ps cs3 performance issue

GQ
Posted By
gavin_qi
Apr 21, 2007
Views
531
Replies
19
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Closed
I do have read this(LenHewitt, "Tuning Photoshop CS" #, 28 Feb 2004 4:47 pm </cgi-bin/webx?50), but sadly, they didn’t help.

This is the situation: I’m trying to move a layer set around, which contains lot of other layer sets and layers, and many of them have complex layer styles. This is a normal action in photoshop, I think, but it’s performance in cs3 and cs are totally different. In cs3, it’s unbelievable slow while in cs it’s rather fluent.

I’ve tried to tune the settings mentioned in the link above, and I’ve just updated my display driver to the latest version, but none of them helped.

I just can’t understand why this tiny usual action would make cs3 choke up.

anyone please shed some light on this?

system info:
win xp sp2, 1G ram, ATI Radeon 9600pro, P4 2.8c.

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Bob Levine
Apr 21, 2007
win xp sp2, 1G ram, ATI Radeon 9600pro, P4 2.8c.

Unfortunately, that’s a rather underpowered computer by today’s standards. Every new version of Photoshop seems to need way more horespower than the previous one.

Bob
PF
Patrick_Finch
Apr 21, 2007
I disagree with the statement above about having an underpowered system. I have a 1.4 centrino laptop with a 32 meg video card and CS3 runs better on it than CS2 did. I do, however, have 2 gig’s of ram in it which really helps. I think that’s probably your problem. You are too reliant on scratch-disk memory.
GQ
gavin_qi
Apr 22, 2007
underpowered? I don’t think so.
I just can’t relate that performance issue to the hardware thing. I think it must be some image cache thing or such, you know in CS, it’s rather rather fluent, while in CS3 it could take 30 second for a single "Ctrl+shift+up".

btw, I found a solution on another forum, that is to reduce the amount of the font library. The guy found the solution had over 3000 fonts installed, and after reduced that to about 800, the problem was gone.
I don’t know whether this would work for me, I’m still sorting my 1700+ fonts… I’ll report that here as soon as possible.
DM
dave_milbut
Apr 22, 2007
could also be a corrupt font among relatively few.

turning off font preview might help determine if that’s the problem before you start removing fonts…
GQ
gavin_qi
Apr 22, 2007
Seems that it’s not the font thing.
Well here I created a file <http://qi.jiahui.googlepages.com/test.psd> for testing.

Try to move the "bottombar" layer set around, compare the performance in cs and cs3.

In my opinion, the difference is just incomprehensible.
GQ
gavin_qi
Apr 22, 2007
Thanks for your replay dave milbut.
Do you have anything to share about how to identify the corrupted font?
CK
Chris_Kowalsky
Apr 23, 2007
Ok, so i have also made some tests. (sry for my english btw, im not so fluent as i should be).

I think that performance issue lasts since cs2. Ive got cs1, cs2, cs3 installed right now, and none of special fonts. From cs2 version, interface and palettes works much slower (I mean palettes refreshing, when hiding them and pop them up by TAB key which i use very often, or just dragging image with full-screen can get some little choke). This test.psd you have posted, in cs3 works so slow that its almost un-workable for me, AND in cs1 performance is quite enough. cs2 perf is something between cs1-cs3.

I have got fast machine (3800+ 2gb ram, raptor scratch disk), and my friend got quad-core machine with 4gb ram, and he has the same slowdown i have got.

In my opinion Photoshop code get a lot of bugs lately in latest distributions. New features maybe are quite nice, but killing performance so dramatically in some cases are just barrier for me to use new cs3 for pro stuff.
AJ
Adam_Jerugim
Apr 23, 2007
Gavin,

Thanks for posting the test file.

Do me a favor and try lowering your cache levels from 6 to 2 and see if the performance improves.

I’m seeing the problem as well and have begun to investigate why this file is causing CS3 to be so slow.

-Adam
GQ
gavin_qi
Apr 24, 2007
Thanks for your help Chris, I really share that point of view on this problem – I think it could be some code issue rather than the hardware issue.

And you know what, my cs2 is also got a palette/interface choke thing, even after I installed the latest cs2 update… so we are really on the same boat. 😀

Thanks Adam, I did have tried to tune the cache levels to 0,1,2,4,6 and 8, but they did not make any difference. I refered to some help document and thought that cache level could have something to do with the huge-image-with-zoom-in-and-zoom-out thing.
BTW, I relaunched my cs3 every time I changed the chache level.
G
gpin
Apr 25, 2007
I do experience the same problem using your test file. I also have a slow palette redraw, same problems I used to have with CS2 before the patch.

BTW Turning the Info palette off doesn’t help! 😉 🙁
GQ
gavin_qi
Apr 26, 2007
It seems that the test file is corrupted, I’ve uploaded a new one here: <http://www.box.net/shared/f2h5q9yol7>

Thanks.
MM
Mike_Morrell
Apr 26, 2007
I can also report that moving the layer set using the move tool is slower in CS3 than in CS2 on the same machine. In CS3, it is unusable on my machine. However, if I use the "Free-Transform" <cntrl-T> method, it works fine after I tell adobe its ok about the missing fonts.

I am using a Dual Core 2 2.4 chip with 2 GB ram and separate scratch disk.
GQ
gavin_qi
May 9, 2007
Is there anyone working on this?
GQ
gavin_qi
Aug 9, 2007
Is there anyone still working on this? or is there any public patch targeting this issue released?
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Aug 9, 2007
Wow, that really is quite a difference. Here’s a video <http://ambress.com/photoshop/cs3_slow_layer_set_move.wmv> that shows the sluggishness of CS3 vs. CS2:

Regards,

Daryl
GQ
gavin_qi
Aug 9, 2007
Thanks for your screen cast Daryl, I thinks that’s really impressive to show the problem. 🙂
J
johntolliday
Aug 9, 2007
Hi Gavin

I have Pentium 4 2.65 with 1 1/2 gig RAM

I experience the same difference between CS1 and CS3

I notice that CS1 says 1402 available RAM and CS3 says 1198 RAM

I’ve played around a bit with memory and cache levels with no improvement. The only thing that helps is deleting the hidden layer sets! (not a solution I know) I notice CPU maxes out in CS3 significantly but hardly blinks in CS1 but increasing allocated memory makes no difference. PS is usually happiest at 65%.

sorry I couldn’t be of further help.

John
KM
Kenneth_Madsen
Aug 9, 2007
Don’t know whether our own current performance-issues in Photoshop is directly related to your problem, but it might be worth a try.
We’ve discovered that having Illustrator open – or even a browser at youtube.com – significantly speeds up Photoshop.
We clearly see the improvement on especially opening files via File->Open. Thing that it might be related to javascript since a browser at eg. Google.com doesn’t have the same effect.
We’re running CS3 on Vista Business, and not WinXP as yourself.

If it’s not any help at all then I apologize for the interruption.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Aug 10, 2007
Kenneth,

Never think of it as an interruption to apologize for when you’re offering an idea that may help, whether it does or not. 🙂 But, for what it’s worth I did try what you suggested and observed no change in PS CS3 performance when my browser (IE7) was open to the YouTube.com site. Maybe Illustrator played a bigger role in what you saw. Hmmm…I didn’t absorb that you were on Vista when I tried this the other day. My observations were on WinXP, so I’d say that the O/S difference is also a very signficant consideration. I’ll try again with Vista later.

Daryl

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