Photoshop CS4 – new report, old problems

Hi there,

although i have posted many of the following problems in another thread, i will recall them here, because the other thread has gone slighty off-topic.

I have been "using" Photoshop CS4 that came as part of my Production Suite Premium Package für as long as it is out now and i have to say, that for me it is the worst release ever.

I work with Photoshop since Version 3 and every new release has had it’s flaws that were fixed after a while. So i really hope this might also be the case with CS4.

So here are my System Specs again:

Intel Dualcore E8600
NVIDIA Geforce 9800 GX2 (Driver: 180.48)
MSI P35 Neo-2 Motherboard (Bios: 1.90)
3 GB RAM
Wacom Intuos 3 A4 (Driver: pro610-5)
Windows XP (Service Pack 3)

The System is brandnew, the Windows-Installation is fresh, before the CS4 Suite there has not been another Adobe-Programm on the machine.

While I am quiet happy with the other programs (Illustrator, Flash, After Effects..eben Bridge is starting to become useful), Photoshop CS4 shows several glitches and problems on my system. These are:

– If activated, the GPU-OpenGL setting deactivates randomly. There’s no obvious reason for this, just in the middle of work, the rotate canvas-tool is no longer available, zooming is no longer smooth. While the box in the preferences is still checked for OpenGL and my graphics-card is recognized correctly, OpenGL features just stop working. After I close and restart Photoshop everything is normal again, until the next time settings are deactivated.

I am so far not able to trace the reason for this behaviour, seems to happen quiet random.

– No "marching ants". In the same matter, the "marching ants" of selections sometimes disappear. While this is not a big problem I think i should note it here for reasons of being accurate.

– Brushtool stops working. I have this quiet a lot. While I paint, the Brush suddenly stops working completely. It produces neither strokes nor blotches anymore. In some cases hefty drawing can result in some strange straight lines but the brushtool can only be revived by restarting Photoshop.

– Crashes. I truly honestly haven’t had a crash with CS2 and CS3 ONCE. With CS4 crashes seem to be quiet normal at this point. The application simply freezes, mostly while using the transformationtool. Killing it via the windows taskmanager is the only option.

– Slow redraw. All the above mentioned problems did occur with OpenGL enabled AND disabled. It really makes no difference. So deactivating this new thing doesn’t convert Photoshop back into something useful, but into a slower version of CS3. Redraw of images is considerably slower on CS4 without OpenGL, than it was on CS3, although it gets better after some time working with it. Moving a maximized Image around feels very strange, because the buildup of the tiles is somehow slow and sluggish.

While these are the really bad things about the new version (on my system that is, I heard from Mac-Users who are quiet happy with PS CS4 and keep telling me how fast it is on a Mac…..) there are other things, that i don’t understand. I recon, photoshop cs4 is first of all a mac-product and the PC-Version is somehow adapted or converted.

Proof of this for me is the new window behaviour. Windows steeling focus and blocking sight on palettes is new for a long time PC-User like me. I also don’t understand, why maximizing an image does fill the complete screen thus exterminating any palettes and menus is of any use? In former versions, the window was maximized INSIDE the application. But so be it, i could live with that if the other things were functional.

Today the annoyances were so great, that i consider reverting back to Photoshop CS3.

My question is: Is there a way to safely install Photoshoo CS3 parallel to my CS4 Suite? Or do I have to deinstall anything first? How will the additional installation of CS3 affect File-assosiations?

I really would like to like Photo