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I know many of you have moved on already to Photoshop CS4; but I thought my situation might be helpful to some. : )
First of all, I never had lagging problems of any kind using Photoshop CS3. But I recently reformatted my computer, reinstalled PS CS3, and wow… the redraw and updating was awful! Brush strokes took several seconds to show, for example.
I looked into my preferences for the culprit. I changed the amount of RAM Photoshop should use, reordered my scratch disks. Changed the # of history states & cache levels, checked & unchecked enable 3D acceleration… Each time I changed one preference, I closed & reopened photoshop. No go, same lagging!
I kept asking myself what was different. Then I remembered: after reformatting my computer, I updated my ZoneAlarm from version 7 to version 8. I had never before used this updated version of ZA with CS3.
So in ZoneAlarm, I went to Program Control, Programs, and saw that whereas the "Trust Level", "Access", "Server", and "Send Mail" columns were all set to question marks for Photoshop 7 (meaning ZA asks me before allowing Photoshop 7 certain permissions), several of those same options were listed as "X’s" (completely blocked) when I reinstalled Photoshop CS3.
Btw, ZoneAlarm 8 never prompted me, as version 7 did, about certain permissions for CS3! And it didn’t occur to me to look into ZA’s settings when Photoshop was virtually unusable. My clue came from a CS4 troubleshooting tip here: temporarily disable one’s AV and see how PS behaves. The difference after disabling ZA was astounding!
All this to say, you may not have to replace your AV if you find it makes Photoshop lag. Photoshop CS3 worked smoothly after I changed my AV’s permissions.
So… perhaps for those of you who are having lags with CS4, you may be able to keep not only the baby but the bathwater as well. In my case, I only needed to change the bathwater! 😛
First of all, I never had lagging problems of any kind using Photoshop CS3. But I recently reformatted my computer, reinstalled PS CS3, and wow… the redraw and updating was awful! Brush strokes took several seconds to show, for example.
I looked into my preferences for the culprit. I changed the amount of RAM Photoshop should use, reordered my scratch disks. Changed the # of history states & cache levels, checked & unchecked enable 3D acceleration… Each time I changed one preference, I closed & reopened photoshop. No go, same lagging!
I kept asking myself what was different. Then I remembered: after reformatting my computer, I updated my ZoneAlarm from version 7 to version 8. I had never before used this updated version of ZA with CS3.
So in ZoneAlarm, I went to Program Control, Programs, and saw that whereas the "Trust Level", "Access", "Server", and "Send Mail" columns were all set to question marks for Photoshop 7 (meaning ZA asks me before allowing Photoshop 7 certain permissions), several of those same options were listed as "X’s" (completely blocked) when I reinstalled Photoshop CS3.
Btw, ZoneAlarm 8 never prompted me, as version 7 did, about certain permissions for CS3! And it didn’t occur to me to look into ZA’s settings when Photoshop was virtually unusable. My clue came from a CS4 troubleshooting tip here: temporarily disable one’s AV and see how PS behaves. The difference after disabling ZA was astounding!
All this to say, you may not have to replace your AV if you find it makes Photoshop lag. Photoshop CS3 worked smoothly after I changed my AV’s permissions.
So… perhaps for those of you who are having lags with CS4, you may be able to keep not only the baby but the bathwater as well. In my case, I only needed to change the bathwater! 😛
How to Improve Photoshop Performance
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