I tried getting used to Photoshop CS4 for two days, but I’m going back to CS3.
The main reason being that using brush tools is *slow*. I’m on an iMac 2.8 Ghz Intel C2Duo Extreme with 4 GB RAM and Radeon HD2600 graphics circuitry (hardly an underspec’d machine, I’d say). In CS3 using the brush tool (or any other freeform drawing tool) with my tablet draws, even larger brushes, instantaneously. CS4 can barely keep up with even a small brush (16px) on a 600 x 600 pixels canvas. That is *not* good, it feels totally unnatural and distracts me constantly. It’s not like mid-90’s slow (and the brush strokes are not getting jaggy or anything), but just enough that I’m going to skip this upgrade (eventhough I’ve paid Adobe their money…). Now that CS4 has OpenGL accelleration I thought freeform drawing might have benefited from that, but apparantly not, the reverse is true.
Faster launch time of Bridge: I don’t think so. At least I didn’t notice it, it’s still annoyingly slow. Somehow Bridge was constantly showing me low-res previews for no reason yesterday. Clearing the caches didn’t help. I’m not sure what went wrong there.
Unless I need one of the stunning new features in CS4 (?), I’ll be sticking with CS3. As far as I can see, CS4 is *not* a version that performs better (eventhough I seem to remember it was one of the ‘features’).
Photoshop user since version 1.1, this is my worst update so far.
Oh, and BTW, if there’s a performance setting I’ve overlooked, then please enlighten me. I’ve waded through the Preferences window and even tried the help (ouch! online help: slow for Europeans, even on a 20Mbit connection!!!) but couldn’t find anything.
Learn how to optimize Photoshop for maximum speed, troubleshoot common issues, and keep your projects organized so that you can work faster than ever before!
Hey Ann, thanks for your tips. Too bad none of these would have only the slightest influence on the behavior I mention. This is definitely not in any way disk-performance or memory related. It *could* be related to OpenGL acceleration, but turning that off didn’t help either.
I agree that a setup issue is likely, but note that Z reports CS3 runs fine.
Z-
IMO work to get all CS4 settings identical to CS3. Scratch, Memory, History, etc. And make sure no corrupt fonts have reared their ugly heads. Check your tablet driver and the tablet forums for possible CS4 issues there.
The problem with the 7300 is that OSX Driver issues have made it impossible to use Open GL Drawing.
That is not true I ran it with that card on my MacPro and all the features of Open GL work fine.
I am not certain where you get this information but the card is supported and Photoshop properly reports it that way.
You can only have a limited number of Open Gl Documents opened at the same time with the card, I was able to have 8 such documents opened but it only has 256MB of memory on the card.
The card works fine for most people I would think.
Thanks for trying to help me guys, but your suggested "maintenance tasks", except for the font corruption, are all disk related. I know it’s well meant advice, but Photoshop causes no disk activity while you draw a stroke (at least not a relatively short one). When you release your pen (or mouse), then history gets written, perhaps scratch (not so likely on an 800 x 800 canvas and plenty of RAM to burn). You can actually check this easily in the Activity Monitor.
As for font corruption: I have only the bare minimum of system fonts installed, so font corruption will not likely be an issue.
This is a well-maintained system that, for example, runs Autodesk’s Maya perfectly (talking about demanding OpenGL performance). The video circuitry was mentioned in my first post, and although a consumer Mac, I’m still blown away by how this machine performs compared to a Mac Pro with high end graphics board (I really enjoy the silence and coolness of the iMac compared to the energy-wasting, heat and noise producing Mac Pro I had before).
I’d love to hear from you if you see the difference in brush tool performance in CS3 vs. CS4. Or am I the only one who sees this?
I’ll update my Wacom driver to the recently published 6.1.0-5 version and see if there’s any change.
Have you tried enabling or disabling various extensions such as?
Bigger Tiles.plugin Force VM Compression.plugin ForceVMBuffering.plugin DisableScratchCompress.plugin DisableVMBuffering.plugin Enable Async IO.plugin
It’s best to a search here to find out about this and how to implement them.
With PSCS3 I got the best performance with DisableVMBuffering.plugin & Bigger Tiles.plugin enabled. Based on your system configuration and what you want PS to do you will find different performance enabling or disabling these plugins.
Also for PSCS4 most of these plugins are not included and are available in a separate download. This download includes a OptionalPluginsReadMe.pdf that will explain what the plugin do or don’t do.
The problem with the 7300 is that OSX Driver issues have made it impossible to use Open GL Drawing. That is not true I ran it with that card on my MacPro and all the features of Open GL work fine. I am not certain where you get this information but the card is supported and Photoshop properly reports it that way.
This is NOT false information. I suggest that you read Adobe TechNote kb405711 before making false accusations:
What do you think? That the Adobe engineers would not have published that TechNote without due cause.
And ALSO:
That you should check Jeff Schewe and others on the subject of setting Screen Brightness.
Jeff Schewe, "Epson Stylus Pro 3800 – Prints too dark." #22, 31 Oct 2008 5:28 pm </webx?14/21>
But frankly, your experience seems to be at variance with everyone else’s.
Your web images images look dismally dark on the monitors of many of the rest of us but if that is how you want us to see them, that’s your prerogative.
Thanks Ann and Wade for hijacking this thread for a really sorry game of "yes/no" about whether a video card is supported or not.
Fortunately, there are still a few professionals around here with some solid advice like DYP’s:
Have you tried enabling or disabling various extensions such as?
I’ll try to launch Photoshop CS4 with a mix of different plugins to see if there’s one that may cause the slowdown. I also read about those optional plugins to disable certain performance-related features in CS4 and I’ll try those too. Thanks for your suggestion.
Zmip and nunatak, you are right I apologize this is about your performance of with the brushes in CS4 and I think it maybe an issue other then CS 4 in itself.
But you did mention that you are on an iMac and I am wondering how much memory you have allocated to PS?
but Photoshop causes no disk activity while you draw a stroke
That is so ignorant that I don’t know where to begin commenting.
The scratch disk is set by Photoshop at its maximum expected size the very instant you open an image file or create a new document. Anything you do is written to the scratch.
Ramón, thanks for your contribution. Before calling me ignorant, have you checked yourself if there is disk activity *during* the actual drawing (pen down, until pen up)? No you haven’t. As I wrote in a previous message, you can easily monitor disk activity in Activity Monitor and yes, as soon as you *release* your pen, the changes are written (which makes sense, because causing disk access may negatively affect performance when its needed most, during the drawing of a stroke). You think PS is writing to scratch, I think its writing history. Scratch is traditionally the disk file that is used by software when the maximum RAM is exceeded. Things have changed over the years, and MacOSX (and perhaps Photoshop) may use scratch (or swap-) files even when there’s sufficient RAM. Only the engineers will know what happens internally, not you, unless you’ve been a Photoshop engineer?
Zmip and nunatak, you are right I apologize
Apology accepted Wade, I’ve done what you say, set the max allowed memory to 90% (which results in 2800 MB of RAM) and there’s no difference, unfortunately. Let me restate that the delay during drawing is really short, but just enough to be noticeable and annoying.
Oh, and before anyone else like Ramón is coming up with wild assumptions: I’ve been writing software professionally for the Mac and for Windows for over 15 years, been a Mac user from 1984. I know a thing or two about graphics software and software engineering in general. At the risk of sounding condescending, stuff like "repairing permissions" to solve problems may sound like the perfect ‘fits all’ voodoo magic for non-technical computer users, anyone with remotely more insight in how software works, knows that it will be a useless exercise in, for example, this particular case.
I hope you find your answer to the question, are you certain that you have cleaned your cache files that can slow down a computer and certain applications. I use Cache Out X which is free.
Are you using an unusual browser?
The reason I ask is that this is not happening here on my computer. If I am working on 16×20 inch document set at 1200 ppi then there actually is a very small lag with the maximum size brush compared to the lag I get from PS CS 3.
But in both cases there is a lag of course we have not yet progress that far.
In any event I would be curious as to what you find out about your problem.
I test software for various small developers, plug ins and stuff and and usually it is problems with the cache not be empty quick enough that causes lag. Once they fix the problem the programs usually become more responsive and stable.
Here is a movie of my performance however Snaps pro does slow things a little and produces an artifact so it is not completely accurate.
Darn Wade, that is in fact an excellent idea! I did the same thing here, using both CS3 and CS4 with the same brush (the default 19px round, 25% spacing) on a 800 x 600 px canvas (8 bit RGB). This makes an excellent analysis of the problem. It shows exactly what the difference is. Here’s the CS3 movie <http://schrijfmethoden.nl/CS3.mov> and here’s CS4 movie <http://schrijfmethoden.nl/CS4.mov>. It’s apparent that the CS4 smoothing is much more pronounced than the CS3 smoothing (more jagged line flow on fast parts). If you scrub the timeline, you can also see that CS3 keeps up almost exactly with the cursor (on this machine, it also feels truly instantaneous), where CS4 shows a big gap between the brush stroke and the cursor.
My first guess was that one of the Adobe engineers had cranked up the smoothing algorithm, making for way more interpolations of the path followed (often causing more delay, because it probably has to factor in a larger time slice). But unfortunately, turning the "smoothing" attribute off on this brush still makes it behave slow (and jagged now).
So I’m not sure what’s happening and I don’t have a solution. But still, thanks for helping me to pinpoint this problem Wade.
To Josh Joslin (#22), thanks for reminding me to not visit the "User to User" forums in the future. I’m attending about half a dozen professional forums where people are courteous and try to help eachother. When I posted here a couple of years ago, I was blown away by the bad atmosphere that surrounds these forums and didn’t return for a few years. You (and a few others in this thread) are a perfect example why it was a mistake for me to return here. (no offense to those who *did* contribute something *positive* to this thread, it’s just that you guys seem to be a minority here).
The Activity Monitor does NOT show what’s happening on my scratch drive, which is a dedicated, physically separate internal hard drive. (As it should be.)
The scratch is being used all the time, from the instant you open an image file or create a new document. I verified that a long time ago by temporarily switching the scratch to an external FW drive and watching the activity indicator lights. Simple.
In general, I’ve seen a large number of users drawing wrong conclusions from the Activity Monitor.
as soon as you *release* your pen, the changes are written (which makes sense )
That is not really the point he is trying to make he is not comparing his iMac to a MacPro 8 Core.He is comparing his PS CS3 to CS 4.
And true that a iMac is limited in speed many speed issues with PS has been corrected in CS4.
However I do admit though I notice the small lag it may be a matter of perception more than actual performance, especially if you take into consideration the observation the OP makes the CS4 does so much better at smoothing and that seems to make the draw look different, it may not actually be slower but different and that probably takes a little getting use to if you notice it at all.
It would only bother you if you notice it.
I think Zmip should take one or two of the new features into consideration s o he can then intelligently decide if he should go back to CS 3. the stamp tool for instance now has preview of the source so that you may position it with a true visual reference t the source.
This is a tremendous advantage over CS3 and there is the open gl feature of rotating the canvas so you do not have to kill your wrist when drawing or retouching, a tremendous improvement in workflow, technique, time and accuracy.
these two features alone will save you hours of work everyday. The very small lag is insignificant even at high resolution files and large brush sizes compared to the benefit of doing something once when it might have taken a half dozen tries in the past.
Here is a retouching job that takes about 10 minutes in CS 4 using these two features along with the dynamic brush sizes and the panning and zoom features as well. BTW when you start using these features alone you will not be able to go back to CS3.
Okay guys, for those who are interested, I did some more research and found another message in these forums mentioning the "Vertical sync" option under Prefs->Performance->OpenGL->Advanced
Advanced GPU Settings Vertical Sync: Sets vertical sync to the refresh rate of the monitor. This should reduce tearing of the image as you drag it. Deselecting this option can speed up interaction at the cost of tearing.
Ouch, that was it. Switching off "vertical sync" and reopening a document (it doesn’t seem to stick in an already open document) made the brush behave much, much more responsive.
Good catch on the GPU setting. There’s a reason that we’re only seeing GPU support now even though graphics cards have been around forever: the number of situations they actually improve performance in 2D operations is pretty low. Quick and smooth zoom changes to odd percentages is pretty nice, but not critical if you spend most of your time painting directly.
Don’t get too bent out of shape about the scratch disk thing. Around here it’s the default way to avoid answering any question, whether logic says it’s a likely culprit or not. You should still get a second drive to use for scratch, but it won’t make you smarter, funnier or better-looking, yknow?
For the kinds of files you’re describing, your setup should be plenty powerful and for most of your non-painting actions, you should see at least a modest increase in performance from CS3 to CS4.
If you have ample RAM and work with human-sized files (lets say 8GB RAM and you work with files under, say, 20MB or so) the occasional refreshes of the swap file will be so infrequent that any delay will be negligible. Your statement will still be technically true, but in such cases a second hard drive for dedicated scratch will not yield a measurable increase of performance, even with a really slow hard drive.
The scratch and its size are set the very instant you open an image file or create a new document. The scratch is always being used.
But if you don’t want to believe that the performance improvements are very real with a separate scratch drive, it’s your business. I personally won’t be affected.
The scratch and its size are set the very instant you open an image file or create a new document. The scratch is always being used.
True! Users too often primarily look at silly things like CPU clock speed when overall operational setup – especially the entire hard drives configuration – is so essential. Folks with by-definition-limiting iMacs in particular should set up fast scratch in addition to maximizing the limited available RAM.
Don’t get too bent out of shape about the scratch disk thing. Around here it’s the default way to avoid answering any question, whether logic says it’s a likely culprit or not.
LOL, that is some sound advice, thanks.
the number of situations they actually improve performance in 2D operations is pretty low
Very true indeed. And even if there’s a performance gain, there’s often a tradeoff for display accuracy. Weird video artifacts are not uncommon, even on higher end videocards.
The scratch is always being used.
Maybe the poster of this statement wants to read up on how the scratch is used, the latest CS4 knowledge base article explains it quite throroughly. In my particular case, creating mostly low-res web-graphics on a 4GB machine shows an "Efficiency" level (see the KB article to understand what this means) of 100% *at all times*! Let me give you a hint: Photoshop is not swapping memory *ever* in this case. History and scratch are often mixed up by people, even in the docs, but in fact History states are a *totally* different thing from scratch (a.k.a. swap) files. You will not likely experience slower performance in Photoshop when it writes out History states because it is done *after* it is done processing.
Folks with by-definition-limiting iMacs
I’m not doing high-resolution work for the last 3 years anymore, hence the heavy-weight workstations are no longer neccessary (since the Macintosh II FX, I’ve always had the ‘fattest’ Mac that was around). For the first time in my professional career, I opted for a ‘consumer’ machine and I love it every day. Oh, BTW, I’m not alone in this, the web is full of stories from folks who switched their noisy room-heaters for an oh so elegant and silent aluminum iMac.
I do feel sorry for those people who think the Mac Pro is a ‘cool’ machine (it isn’t, it’s noisy and generates a lot of heat, especially with a serious videoboard in it), just because it’s the fastest. When my current iMac was released, it was only around 20 percent slower than an 8-core Mac Pro in Photoshop performance tests. As the KB article on CS4 optimization says:
Note that there is a law of diminishing returns with multiple processors: the more processors you use, the less you get from each addition processor.
I do feel sorry for those people who think the Mac Pro is a ‘cool’ machine (it isn’t, it’s noisy and generates a lot of heat, especially with a serious videoboard in it), just because it’s the fastest.
One quick comment. While the iMac is certainly a capable machine, it has its limitations of expandability, drives, memory, video cards, etc, and…speed. If you are working on Web stuff, no problem with an iMac. No problem either for a fair portion of Photoshop stuff either.
But if you are in a fast-paced print or video production environment, or spend considerable time on very large-to-huge Photoshop or video files, no way will the iMac be a very satisfactory machine. Nor will a laptop. Thus, enter the tower.
"Coolness" may be a byproduct of owning a Mac tower. But for anyone with half a brain, a working budget, too little time to get a lot of work done, tight deadlines, and who is a business realist, coolness is not the reason they buy one.
Sounds like someone who has never touched a Mac Pro. Unlike many earlier Mac towers, MPs are not noisy.
Certainly for your light work needs an iMac apparently suffices fine. However your personal light needs do not make an argument for iMacs as somehow generally appropriate desktop pro graphics boxes. The RAM alone is a huge limitation moving forward with OS X versions.
And most pros move enough files around, including onsite backup, that multiple hard drives are constantly in use – even if your PS work is so light that you find no need for recommended separate scratch. Strewing multiple external drives around one’s desktop, in addition to sucking useful table space, is actually noisier than having them buried and faster (SATA rather than FW) in a tower on the floor.
Let me give you a hint: Photoshop is not swapping memory *ever* in this case.
Thank you for explaining this and citing your references in such detail so that I wouldn’t have to.
I have done more extensive testing of the improvements gained by having a separate fast scratch drive than I ever wanted to do. Theory aside, I can say empirically what I said before: ample RAM + small files == zero benchmarkable performance difference with a dedicated scratch volume.
I went through this in an older thread; I had a single four-drive RAID5 for both system and scratch. My thinking was that the drive controller was doing all the "traffic control" and writing to multiple drives all the time, which did not mean faster performance as I thought. However, after switching to a single JBOD drive for the system and a three-disk RAID0 for the scratch disk, my overall system performance took a (slight) hit, and CS2, relying more on the system drive because it runs through Rosetta, performed about half as fast as it did in the other configuration. I’m talking 30 minutes versus 15 with the four-drive RAID5.
I’m not saying this to suggest that *anyone* should avoid having a separate scratch volume, just to illustrate that there are other factors that sometimes are *far* more important than that.
Finally, I have a 1GHz G4 iBook with 1.25GB of RAM and one of those nasty 5400 RPM drives that has system and swap on the same drive. Photoshop flies on it—so long as I don’t feed it any big files. I use it for very different tasks than I use the Mac Pro for, but I never see delays. It’s snappy and responsive.
Problems like crashing, freezing, tools misbehaving, or delays in specific circumstances when RAM is not an issue are much more likely to be caused by corrupted fonts, permissions issues, or a software configuration issue than a lack of a dedicated scratch volume.
People here do a disservice when they blame any issue on a lack of dedicated scratch or "substandard" hardware rather than reading the details of the issue and logically considering the likely causes.
Steven that is so about a separate scratch not really necessary, it was at one time but not now. However a RAID O as a scratch disk can improve your performance ad a faster drive will as well.
You might think you are happy with the current performance but the increase will be a pleasant and welcome surprise.
But if you are in a fast-paced print or video production environment, or spend considerable time on very large-to-huge Photoshop or video files, no way will the iMac be a very satisfactory machine. Nor will a > laptop. Thus, enter the tower.
I totally agree, and I’m fully aware that the iMac is sufficient for me because I do relatively ‘light’ work these days. I was just trying to point out to some simple minded folks in this thread that an iMac is not a bad performer for Photoshop per se (I know, I shouldn’t be bothered with those types, I know…).
To get back on topic: the iMac turns out to be fast enough for using the Brush tool in CS4 with a relatively small brush on a relatively small canvas, pretty much as it was in CS3. As far as I’m concerned, the problem is solved and I’ll be giving CS4 another chance…
Again, thanks to those who contributed in a positive way!
I think most here would agree that an iMac is fine for Photoshop and a lot of other purposes, as long as you understand and accept its limitations. Some folks report success in running Photoshop on old G4 machines. As long as the purchase is made with both eyes open, and with no unrealistic expectations, no problem.
The monitor of the iMac is simply unacceptable if you’re doing any meaningful print work.
Granted, I don’t deal with web stuff nor with puny image files.
It seems some folks are so narrow minded that he prefers to believe what they reads rather than what they have tested for themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they believe in the bible. :/
As I wrote above in #38: But if you don’t want to believe that the performance improvements are very real with a separate scratch drive, it’s your business. I personally won’t be affected.
If I didn’t know better, based on your explanations, I would think your secretly an Adobe "Engineer". If something as simple as a marquee tool movement can not keep up on a relatively small file (20mb as well as 2 mb) there are definitely efficiency and QA issues that Adobe has failed to solve in their code. When I was using CS2 there were absolutely none of these lag issues. I have a PC with a Quad Core 2.55 and 4GB or memory, a verified CS 4 qualified Video card with all the latest drivers updated and installed. Where are the fixes??
Chilkoot, As Ramón mentioned this is the Mac forum. Macs seem to have less problems with CS4 than Windows boxes. And if a Photoshop engineer were to appear it would be listed under their name.
Windows problems usually stem from old video card drivers among other things. There are a number of solutions over in the Windows forum.
