging a document window around inside the PS CS2.
I set the process "Priority" to "High" in Task Manager and the problem is eliminated. Windows drag and scroll like a dream.
I did experience two errors before rebooting that I have not been able to reproduce. 1) I got a "Not Enough Memory" error when trying to open my test .psd file 2) not being able to "Open" a file from the File menu; the command just didn’t do anything.
Basic system setup: WinXP SP2 3.06 HT 1024MB rdram RAM 55% allocated to PS CS2 120GB 7.2K System Disk + 80GB 7.2K Scratch (lot’s of free space on both) ATI X850 XT 256MB video, Catalyst 5.4 Drivers
I’m not sure how the OS uses the "Priority" setting, but it sounds pretty low level. I have not tested with any other applications running or for very long.
Is there a switch I can add to the photoshop.exe that will make it always start with a given priority?
My guess is that there is a difference between CS1 and CS2 wrt to the window modality… Being able to drag outside the CS2 workspace. Since the priority is involved, I’m guessing it has to do with a CS2:WinXP interface API.
The swtiching between tabs in the Layers | Channels | Paths palette seems a little faster, too. All my other tests show CS2 to be comparable or faster than CS1. The filter gallery and blur is waaay faster. Resizing images is faster in CS2. Transforming "Smart Objects" is pretty sluggish, but I’ve got nothing to compare this to. One thing that would be nice would be to "outline" vector objects just like Illustrator does when transforming them, including text. Seems like screen redraws would be a little smoother and Paths would look a little nicer.
I’m having the same redraw trouble as some of the people here seem to have. (Athlon 1900+, Nvidia MX440, 64 mb, XP sp2). When i’ve booted the trail CS2 then open my taskmanager op top and go to the preformance tab the cpu just keeps hovering between about 55-75, when i switch to the proccess tab it goes down to about 40 en when i minimize it it sort of goes up en down between 10 and 15. Ofcourse i installed the latest greatest display drivers, it seems to me that it has to be something to do with display drivers, display settings and possibly some incompabilities with CS2.
Greeting, Michelengeltje
ps. done the same with CS (the CPU usages was between 4-11, 4-11, about 4-7)
Parameters "title" Specifies the title to display in Command Prompt window title bar.
/dPath Specifies the startup directory.
/i Passes the Cmd.exe startup environment to the new Command Prompt window.
/min Starts a new minimized Command Prompt window.
/max Starts a new maximized Command Prompt window.
/separate Starts 16-bit programs in a separate memory space.
/shared Starts 16-bit programs in a shared memory space.
/low Starts an application in the idle priority class.
/normal Starts an application in the normal priority class.
/high Starts an application in the high priority class.
/realtime Starts an application in the realtime priority class.
/abovenormal Starts an application in the abovenormal priority class.
/belownormal Starts an application in the belownormal priority class.
/wait Starts an application and waits for it to end.
/b Starts an application without opening a new Command Prompt window. CTRL+C handling is ignored unless the application enables CTRL+C processing. Use CTRL+BREAK to interrupt the application.
FileName Specifies the command or program to start.
parameters Specifies parameters to pass to the command or program.
Remarks You can run nonexecutable files through their file association by typing the name of the file as a command. For more information about creating these associations in a command script by using assoc and ftype, see Related Topics.
When you run a command that contains a the string "CMD" as the first token without an extension or path qualifier, "CMD" is replaced with the value of the COMSPEC variable. This prevents users from picking up cmd from the current directory.
When you run a 32-bit graphical user interface (GUI) application, cmd does not wait for the application to quit before returning to the command prompt. This new behavior does not occur if you run the application from a command script.
When you run a command that uses a first token that does not contain an extension, Cmd.exe uses the value of the PATHEXT environment variable to determine which extensions to look for and in what order. The default value for the PATHEXT variable is: .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD (that is, the syntax is the same as the PATH variable, with semicolons separating the different elements). When you search for an executable and there is no match on any extension, start searches directory name. If it does, start opens Explorer.exe on that path.
Examples To start the Myapp program at the command prompt and retain use of the current Command Prompt window, type:
right, all those advices are regular for someone trying to keep a microsoft system with top performance. i have a p4 3.6 with 1gb ddr2 533 dual channel with a asus p5gd2 motherboard. system on c: with photoshop, temp and swapfile on d: both with more than 20gb free. and a temp drive just for adobe with more than 60gb free. the work files are on another hdd. now… why the HELL IS PHOTOSHOP THIS SLOW? even menu access… i cant get it.
What I don´t understand is why we have to change priority for Photoshop CS2, and made that kind of changes to our system? If we have to do this, do not say that CS2 is better, faster, etc than CS in its speed.
I installed the trial version (I’m still not convinced that the upgrade is worth the aggravation) and it was very slow. Screen redraws were sluggish, the tabs changed at approximately the speed of evolution, and changing tools was painful. I have a Matrox G550 video card and updating the driver fixed those speed issues. Your mileage may vary.
Marco – we don’t get it either – none of our systems are slow, nor did our beta testers have that much slowdown (after a few updated their video card drivers).
Just another voice for updating your video drivers. CS2 was as fast if not faster than CS, but the redraw noticeably slower, so I downloaded the latest driver for my graphics card. Bingo, amazing difference.
P4 3 mgz. xp Pro SP2 2 gigs RAM Nvidia Geforce 5200
There are quite a few,but as I have shown, CS2 holds up pretty well compared to CS. I am using the tryout, Amazon in the UK are being a bit slow.
Having said that CS2 was as responsive as CS, I find that on making a comparison of redraw from minimise, CS is pretty well instant and CS2 takes a second or two.The GUI comes up instantly,but the redraw of the palettes, image and tools, takes the time. Perhaps it’s the LARGE FONTS!!!!?
Setting Task Priority to High and gaining a significant increase in operational speed shows that things are running in the background.
You may have lots of things running that you don’t know are running but, and this is a really important point one a bit linux expreienced users will know (as well as DOS, Win3, Win95, … ) is that the operating system is a general operating system.
If there is a demand to have things running swifter well, there are standard Windows tweaks to do so but! disclaimer!: don’t go too far as the difference between a tweak and an eek is less than twa 🙂
All it is is a spot of fine-tuning to get the most out of the code that is there – as in digital imagery tweaks there may be a cusp. Finding the cusp is for the wise IMHO 🙂
The OS will know what programs are being accessed most often and regularly so don’t be surprised if X Messenger is running faster than Photoshop but the OS won’t know what programs you want to run fster if you know what I mean
Hi Mike – try the same test runs after installing OptimizeMemory.
It is free, it defrags RAM, ir is free and defrags RAM
Besides, you will probably notice a huge increase in overall performance not just with Photoshop. Menus will seem zippier, tasks sorta zip along rather than trundle
Some readers who know more about it than I do may wish to comment on the following, quoted from a Windows forum:
Since it is architecturally impossible to defrag ram, it will be hard to find one of these programs (regardless of what their documentation states).
As well, even if you could defrag ram, there would be no benefit. The benefit on disk is to reduce the affect of having the read/write heads move, and to wait for the disk to revolve in order to pickup the next piece of data. In ram, every byte can be accessed at the same speed as the next one, since there is not the concept of read heads, and the ram certainly does not revolve.
I suppose there is a danger of me being self-dellusionist about it, however, I tend to trust my own instinct, observations and how the ‘puter behaves.
Most electrical motors, I understand, are in theory impossible to work and operate. However, most electrical motors don’t know this and are quite happy to run contrary to the theory…
don’t think my background tasks are an issue. i am comparing an apples to apples test between screen repaints/redraws between PS CS1 and PS CS2 on my WinXP machine.
CS1 has no screen redraw slow-downs. CS2 has significant screen redraw slow-downs.
Many things with CS2 are faster. Startup time is a couple seconds slower, but I can live with that (6.5 for CS1 8.5 for CS2). Screen redraws and palette interaction are noticably slower. Painting with brushes, smudging, dodging and burning are slower or "lagging" in CS2. (Resizing tools with the bracket keys sometimes doesn’t work in CS2).
Setting PS CS2 to "High" priority decreased redraw times. However, at "High" priority PS CS2 crashed once and would not open a file from the File menu on some occasions. Also I got a "not enough memory error" when trying to open a file, despite over 300MB free memory and tons of free scratch and temp space. Resetting the priority to "Normal" resulted in stable running, but the screen redraws are slow again.
Also noticed an issue with CS2 with the Info palette open: dragging an image window around by the title bar, sometimes the cursor moves and the window has to catch up with it. It’s kind of like the redraw/repaint issue, but it’s more like the window can’t keep up with the mouse as I’m trying to drag it around.
— font9a
Adobe Photoshop Version: 9.0 (9.0×196) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 2 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:15, Model:2, Stepping:7 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, HyperThreading Physical processor count: 1 Logical processor count: 2 Processor speed: 3049 MHz Built-in memory: 1023 MB Free memory: 543 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 908 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 55 % Image cache levels: 6 Serial number: 1045xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\ Temporary file path: D:\TMP\ Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled Scratch volume(s): C:\, 111.7G, 87.5G free D:\, 74.5G, 11.1G free Primary Plug-ins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Plug-Ins\ Additional Plug-ins folder: not set Installed plug-ins: … … … Plug-ins that failed to load: NONE
Most of users here has redraw problems, and lot of has speed problems; with fast video cards and fast PC’s. In conclusion Photoshop is not working properly with a big number of machines, than run CS without any issue.
I currently using the TryOut version, maybe that’s the problem. But I can´t upgrade to CS2 until I solve redraw and speed problems.
Chris I´m here to help. That’s why I posted my configuration, in a earlier post.
But I think we can ignore the facts that Photoshop CS2 doesn´t work properly in some machines where CS does.
I was running CS, then install CS2, with speed problems and redraw problems. Before comming here, I installed newest drivers, defrag the disk. Then I came here, and read that CS2 should run faster, than CS.
The answer to problems cannot be change the windows configuration, with cmd or changing other things.
I have a Nvidia FX 5200 with 128 Mb, lastest Nvidia Drivers. That’s not an old video card.
Yes, it could be changing the configuration – if the drivers are still buggy, then those drivers need to be updated (after the manufacturer fixes them).
If you’re seeing the palettes draw slowly — that is caused by problems with the video card driver. Even if it’s a new card, the drivers can still have bugs. And we need to narrow down what cards and what drivers still have problems.
If you’re talking about some other slowdown – then we need to figure out what exactly is slow, and why your particular system is slow.
I am using a new ATI Radeon X850 XT with 256 MB DDR3 video memory. Core speed is 520 MHz, Memory speed is 540 MHz. It’s ATIs fastest card. I am using the latest drivers: Catalyst 5.4 version 6.14.10.6525. CS1 does not have the same redraw problems. Every other application I use, 2D or 3D, absolutely screams.
Slowdowns are: — bottom screen redrawing/repainting when dragging another window on top takes 30-50 milliseconds c.f. with "instant" redraws in CS1) — toggling between palettes (e.g., Layers, Channels, Paths) takes 30-50 milliseconds c.f. with instant behavior in CS1 — an image window can take long enough to redraw when its being dragged by its title bar that the cursor will actually move out of the title bar before the window catches up to it (window does not lose focus) — brush strokes sluggish when Info palette is visible — brush size and hardness often doesn’t respond to keystrokes [ and { and ] and }
Yes, it could be changing the configuration – if the drivers are still buggy, then those drivers need to be updated (after the manufacturer fixes them).
I also have an nvidia gforce fx 5200 with the latest drivers (7.1.8.9 4/5/2005) and it’s working fine, so those specific drivers are not buggy (on my system).
Font9a, I have exactely the same slowdown as you describe.I use a Geforce 4600 TI with the latest driver.CS1 and all other programs I use run perfect. Stefan
I have an old MX440 with 6 month (66.93) old NVidia drivers, and the screen redraw, from minimise to maximise, is instant. I can drag the window edges as fast as I can move the mouse with no lag.
Does the ones having problems use a special skin in windows? I have no problems, but use the grey windows classic, with most eye candy disabled. (Do not show windows content while dragging, etc. )
Good point. I am on vanilla W2K SP4, maybe others are on XP with the fancy eyecandy. Same with the Mac people, there lots of (useless) funky visual stuff going on in OS10 which must take up display resources.
I had similar problems with PS CS2 slow interface redrawing speeds. Th problem seems to have been fixed by increasing the memory usage maximu to 708 Mb (78% in my case) and I also set the cache levels to 8. Afte making these changes and restarting Photoshop the lagging stopped (e.g having info-pane on when selecting and moving the cursor in a zoome image, the cursor did stagger on this previously but now move smoothly). Maybe you others having problems should try this too. Th setting can be found in Edit -> Preferences -> Memory & Image Cache.
Not seeing a slowdown in performance or video redraw on my older Dell Dimension 8100: 1.8 ghz, 1 gig mem, Nvidia gforce 3 (drivers 10/29/2004), Windows 2000 SP 4, and probably way too many fonts in the system/Adobe font folders.
Usually work with Photoshop, Bridge, and either Indesign or Golive! open at the same time. In the background is a virus checker and a personal firewall.
The slowdown I do see gradually builds over several hours as more files are sent to the scratch disks. Physical memory usage will gradually build and hover around 900 mb. There will be some accompanying video redraw sluggishness.
But, because I am using an older, slower system and video card, maybe I have no sense for the sluggishness being reported by others in this thread.
we have just upgraded to CS2 and noticed the same performance decrease. It’s really frustrating. All machines are up-to-date, no hardware/driver problem, have more than 1 GB RAM, fast video cards etc.
The application is VERY slow. This includes escpecially: – Slower redraw times – Even selecting a layer takes about a second! – Keyboard commands react slowy (you have to wait for commands to finish)
I found out that when you have the "Info" window activated, even the mouse starts to "stumble" while moving over an image. It appears that there are several bad performance issues in routines that are executed often during runtime.
It realized that we’ve got at least 2 posters from Germany, several with Hispanic last and first names, one with a Dutch name. English speaking posters do not experience any issue.
Could that be an issue on localized operating systems?
Folks, what is the language of your operating system?
What language is used for Photoshop? (if you’ve got language tools/switching open in the taskbar of windows)
you can see the effects of dragging the Task Manager window on top of a CS2 document. This effect is the same if I’m dragging one .psd on top of another. This redraw problem does not happen in CS1.
Does your display stay ‘whited out’ after moving a window over it? Mine whites out but immediately comes back – no big deal. Interesting that the file windows are now able to move out of the Photoshop application window.
—
Rick Moore Barnes Gromatzky Kosarek Architects www.bgkarchitects.com
I also have this issue (sluggish interface) on a system with an Athlon XP processor, 1GB RAM, and a Radeon SDR PCI video card (don’t point to that because folks with X800-series cards also have problems) with the Cat5.4 drivers. FWIW, my system is in English.
Adobe Photoshop Version: 9.0 (9.0×196) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 2 System architecture: AMD CPU Family:6, Model:8, Stepping:1 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP Physical processor count: 1 Processor speed: 1837 MHz Built-in memory: 1023 MB Free memory: 550 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 908 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 69 % Image cache levels: 6 Application folder: C:\[path to photoshop] Temporary file path: C:\[path to documents] Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled Scratch volume(s): D:\, 14.6G, 2.85G free
Could that be an issue on localized operating systems?
Take a look at some of the posts over in the Bridge forum.
The Danish version of XP apparently doesn’t like Bridge at all – to the extent it looks like the Bridge team are writing a dot release especially for the Danes!
Anyone tried turning off their antivirus to see if PCCS2 speed improves? Just that some AV’s, especially Kaspersky/Symantec Corp and a few others check every time a prog is opened and related files which means fonts, plugings etc. My system, xp2800/1gig ram runs okay but I do notice my mouse/pen tablet does start to get a touch jerky moving over photos when the Info Palette is selected but since I rarely have the info palatte open except to spot check a colour for me it’s no biggie.
I tried CS2 on Celeron 1.7 with ATI Rage Fury Pro video card. Interface redrawing was slow. Replased video card with NVidia FX5200 128Mb and it improved redrawing a little bit. Bu it isn’t instant. Maybe that CPU performance problem. CS1 on the same box has almost instant tool box redrawing. Noticed that Bridge was slow in updating Metadata preview window (about 2-3 sec) when McAfee antivirus was on. Turned it off and Metadata window updates much faster. Maybe developers could reveal what API video card suppose to support in order to have fast interface redrawing?
I have now installed the latest Matrox driver. The redraw of CS was not affected, as it was pretty well instant anyway, but the redraw for CS2 is now almost instant. There is a slight lag, but not what it was.
Looks like the developers changed the interface library which use some specific API and that API is not supported or has problems with some video drivers.
font9a – yes, Photoshop is using an API a little differently to draw the palette tabs, and apparently some drivers (and a few ancient video cards) have serious problems with it.
Chris, Are you, guys, going to fix it by releasing an update? Right now, everybody who has problems with video drivers has to wait for video card producer for the updated drivers or get another video card, still not sure which one would work.
We aren’t sure that we can do anything about it in Photoshop. We have something that we need to do – and the video driver software is doing it too slowly.
Unless we remove the need to do what we’re doing (which would alter the appearance of our UI), I’m not sure what we can change. And, unfortunately, the engineer with the most experience in that area is in Japan right now.
I would suggest to put a switch in Preferences to switch between two UI versions. You would need to write a proxy API which will redirect your calls to the different implementations of the same API functions based on user settings. That’s just rough idea, since I don’t know what API you are using.
I don’t really see the need for you to "fix" Photoshop if it’s not your problem, but I would like to know the basics of what’s going on so I can start lobbying ATI to fix their drivers.
Chris, that was VERY optimistinc thought :-). Actually, I have seen the similar switch in Adobe Premier Pro. That was about to use or not DirectX for UI rendering if I remember correctly. Some how you, guys, did it there. But if it wasn’t planned to have that in Photoshop, then it would be, probably, hard to add it pretty quick.
Josh – we’re not entirely sure ourselves. We need to reproduce the problem, THEN we can analyze it and talk to the video card makers (at least those who are still in business).
But reporting it yourself to ATI (or NVidia) will let them get started on testing the problem.
Chris as I said before I´m here to help; and appreciate your presence here in a user forum; but before talking with Nvidia and ATI, you must take a look in Photoshop. Both company (ATI & Nvidia) cannot offer buggy drivers at same time, with the same problem with PS CS2.
Always redraw problems mean video drivers problems?? I ask because I know nothing about this.
I would not be surprised if it is indeed a problem within the drivers. While everyone (except maybe Matrox) concentrates on getting the most 3DMarks at all costs (even unethical ones), nobody seems to take much time to do anything about 2D performance issues relating to alpha-blending and "advanced" things like that.
With that said, I just wrote a short message to ATI’s "catalyst crew feedback." If you are having this issue, I advise you to write your video card manufacturer’s support address. It may not be their problem, but it can’t hurt to ask…
I suspect that this is an uncommon use of one of the APIs, and hits a non-optimized path in the code (but is optimized, or at least performs reasonably, for most cards).
What Josh said. Some years ago, Carol Steele told me to get a Matrox card. I’m now using a Matrox G550, latest drivers, solid like a rock on PS CS2 (and CS1, and PS7, and PS6, etc.)
I have the Matrox G550 and have just installed the latest driver. There is a great improvement in the speed of the redraw, but CS2 is still a mite slower. For example If I maximise CS, the screen comes up with the GUI and palettes populated and then the image, which is pretty well instant. With CS2, the GUI is populated, with unpopulated palettes, then the palettes fill and then the image comes up. A very small delay, but noticable. This also noticable when painting with large brushes.
Mike – that delay in drawing the palettes is part of what we’re looking at. The people with real problems see it take several seconds to draw the palettes. On one laptop it took about 1.5 seconds PER PALETTE to draw (and setting video acceleration to zero made it take 0.2 seconds per palette!).
But we’re not doing anything that should be that slow. So we’re still trying to figure out what’s going on.
Mike… What you describe is just what I see, with the NVidia 4600: not the several seconds of some, but a small yet very noticeable, gradual, delay (comparative to near instantaneous in PS8).
Plus I find other, more debilitating, symptoms… Could you have a look please at the link in the first post here: TroubleShooting PS9 Display Slowness <http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.3bba5591/17> and let us know if you, with the G550, are free from such problems? (I personally am interested in v), where for me the Info Palette becomes unusable).
(I’m intrigued by what you say, cos I have actually been thinking of going back to Matrox)…
My laptop takes six seconds to redraw palettes, but its a five year old machine with only 8MB VRAM, video drivers are three years old and are unlikely to be updated. Zooming takes a couple of seconds too.
I can send you a Quicktime movie (440kB) via yousendit if its any use.
I have one Canon Raw image, so I don’t use Camera Raw much. The Camera raw does do what you say. It is slow and is the worst for clipped ticked boxes using Large Fonts. It also takes a couple of sec to resize a window, when I drag the corners and to redraw from minimise. If I click to magnify it takes about 2 sec to redraw, with the lagging strip on the left. It seems to be better as you zoom in. On zooming out using the alt key, there is no lagging strip, only zooming in, but it is still slow. Curiously the lagging strip does not happen if you use the zoom +- buttons, but it is still slow. I cannot get a screen grab of it.
Mike… Many thanks for that. I don’t know what it all signifies exactly, but it’s certainly interesting that the Info palette loss does happen with your Matrox as well.
At least it’s made me decide I’ll not be rushing into changing components that are probably not faulty at all…
Chris, I don’t mean to teach you have to troubleshoot the problem, but here’s some ideas if you don’t mind. If you know that problem is in some API call and that API is in separate DLL, you could measure the performance of each call by creating a proxy DLL which has the same API functions declared but in their implementation it takes the current time stamp, calls the real API function, calculates the duration of the call and logs the function name, parameters and duration to the file. Then you would need to load process that log file and find which API call takes most of the time. That would take some time to put it togethet but there’s a real benefit of dooing that. I have done that before for some project to figure out hot spots with performance problems.
you could measure the performance of each call by creating a proxy DLL which has the same API functions declared but in their implementation it takes the current time stamp, calls the real API function, calculates the duration of the call and logs the function name, parameters and duration to the file.
gee, ya think? you should patent that. you’d make a fortune!
Well, I’ve been following this and other ‘performance’ threads so I downloaded the CS2 demo and installed it. Man-o-man is it impressive and while slower than v7, not enough for me to say it is that big a difference. I am not going to be very popular, but here are my system specs:
Dual PIII 1Ghz CPUs w/ 2GB of PC 133 RAM Matrox G550 video card (recent drivers) Abit VP6 motherboard (latest bios/drivers) WIN2K SP4 for the OS 6 hard drives / 2 DVD burners 2495 active fonts (2300 Type1/OTF, the rest TTF)
After the installation, the first startup took 21 seconds, wasn’t surprised. Shut it down and started it up again and it took about 7 seconds. Shut if down, re-booted the computer, started it up again and it took about 12 seconds, shut it down and started it again, 7 seconds. If it wasn’t for the ‘trial screen’ it might even be a bit faster. Set memory to 85%.
The pallettes all appear simultaneously within a second, but they look they are ‘fading in’. Not a problem, I can deal with that.
Doesn’t matter if I have the info palette open or not, does not change anything that is going on time-wise. Using a 16-bit/300Mb image I can move the eye-dropper tool all over the place and there is no lag in the info palette being updated.
I used the liquify tool, you name it on that image and it was really no slower than v7 doing the same thing (except that you can’t use really anything on a 16bit image in v7).
Looking in the task manager, for the first time I can see Photoshop use more than 50%, it can clip at a 100% without crashing and is way faster than v7 in this regard. Good show PS team, particularly Chris.
My font window poplutates with the preview without a problem. Can highlight a font and use the up/down arrows and see a very quick font update on the type.
While this is too nice to hear, it is what it is and I will be getting my update shortly.
Want me to test anything else, be happy too. It always makes me happy when I know how to make an app crash/act-up.
v) Info Palette… Open image; Ctrl+M; Ctrl+Clk in image; keyboard arrows to adjust Output up or down: figures in Info disappear when arrow key pressed. Need to move cursor, click again to refresh. Press arrow, they disappear again…
Bummer. I didn’t know about that one; that *really* needs addressing.
Chris, how does it work in your test labs? Instant restore from minimized to full screen on all types of computers and video cards available to you? What is the minimal PC configuration you have tested it? Maybe what we see is expected?
Well people, I recently upgraded from CS1 to CS2, I detected the same problems as everyone else (sluggish UI, redraw problems), and decided to read the whole topic (the 158 posts), I used all the advices posted here and finally decided to update my video driver.
I have to say that even though I didn’t believe it would work at first, to my surprise I must say it did work, at least for me.
I’m using an HP/Compaq D220 with this configuration:
Adobe Photoshop Version: 9.0 (9.0×196) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 2 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:15, Model:2, Stepping:9 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, HyperThreading Physical processor count: 1 Processor speed: 2799 MHz Built-in memory: 1015 MB Free memory: 258 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 901 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 80 % Image cache levels: 6 Application folder: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Temporary file path: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled Scratch volume(s): H:\, 31.5G, 31.1G free Primary Plug-ins folder: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Photoshop CS2\Plug-Ins\ Additional Plug-ins folder: not set Installed plug-ins: blah, blah, blah… Plug-ins that failed to load: NONE
Installed TWAIN devices: VideoCAM Express V2
Since my computer is fairly new I didn’t give much credit to upgrading drivers, but that solved in great deal the problem.
Theese are the facts (mine) – I can still see some delay at dragging windows around PS – I have 3000+ fonts installed, so that’s not the problem – I use WinXP Pro with service pack 2, in SPANISH, so discard language – I have an Intel 82845G integrated video card, 64MB memory – 1GB of physical memory – 3.0Ghz of processor
Don’t know if this might help you, although I don’t have a neat video card I was doing pretty ok with CS1.
Thanks to all for the recommendations, my advice: update your video drivers, even if you think they’re OK, if that doesn’t do the trick, then roll back or get a new video card (maybe is time to upgrade video as well).
That said, I think people at Adobe SHOULD revise a little bit more PSCS2, because no software is free from bugs, and you might find yourselves with a few in GUI display and redraw; befeore the upgrade I had no troubles with PSCS.
Also post a list of "know incompatible video cards/drivers".
I’m very sorry, but some of us _have_ updated our video drivers (I also went back and tried the older Catalyst drivers that were mentioned to work by somebody in another thread), and it does _not_ help. I’ve tested PSCS2 on my system, and also trialed it on my other Windows computer with a slightly newer AGP Radeon card, and in both cases the sluggish display of palettes and toolbars persists. Maybe there’s something in these ATI cards or drivers that prevents them from handling the necessary APIs in a reasonable amount of time, but regardless, I’d like to have some kind of conclusion at least of what cards are known to work with some regularity so I don’t buy something else that’s not going to work any better.
Ive got a 2.8HT with 1gig ram and a nvidia fx 5900 ultra. I have the latest drivers and keep a tip top clean machine. CS2 laaags heavly when moving layers and will not respond, windows blank out then it will recover. dont know what else is up with it.
Josh: Can you borrow a Matrox card to see if this helps (G450/550)? I’ve been using Matrox cards for 10 years and I’ve (knock on wood) never experienced a problem with them. As above I do not have the lastest machine but maybe my Matrox G550 makes the difference, and I’ve really been trying hard to make the CS2 trial fall over.
Bob wrote: That doesn’t mean that the fault isn’t with the driver…only that a driver that works doesn’t exist.
Josh says: Yes, I know. I was responding to what I thought seemed to be a rather simplistic statement that if it doesn’t work, one must have failed to properly update one’s video card drivers. For what it’s worth, after I sent feedback to ATI, they wrote back saying something to the effect of "this is for driver-related issues and feedback only." [if we had a rolling eyes emoticon, I’d use it here]
Does your info palette update properly if you perform the steps outlined in post #154 of this thread? The numbers in the palette should *not* disappear when you press the arrow keys.
Ho, "PHOTOSHOP CS2, MORE SLOW THAN EVER !!!" #154, 11 May 2005 4:07 pm </cgi-bin/webx?14/153>
I hate to say this but we tested PSCS2 on our lame systems yesterday–we don’t even have video cards in these crappy machines, only a video controller chip and it shares 16 MB of Ram with the system…
PSCS2 ran Great!!! Opened quickly and seemed much quicker to the students who were testing. We are going to run side by side comparisons with the full CS2 Suite and large files on Friday. But if these machines will run PSCS2 without tweaking, straight off the download and overlayed over the top of Deep Freeze (so we can test without disrupting the image) then it has got to be another problem besides Adobe software!
It realized that we’ve got at least 2 posters from Germany, several with Hispanic last and first names, one with a Dutch name. English speaking posters do not experience any issue.
Could that be an issue on localized operating systems?
Folks, what is the language of your operating system?
What language is used for Photoshop? (if you’ve got language tools/switching open in the taskbar of windows)
I have the issue – English version of PS on English (Scottish!!!) Windows XP SP2 – 3.4ghz P4 Extreme Edition / HT, 2Gb RAM (two 1gb, dualbank, PC3100), ATI Radeon 9800XT 256Mb, 800Mb of free disk space (not kidding)… & a dedicated 80Gb scratch disk.
PhotoShop CS 2 is VERY noticably slower. It’s not unusable, but side by side with PS CS 1 simple things like dragging popups and switching tools results in pauses as the disk drives are hit. Odd.
Howard: Didn’t notice you had to have the curves palette open for that to fail. Updated my response with correction. Yep, that is not what I would like.
TO ALL WHO HAS THE CS2 REDRAWING PROBLEMS: I have been experiensing the same problems with my ATI Rage Fury Pro 32MB video card. Last night I have tryed to lower the hardware acceleration on my video card. I have lowered the slider down one point and CS2 began redrawing much faster. Then I put it back to full acceleration. No issues. So, as soon as I touched the acceleration slider, then it doesn’t matter in what position it is CS2 redraws fast enough. So, try to lower the hardware acceleration in your video driver by one point and see what happens.
Zeb: Basically what I was trying to say is that the systems in my lab shoudn’t be able to run CS2 period! No way, no how, they barely meet the minimum specification for RAM and without a video card they should be dead crawling slow and if anyone should see screen redraw problems it should be me…but we are not seeing a problem with files under 50 MB.
Tomorrow is 100-200 MB test files day! (If you hear of a fire on a Community College campus in Colorado…it’s me…I will have toasted the lab…no loss)
I barely meet minimum specs, and I don’t even have video cards, just a controller chip, but we are seeing no slow down under PSCS2!We tested this on 18 machines. It has to be drivers or as Alexander has figured out, hardware acceleration which has always been a way to test if it’s a video card driver problem.
I guess, Christine, it is not a question that this is a video driver problem. I think you should test for tool box redrawing time. That what has noticable low performance. The other is fact that the apperance of those tool boxes was changed from CS1 to CS2. In CS2 they look nicer, the unactive tabs have shades, etc. So, looks like the way they are drawn in application or usage of some API caused the performance issues for some video card drivers. If you have integrated video card with shared memory but the driver processes the API calls correctly, you don’t see any issues. I have integrated graphics in my computer at work, it’s a fast computer though, I don’t see any issues with redrawing either. But the question is what API call causes a problem for the driver and if the person is in position to replace the card, what to look for in a new one.
On my machine running W2k and with an old MX440 card, if I take the hardware acceleration down *2* stops from ‘full’ the message reads ‘Disable advanced drawing acceleration’.
I had it on the lower setting anyway, for some reason, and have had no problems. As soon as I put it higher I had problems.
2 Stops down, the CS2 screen redraws in an instant.
For me, putting the acceleration slider down even one notch is enough to speed things up noticeably (though it’s not quite "instantaneous," it’s still better). Taking all of the acceleration away, however, makes everything horribly slow, though in that case everything appears to wipe down, rather than with acceleration where the PS palettes pop into place one at a time, slowly.
This is really wierd, but I installed my Wacom Intuos 3 6×8 tablet (latest driver) and the erratic and sluggish movement with the info palette open went away. Whatever it did, it fixed everything. The Wacom tablet is working correctly and the Logitech mouse is working correctly. I guess they like playing together. My problem is solved.
Can someone just please confirm for me that, running/displaying properly, the PS9 Info Palette does behave as in PS8 and PS7 when using the Keyboard Arrows to adjust a point in the Curves dialogue? (ie the figures do not disappear with each Arrow Keypress, as happens for me in v9)?
TO ALL WHO HAS THE CS2 REDRAWING PROBLEMS: I have been experiensing the same problems with my ATI Rage Fury Pro 32MB video card. Last night I have tryed to lower the hardware acceleration on my video card. I have lowered the slider down one point and CS2 began redrawing much faster. Then I put it back to full acceleration. No issues. So, as soon as I touched the acceleration slider, then it doesn’t matter in what position it is CS2 redraws fast enough. So, try to lower the hardware acceleration in your video driver by one point and see what happens. Alexander Havrylyuk, "PHOTOSHOP CS2, MORE SLOW THAN EVER !!!" #170, 12 May 2005 8:10 am </cgi-bin/webx?13/169>
I’m experiencing the same redrawing problems on my Toshiba Tecra M1. But when I tried Alex’s suggestion, everything went smoothly! I can now use CS2 without any problems! Thanks Alex! For those interested, here are the specs: (I also included the latest video driver version for my laptop)
Adobe Photoshop Version: 9.0 (9.0×196) Operating System: Windows 2000 Version: 5.0 Service Pack 4 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:9, Stepping:5 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP Physical processor count: 1 Processor speed: 1596 MHz Built-in memory: 1023 MB Free memory: 615 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 908 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 70 % Image cache levels: 6 Serial number: Tryout Version Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\ Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled Scratch volume(s): Startup, 20.0G, 12.5G free Primary Plug-ins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Plug-Ins\ Additional Plug-ins folder: not set Plug-ins that failed to load: NONE Display Driver and Version: Trident Video Accelerator Cyber-XP4 v6.4823-104.22_1
I tried the Hardware Acceleration method and it did not fix my redraw problem. I saw no change with any of the HA settings. I selected each stop and rebooted and re-tested. Each setting was the same, even None.
I tried the Hardware Accelaration method too but it didn’t fix the redraw problem. Since my PC isn’t a "Photoshop Exclusive PC" I hope Adobe can find a solution that doesn’t interfere with other apps. Disable Hardware Acceleration method can help to isolate the problem, but cannot be the solution.
I hope Adobe can find a solution that doesn’t interfere with other apps.
<<
Well, if decreasing hardware acceleration helps the problem, that is proof-positive that it is a video driver problem.
As you decrease hardware acceleration, you progressively hand video tasks over to the O/S from the video driver. So if the O/S can handle the calls, but the driver can’t, it really is up to the video card manufacturer(s) to sort out their drivers.
Len, it’s laudable of you to defend Adobe but they made a change between CS1 and CS2 which causes this problem. They are free to ignore it of course and blame somebody else but not everybody has the latest machines. Watching palettes redraw is unacceptable and it is the first time I’ve had to go back to an earlier version of Photoshop. BTW it took longer to uninstall than install. It’s good that the tryout is available but I can see a lot of returns at retail stores. I’ll try again when I get a new computer.
They are free to ignore it of course and blame somebody else but not everybody has the latest machines
When I upgraded to CS(1) I had to ditch my old Windows 98. I didn’t whine about it. I just accepted that ever more highly featured software has to be run on more highly featured systems.
If the improvements in CS2 means updating the graphics card/drivers, it is surely a comparatively small price to pay.
It would be a small price to pay but will not be possible for all cards. It may mean buying a new card or, in the case of a laptop, a new computer. Also we have seen users with top spec cards and the latest drivers having problems.
The flurry of problems since CS2 came out is far more serious than those with the previous jump from Version 7 to CS1
It is hard for Len and Bob not to defend Adobe but I think sometimes a circumspect silence would be advisable.
I’ll defend whoever I think needs defending. In this case, it’s becoming apparent that there are problems with video cards out there.
There are too many people reporting that turning hardware acceleration down is fixing the problem. That puts it squarely on the video driver. The fact that updating doesn’t fix the problem only means that the manufacturer has some work to do.
If turning down hardware acceleration isn’t helping, there’s something else going on. Providing Chris with every detail about your system can only help get things straightened out.
It is not a case of defending Adobe at all, but of establishing WHERE the problem lies.
If there is no problem when hardware acceleration is turned down, then the application is not using illegal calls. If a video driver (or a number of video drivers) are not written to conform to the O/S requirements/specifications – note O/S NOT application requirements – then the problem is with the video driver(s), and no doubt the manufacturers of those drivers will respond with updates, at least for their current cards.
If those manufacturers choose not to support their legacy cards, one cannot really expect Adobe to do so in their place.
Were a software producer to limit their applications in order to support legacy hardware, then many of the improvements and enhancements we have seen in software over the years would have been impossible.
On Sat, 14 May 2005 01:39:00 -0700, "John Joslin" graced us with:
It would be a small price to pay but will not be possible for all cards. It may mean buying a new card or, in the case of a laptop, a new computer. Also we have seen users with top spec cards and the latest drivers having problems.
The flurry of problems since CS2 came out is far more serious than those with the previous jump from Version 7 to CS1
It is hard for Len and Bob not to defend Adobe but I think sometimes a circumspect silence would be advisable.
Or even more expense for some people; Matrox recently changed their driver in ways that defeat my Monaco Colorvision color management system, and forced me to downgrade to the last version in order to retain my rather sizable investment in color management. If I have to replace my video driver (and at this point I’m still testing) then I also have to either buy a new CM system or a new card.
Well I seemed to hit a nerve there sorry fellas.
I don’t have an axe to grind here. Up to now CS2 is fairly screaming on this machine (128MB PCI-E ATI FIREGL V3100 card by the way) and I just wish there were more hours in the day to practice and use all the amazing new features.
Let’s just say that the program puts a lot of demands on any computer and it is revealing weaknesses on machines that will cope with almost any other high-end program without a whimper.
Our friends at Adobe are recognising that some of the issues mentioned will have to be addressed by them but hey, nobody’s perfect!
I posted my system specs for a four-year old machine earliier in this thread, CS2 is running really well on it with a Matrox G550. If I was having problems, then I would say so. Never one not to frankly speak my mind.
There are some minor bugs to be worked out, but I really think you have a hardware problem of some kind that needs to be worked out on your end and it isn’t the responsiblity of the software development team to do so for you. They are trying to help, but change the software to suit your limitations, wouldn’t expect them too.
Let’s just say that the program puts a lot of demands on any computer and it is revealing weaknesses on machines that will cope with almost any other high-end program without a whimper.
but it’s always been like that. you’ve been here long enough to see people scream when their systems lock in xp under ps6 or 7 but not with anything else? it’s not the app that’s causing it. it’s the app that’s exposing the flaw that’s already there.
in the case of the vid cards len’s right, of course, about the hardware acceleration. there are also a couple of cards that don’t respond to a drop in acceleration or to new drivers. chris has said they’re getting a couple to test. if it’s a bug in cs2, they’ll tell us.
I wonder if the redraw problem has to do with the embedded Opera browser components. If I tab the palettes away, the screen redraws fine (unless I drag the document window over the Photoshop menu bars, then the menu bars are slow to redraw and the dragged window gets choppy/sluggish)…
you know with so many people reporting, i’m sure it would help the engineers out if you guys with problems would include your model of video card with each post about this, so they don’t have to keep looking up the whole thread for people’s names to try to match up a card you mentioned 20 or 50 posts ago.
I just installed Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 (Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design) on my WindowsXP machine (dual 900mhz processors with 1 gig of RAM). I’m also finding the applications extremely sluggish. The programs take longer than normal to load and then behave as though I have no memory. There are slight delays when clicking around and performing tasks. It’s difficult to work this way.
I should point out that I installed a new C Drive (after the first one died) and now have Windows XP installed. Perhaps there is something to disable in XP that is hogging resources but my other apps seem to work fine. Thanks for any help!
Bill, if you would have looked at some of the previous posts, you would have noticed that it seems that some combinations of videocards and drivers seem not to function properly with CS2. Could you please state what videocard and drivers you are using? Did you try to lower the acceleration in the display properties? (or what dave said :D)
I have noticed this (contrary to my earlier post re., Illustrator CS2)
–> Photoshop CS2 –> Illustrator CS2 –> Acrobat 7.0 Pro
ALL redraw slower than their previous versions (CS, Acro 6). I installed Opera 8 over my Opera 7, and Opera 8 redraws slower than Opera 7, and slower than Firefox 1.01 and IE6. I don’t have any other apps that redraw slowly. For example, all the Macromedia MX suite redraws fine, all MS Office apps redraw fine, CS1 Adobe products redraw fine.
I have no problems with redraw, only the info palatte bug wich goes away if I turn hw accel down one notch. This is on a ATI 9600pro with cat 5.4. Same prob with cat 4.12 drivers also.
Hmmm – a thought occurs to me and it may be that I am a million miles off track so apologies in advance.
It seems, to this casual observer, that there are some important factors about upgrading (all general points and not related to any particular program) 1 – upgrade induced because new hardware and/or new operating system requires different ways to do things (call this, for example, environment induced)
2 – upgrade required because a key or core element in earlier versions needs a major overhaul (call this, for example, application induced)
3 – upgrade required because customer base seeks extensions or modifications that go beyond additionality in the form of patches (call this customer induced)
Getting all of these things in phase is not and pobably will never be easy. Top it off with trying to install an upgrade on legacy hardware and well – it gets sorta complicated.
Started new topic, but hoping to catch somebody’s attention. I opened PC CS2 with the Info Palatte open, There were values in the Palatte R 255, G 0, B 0, C # , Y ?, M 100. No document had been opened. I tried this with PS 7 and there were no values in the Info Palette. Any body else?
I downloaded the proper drivers for my Matrox Millenium G450 Dual Head Video card and CS2 seems to redraw much faster now. Whew! I just had a new C: Drive installed by a third party and he apparently installed a generic driver.
By the way, this card has 16 MB of onboard memory. Is that a joke by today’s standards? The card is 5 years old. Thanks for all your help!
Chris: I have noticed a different performance since downloading & installing Intel Booster, apparently it frees up some systematic data bottlenecks.
Along with increasing rank of process priority I kinda feel guilty that CS2 sorta whizzes? Maybe I am doing something wrong?
Intel Booster/Accelerater works as well with CS as it does for CS2 however I anticipated slowness as this laptop is last year’s spec
As Windows XP variants and flavors increases I can only wonder what coders must be going through so I hope that detailed spec is followed up and acted upon by hardware co’s equally efficiently
Some of us use AMD, so that doesn’t work for everyone… Besides, primarily as a worker, but yet a tweaker at heart, I’ve long since come to the conclusion that every "optimization" guide on the net can not be totally correct, and some of them can not be trusted at all. There’s too much urban legend and tweaking folklore out there, and a lot of it provides about as much "benefit" to computer performance as $2000 power cables provide to audio systems (in other words, maybe theory says there’s a 0.0000000000000000000001% improvement, but if you claim to see or hear anything, it’s all in your head).
My system again, for reference:
Abit NF7-S v2 Nforce2-based mainboard AMD Athlon XP 1700+ ATI Radeon 7200 1GB Corsair XMS DDR SDRAM 36GB Western Digital "Raptor" 80GB Western Digital "Caviar" + other stuff and the PS CS2 display update sluggishness
This laptop always hits a performance barrier when it approaches 75% use of a 40 GB hard drive. 40GB! When I bought it (pre-digital image times) I thought it would last like forever.
On the good side it has forced better file management and maintenance on me 🙂
I have used the Intel Application Accelerator for several years and it does indeed make some difference. However, be advised that you need to use the version created for your Intel particular chipset. It is not intended for anything but Intel chipsets.
For what it’s worth, I just did a complete uninstall of old drivers and subsequently installed the new Catalyst 5.5 drivers that came out today, and nothing changed in regard to Photoshop palette sluggishness.
Athlon XP 1700+ Abit NF7-S v2 ATI Radeon 7200 (SDR PCI) 1GB RAM, 36GB and 80GB hard disks, etc.
Let’s not start on an "AMD sucks" thing here… Some VIA chipsets have had issues, but my VIA-chipset-based system has not been afflicted by any of the others. I don’t know where you got your "2" next to VIA, because my other chipset is made by Nvidia, which is pretty far removed from VIA (at least used to be also in the performance area).
The motherboards are made by Gigabyte and Abit, with VIA and Nvidia chipsets, respectively. I’m going to say with 99.9% certainty that it is not the motherboard. Chipset? Possibly (though I still think it’s video card related). But definitely not the motherboard.
For me anyway. The system I have is new and I really did not want to start messing with it, by doing driver updates and all that. Here’s my system:
Emachine Windows XP 340 Intel Celron D Processor 2.93 GHZ 256 L2 Cache 533 MHZ FSB Intel Extreme Graphics 3D 512MB DDR SDRAM 80GB hard Drive 7200 RPM
The problems I was having, it was sluggish. Drop down menus on click shuttered and faded in slowly. Windows appeared slowly over all it was sluggishness.
I found it had nothing to do with ram, graphic card, or hard drive space, but everything to do with Windows XP. It had to do with the fun visual effects.
GO TO: Control Panel>System Properties>Advance>Performance Options Settings>Visual Effects
UNCHECK:
Fade or slide menus into view
Fade out menu Items after Clicking
Show shadows under mouse point (this drove me crazy!)
Use visual style on window and buttons
Now Photoshop CS2 runs like a charm! Wow! Is it cool! I look forward to using this fantastic program! Thanks for the upgrade Adobe!
Possibly (though I still think it’s video card related). But definitely not the motherboard.
true. just gathering info…
christine’s post is interesting… i’m using the old style windows desktop and have System Properties>Advance>Performance Options Settings set to "Best Performance" which turns of almost all of the xp "eye candy".
I’ve a Via board – Asus with an Athlon 2800 – and have had no problems whatsoever with CS2. If there was a problem with Via chipsets in general, this forum would have been snowed under by now I’d guess. Graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce FX5600.
I’m using the old style look of windows as well. I just happen to like the look as opposed to the new look of xp. For me the less visual noise the better.
Pipkin, I was not really forced to adapt. I didn’t have to upgrade anything on my system like drivers…etc. Just click off a couple of things that did not effect the performance one bit. Nor did it hurt the integrity of my system. Those are just visual effects I personally would not use. So, it is no great loss.
Yes Pipkin, It did perform with an amazing difference. There are to many people on this thread, with different types of systems. There’s too much diversity. But one thing most of us have in common is the operating system. Windows XP. I don’t remember reading about any MAC problems on this thread.
Christine, I agree with you. MAC problems are chewing in another thread. But they have ones as well.
John, incidentally I am one from that brigade too: I have no problems with my AMD64 3400+ and 1 Gb fast RAM. Only when Info palette being opened I have small GUI deceleration…
I don’t have any shadows (except on the mouse pointer), and don’t use any menu fades. My theme is "Classic" and most (but not all) of those performance options are optimized for best speed.
If it helps to narrow down which API’s are involved, this video card is an 8MB ATI RAGE Mobility-P 2X AGP in a Dell 7500 laptop, drivers R48642 dated 17th April 2002, version 6.13.10.5795.
There must be a quite a few about and they go for less than $200 on eBay these days. Removing XP Pro ‘eye candy’ made little or no difference to palette redraw, as did moving the acceleration slider backwards.
All the same, seems, Adobe must correct their ‘System requirements’ for CS2. Opinions? And, I think that CS2 (and all versions) is ‘sharpened’ for Intel. AMD is outsider. Am I wrong? What would say Photoshop ‘codewriters’? Frankly.
Hi – the machine I am using is emachines laptop 2.4GHz Intel Celeron 480MB RAM 60 of which go to intergrated Intel graphics 40GB hard drive set for performance rather than eye-candy and I have not observed slowdowns on CS2 Tryout
Quite the opposite really – applying filters seems immediate well, far quicker than CS and I have been trying to hit reported CS2 slowdowns but cannot seem to do so.
There are occasional white-outs during CS2 startup usually with "not responding" in task manager (I suspect this is CS2 going into some interesting suroutines.)
There have been times when I noticed a bit of blockiness when dragging an image in CS2 but these have been rare.
Sorry to say I installed PS CS2 at my office. Different Motherboard, different video card, clean install of everything, latest drivers, patches, etc…. Same brush slowdown over the image with the Info Palette open. My feeling is that its waiting on numbers from the palette. Maybe its specific to card, video driver, AGP driver etc. , but I never saw this problem with previous versions and the brush tool and info palette have been around for as long as I can remember.
I use win2K sp4 (I have current disc), both systems have a gig of RAM, and 128 meg video cards, 2 100 gig hd’s, partition on second physical drive for PS swap file. Windows swap file is 3072/3072 on the first physical drive, every other app flies. Much faster than on my machines with XP and I always run those in classic mode with all the effects turned off including sounds. I got over the interface toys after win 95.
I think in October-November I’m going to build a dual processor 64 bit machine and give the new windows a go.
Well, the tryout only lasts a short while, but it’s nice that I don’t have to commit to purchasing the full thing until I’ve made certain that PSCS2 will work on my system. With that said, if the tryout and release are "almost" identical, would any of the differences affect performance issues such as the ones we’re discussing here? I’m assuming not (probably the differences are more in extras not included to minimize download size), but my curiousity wants me to ask. 😉
Ok, Ive had the same problem with the slowness, refresh delays, the whole bit. I have read every post and I had all the same problems. So I tried updating the video driver and bingo. Instant fix! CS2 runs better, faster and as smoothly as CS or 7 every did. Runs just as I expected it to.
Bottom line for me. Since the video update fixed what at first seemed to be a CS2 problem and CS2 now runs perfectly, my guess is that there isnt anything wrong with CS2 at all. It may be more demanding of resources and drivers and configurations but what new ‘latest, greatest’ software isn’t? Does anyone really expect 3d Max to come out with a new, blowout version but that doesnt require the user to bring their computers up to a certain level of equipment and configuration criteria to handle the new package? I think not.
There may be some mysterious problems left that video drivers wont fix but Id bet my next upgrade that it is almost certainly individual equipment and configuration incompatibilities that are causing the problems and not some untested new programming in CS2. This would also explain why the beta testers didnt find anything unusual.
Perhaps it’s because ther isnt anything unusual.
David Skidmore owner David Skidmore Photography owner PhotoMiracles 10 yr user of Photoshop
Dave S.: I’m glad to hear that updating the graphics drivers fixed the PSCS2 redraw issue for you. Unfortunately, I have updated to the latest Catalyst drivers (5.5) from ATI, but that has not caused the issue to go away for me. Could you please let us know what kind of graphics card you are using, to help the rest of us in our troubleshooting.
David, " Does anyone really expect 3d Max to come out with a new, blowout version but that doesnt require the user to bring their computers up to a certain level of equipment" Some of the users have the latest and greatest video card with the newest drivers and fast P4 processors and it`s still slow. Stefan
I understand. My point is this. My hunch is that when you put together a big package like CS2 (and its associated improvements) and the complex and varied computer configurations we all have, including the biggest and baddest of everything, it seems the problem is more likely in getting all of those configurations into some commonality that will work with the new CS2 (since is is a more advanced program than CS) rather than suspecting that CS2 is so particular that it will only work on the most perfect setup (as opposed to the average system, which it was intended to do).
I guess Im saying that I suspect each system and its configuration and ‘updatedness’ more than I do CS2. Maybe Im wrong. At least in my system it was the case.
Well then, tell us what your configuration is! We’ve been saying this over and over, but some folks fail to grasp that in some of our cases, it _isn’t our fault_ because we’re running reasonable hardware and are up to date on all of the latest video drivers. I’m ready to replace my gfx card and be done with it, if only someone would provide some reasonable indication of something that works properly!
I’ve just tried replacing my NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 with a borrowed (new) Matrox P650. Both with latest drivers. Tried both on my regular Win2k SP4 setup and on a test setup of fresh installed WinXP SP2 on a bare Drive with nothing but PS9 installed.
The problems of Display lag were unchanged in all combinations, configurations, whatever.
I am judging by comparison to having worked with Photoshop amost daily for several years, through several incarnations, and know a degradation when I see one.
Considering all the variables I have tried, it seems we’re left with only very few common constants to question: Mainboard/BIOS, CPU, RAM (all of which have never been anything other than faultless) and… Photoshop CS2.
That it purportedly works like a dream on 99.something% of other users’ machines only adds to our frustration and incomprehension.
XP with Service Pack 2, which, by the way may help. At least SP1 1 gig Separate multi gig scratch disks for both system and CS2, all of which are separated from the image drives. nVidia GTS (are you ready) gForce 2 (that’s right, 2) with 6.1.7.7 driver, which isnt the very latest but dated 8/4/2004 DirectX8, although I dont think that matters 55% memory usage full acceleration Ive made no configuration changes such as turning off virus protection or turning off shadows or menu animation, etc. Ive tried this with upgrading both ways, by loading CS2 with CS still on the system, then removing CS….and by first removing CS then loading CS2. Same results, perfect operation.
Keep in mind, I was ready to get my money back with all the same problems Ive read about in the posts then I tried updating the video driver and it solved the problem. I suppose its possible that some, even big and bad, video cards may create the same problems (out of the box, off the shelf) that my 2 1/2 year old video card and driver produced. In other words, it seems that the most likely cause is with video compatibility.
How is this possible with $400 brand new video cards? I dont know but it seems that most new cards are geared to 3d gaming and may not come from the factory configured in a way that makes CS2 happy. I would go to Best Buy and purchase a good $100 card and test it with its newest driver to prove whether or not its a brand and driver problem. At Best Buy youve got 14 days to return it no questions asked.
Remember it doesnt take a $400 card to make CS2 happy and in fact require more careful settings scrutiny to get it set for CS2.
Bottom line. We’ve all been looking for a way to reproduce the problem to find out what’s wrong and I did just that. I used standard XP-from-the-factory configuration and had all of the same problems, I mean all of them just as stated. AND, with doing nothing more than updating the driver, I solved the problem. That proves to me that it is a compatibility or configuration issue with the card and/or driver.
In short, just when I was ready to point the finger at CS2 and Adobe, it turns out it was me and my computer all along.
I was frustrated also. When things dont work all you want is to get it fixed and right now, boy do I know the feeling!
This may not seem to help but I offer it only as a ‘think-out-loud’ idea.
We know that CS2 will work on a fairly common but not extravagent machine like mine. XP SP2 works fine. CS2 works fine. I needed a new driver, so Im thinking it has to be configuration and/or drivers and not inability of the hardware to drive CS2. Soooo….I would take solace in knowing that it SHOULD work and CAN work if you can just find the configuration/driver combination. Maybe by trying a new video card (from Best Buy) you can test it.
Other than that I dont know. I feel your agravation. It would be neat it Adobe had a system and memory and configuration dump that could be used to diagnose problems like these. Maybe they do.
Could I ask you to perform a quick test on your system and report back on this forum? Since your system running CS2 seems to be performing to your satisfaction I’d like to know what a good behaving system is supposed to be like 🙂
1. Open a a jpg file about 800 X 600 px RGB, about 250K in size in CS2.
2. Grab the window title bar of the image and drag it all over the menu bar of CS2. Does the menu bar redraw instantly? Or is there any delay?
3. Also try hitting the "Tab" key twice in a row. Do the palettes redraw instantly, or is there some delay?
font9a – I just tested this If the menu bar is being redrawn, it’s too fast to notice Tabbing twice does show a slight delay in redrawing the palettes, but not that noticeable QuadroFX 750 video card, 71.84 Forceware drivers
Rick Moore Barnes Gromatzky Kosarek Architects www.bgkarchitects.com
What is everybody who has problems with CS2 report their’s video cards and driver versions so maybe we can sort them out and find out with card/driver combination is faulty?
Here are the results. I used a 11.7 meg jpeg file. I moved it all over the screen and the image and the menu bar is instantaneous, at least to the eye. I opened and separated every palette on the screen, about 17 or 18 of them and hit tab twice. The redraw of all of the palettes does take about .6 seconds from the time I hit the tab to the time the last palette redraws. With just the three I usually have open, layers, info, and character, it seems instantaneous. Info refresh is instantaneous. Everything looks the same as it always has been with 4,5,5.5,6,7 and CS.
I’m not sure if this is helpful and apologize if it’s already been pointed out (I’ve read most of the thread but may have missed some — it is a long thread!).
With respect to the "jerky" behavior that some have seen when dragging their images around the PS window, I’ve noticed on my system that it only occurs when the image window intersects with the palette well. The image will drag completely smoothly until some part of the image overlaps the palette well and then it becomes very jerky. When this happens, you can see the lag in redrawing the newly exposed part of the well as the image moves over it.
A little more information on what I’m seeing in my system. If I close and restart PS, then open a .psd file, I can drag it around the entire PS workspace and see almost no "jerky" behavior. In this case the Scratch numbers are: 247 M/499 M. No problem so far.
I then used Bridge to open about 15 .psd files. The scratch numbers then changed to 1.55 G/ 499 M. When I drug an image around the workspace, it was smooth until any part of the image hit the palette well, then it became very jerky and you could see the redraws occurring in the well. This didn’t surprise me with so many files open.
Then I closed all the images except for the original one. The scratch numbers returned to their original values of 247 M/ 499 M. But, when I drug the image around the workspace, it still exhibited the jerky behavior when it hit the palette well.
Don’t know if this helps, just an observation.
Windows XP Home, SP2 1G RAM 3G Pentium 4 Intel 82915G/GV/910 GL Express Chip Set (I know it’s crummy but it’s what I’ve got) PS Memory: 50%
Further update: I’ve tried the above test several more times now and the results aren’t as consistent as I initially thought. Sometimes I get the jerky behavior yet sometimes it still works relatively smoothly even after opening lots of files. My apologies for the misleading posts. The only thing that seems consistent is that when the behavior is jerky, it’s always when the image hits the palette well and nowhere else.
I installed an additional 512M RAM in my machine, and the problem is 90% better. I went from 1 GB to 1.5 GB in my Dell 8250.
The RAM upgrade involved removing 2 sticks of 256M DIMMs and replacing them with 2 512M DIMMs. I have no idea if the new memory works better becuase there is more contiguous memory, or what. I did not expect the memory to help (as PS wasn’t even paging to disk before).
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