CS4 performance issues

MK
Posted By
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 10, 2009
Views
2847
Replies
75
Status
Closed
XP, 4GB RAM with 3BG switch, nVidia 9600GT 512 vRAM.

CS4 keeps sucking up RAM (sometimes to 2GB), shows bad lag time, the OpenGL crashes, and my workflow comes to a stand still.

I just put that video card in as an upgrade from a 7300 LE, as the 9600GT was on the list of Adobe tested cards.

What’s going on here?

MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥

– in 4 materials (clay versions included)

– 12 scenes

– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups

– 6000 x 4500 px

DM
dave_milbut
Feb 10, 2009
lots of threads on this. please read and follow fixes. then if still persisting, ask away.
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 10, 2009
I did read and try all of the fixes, with no luck, hence the post.
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 10, 2009
if you read them all and tried all the fixes, then you’ve pretty much covered the bases. you could maybe TELL us what you’ve tried so we don’t have to go over every solution again and have you answer "nope. tried that. nope. tried that."

help us help you.

here i’ll throw you a softball… 🙂

did you update the video drivers on your new card? what version of the drivers are you running?
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 10, 2009
This past weekend, after thinking that there might be a virus causing some of the issues, I reformatted the entire system, downloaded all of the latest drivers for "all" of the components that I could find. That didn’t fix the OGL crashes. I then thought that it was the old video card (7300LE [still, with the latest drivers]) so I put in a 9600GT (was going to do it anyway… the 7300LE sucked), and updated to the latest drivers for that (v181.22). Still had the crashes, and memory usage issue. I rolled back to CS3 yesterday (still kept LR 2.2) so I could get some work done. I’m currently trying a reinstall of CS4 one more time, with the nVidia setting to compatibility mode to see if that might be something that I had overlooked (though, I’m almost positive I had tried this, but with the old card)

Batter up.
BL
Bob Levine
Feb 10, 2009
Shot in the dark…kill the 3gig switch.

Bob
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 10, 2009
couldn’t hurt… I’ll try it.
CF
chris_farrell
Feb 10, 2009
Are you loading image files while it’s eating ram….Photoshop never releases the images after they have been closed….This can be a problem when using large or many small files…..

I guess it didn’t matter in the olden days when image sizes were relatively small / less RAM intensive.
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 10, 2009
No. When it happens, I’ll have a fresh image that I’ve been working on, and it’ll just steadily increase until it crashes. Rarely will the psd files go over 300mb, so they’re not that huge…
CF
chris_farrell
Feb 10, 2009
That IS odd…..I’d contact Adobe and place a bug report as they may have some clues and/or might be able to fix it in the next update.
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 17, 2009
So, has anyone come up with a fix yet??
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 17, 2009
Without knowing more about why/when you’re crashing, nope. And what do you mean by "OpenGL crashes"?

As for the RAM usage – that’s normal. Photoshop allocates and reuses RAM up to the limit you set in preferences. But that isn’t a leak, and won’t cause a crash.
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 17, 2009
As in the Enable GPU will suddenly stop working and I’ll have to restart PS, the brushes will lag considerably, basically everything that people are complaining about in the CS4 is a disaster thread. I haven’t seen any fix that works, nor have I heard anything concrete about Adobe working on the situation.

It now takes me double the time to do my work in CS4 as it did in CS3. That is not acceptable.
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 17, 2009
Ok, that’s not a crash. That’s a case of "your driver returned an error when it shouldn’t have and Photoshop had to disable the GPU support". That means: that your driver has bugs, or something is conflicting and causing the driver to return errors. That can only be fixed in the video card driver.

Brush lag and other problems: may be Photoshop bugs, or may be driver issues. Hard to tell since you lump all problems together.
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 17, 2009
I installed a nVidia 9600 GT, as it was listed as one of the cards tested by Adobe for use with CS4. It has the latest and most up to date drivers. The problems still exist.
MP
Mark_Phell
Feb 17, 2009
That means: that your driver has bugs, or something is conflicting and causing the driver to return errors. That can only be fixed in the video card driver.

Chris, if I can offer a suggestion: when you say "that’s a driver bug", it sounds to users like you’re saying "not our problem", which more or less translates to "screwed". It leaves users at a dead end.

Even if there’s nothing we can do about it right now, it’d be a lot less frustrating to know what’s happening. Is Adobe working with nVidia to fix driver bugs?
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 17, 2009
According to this tech note, < http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb 405445#h3> my card should work fine…
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 17, 2009
Mark – users aren’t at a dead end, they can and should contact their video card manufacturer. It’s just that Adobe and the readers here can’t do anything directly about the driver bugs. The video card maker can do something about them, but won’t know that there is a problem unless the user contacts them and provides enough information to track down the bug(s). Sometimes the cause is a very specific configuration (eg: XP 32 SP2 on an AMD Opteron mask version 6, with a BIOS version 20060512.653 while using a second display and showing a cursor over 64 pixels tall) — and the driver authors need to know that.

I’ve already stated several times that Adobe is working with NVidia and ATI on the bugs that we have been able to reproduce. But we can’t reproduce every single possible configuration. The video card makers need to hear about these bugs, and get more details – possibly following up directly with the user to get enough details.

Yes, I’m frustrated as heck with the driver bugs. If I could fix them, I would. But I can’t. All I can do is try to get the users to contact the video card makers.
ND
Nick_Decker
Feb 18, 2009
Sometimes the cause is a very specific configuration (eg: XP 32 SP2 on an AMD Opteron mask version 6, with a BIOS version 20060512.653 while using a second display and showing a cursor over 64 pixels tall

Chris, where do I find all of that "mask version, etc." stuff on my system?
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 18, 2009
NIck – you usually don’t find stuff that detailed very easily. Some BIOS configuration pages will show it. Photoshop System Info tries to dump as much as we can safely discover.
But which details matter will only be known to the engineers working on the device drivers – that’s why they need to be asking for more information, and why they need direct contact with customers having problems.
MP
Mark_Phell
Feb 18, 2009
nVidia doesn’t even offer direct user support; all *they* do is punt to the manufacturer, many of whom you’ll be lucky to get a response from in readable English. It’s hard to get support from nVidia even as a small developer, much less as a user.

If you know a way to get their attention, it’d be a very helpful thing to include when you’re telling people to talk to them.
S
stevent
Feb 18, 2009
If it’s the graphics drivers fault wouldn’t disabling OGL fix the redraw/lag problems etc, or are there other performance issues if OGL isn’t enabled?

Not that it did for me, had CS4 run slowly with a few files open with OGL (fixed the other bug though) and when I disabled it, it was bad but different.

Unfortunately I can’t experiment anymore as trial was up.

Back to CS3 and getting some work done! Think I’ll go back to my old buying habits and skip every odd version. See if the graphics acceleration and performance of PS isn’t quite at the mercy of a 3rd party company.

Maybe I’ll reformat and try again when the update cames out.
BC
Bart_Cross
Feb 18, 2009
Well you can’t blame nVidia for the poor implementation of their chips. I use a BFG 8600GT OC (OC indicating their use of DDR3 RAM) without any PSCS4 issues.
F
Freeagent
Feb 18, 2009
OC indicating their use of DDR3 RAM

I thought OC meant overclock, that always appeals to gamers…?
BC
Bart_Cross
Feb 18, 2009
OC is for overclock, but for this company it indicates the use of DDR3 RAM on the card vs. non OC marked cards that use DDR2.
F
Freeagent
Feb 18, 2009
OK
SK
Stefan_Klein
Feb 18, 2009
Chris,
I heard you say several times "contact your card manufacturer". The problem is that it`s nearly impossible to get in contact to nvidia.
I could not find any contact or email info on the nvidia website. If Adobe and nvidia are interested in improving Photoshop CS4 support why don`t you add a thread or anything similar to the top of the forum page so that users are actually able to report their problems to nvidia? We need an email adress or a contact form otherwise we can`t report anything to nvidia!
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 18, 2009
how about:

NVIDIA Windows Vista Graphics Driver Bug Report

< https://surveys.nvidia.com/index.jsp?pi=7498eac864dc1950c8f0 9e040b4a437a>
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 18, 2009
found through the support menu which leads to the QA section: <http://www.nvidia.com/object/vistaqualityassurance.html>
LH
Les_Helgeson
Feb 19, 2009
Chris, if video card drivers are at least partially at fault how did the cards (and consequentially their drivers) get on the so-called "approved" list? I’m hard pressed to believe they were all tested (with the same drivers we all have access to) given the number of complaints posted on the forums.

Which cards (and driver versions) were actually beta tested by Adobe and found to perform well with CS4?
JJ
John Joslin
Feb 19, 2009
Les have you not been following all the discussions?

The card/driver combination is one of about 10 factors that can affect some of these problems. Other factors include manufacturer, BIOS settings, system settings, running services, image size and resolution, monitor type and resolution, … need I go on?

Several people have reported malfunctions with the cards listed as good by Adobe and others have had problems with the same card and drivers that have worked perfectly for other users.

So your question, or rather the answer to it, is irrelevant!
LH
Les_Helgeson
Feb 19, 2009
Joslin, I’ve read the forums and find your response(s) to be quite arrogant and unhelpful. My post was addressed to folks who have first hand knowledge of the matter.

The question still remains: what specific hardware, especially video cards, did Adobe actually use to beta test CS4? It is relavent to me so I’d appreciate hearing from someone who knows.
BL
Bob Levine
Feb 19, 2009
How was it unhelpful…if you’d bother to read everything here you’d see that people with same combinations of hardware are seeing different results. Even if you had a full list of the myriad combinations of test machines it wouldn’t tell you if it would work for you.

Bob
HB
harold_berm
Feb 19, 2009
I think it would be very helpful.

If folks had a list of very specific hardware and software they could rule out quite a lot of variables…absent a faulty drive or memory module, but that would be easy enough to test. I’m sure some could and would be willing to replicate the exact OS/apps/hardware/driver combo.

I’ve been relatively lucky so far but I don’t usually do heavy processing. It is puzzling to me that people are often advised to update their video drivers…as PS was released months ago.

Which drivers, exactly, were the lab people using – two or three releases back that were working?
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 19, 2009
Les – there is no way we are going to post the thousands of configurations we tested. And unfortunatley, we don’t even know all the parameters that might be affecting the drivers — so even if we think we have the same configuration, we might not really (this already happened during beta — firmware versions, processor versions, etc. tripped up the drivers).

The answers you got were reasonable.
Even if we could publish the complete list of what we tested – it wouldn’t do any good (in light of the many configuration details involved).
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 19, 2009
Harold – Adobe tested with the latest drivers at the time we were testing. We found bugs in the drivers, and the GPU makers promised to fix those bugs. Some were fixed before we shipped, but not all. But they are still working on some of them (and finding more) because different configuration issues were missed (multiple monitors, CPU and firmware dependencies, external utilities interferring, etc.) in their fixes or their testing. Even Adobe couldn’t test all the factors involved because Adobe has no visibility into the drivers to know what factors MIGHT be involved. Adobe tried to get as broad a coverage as possible, but, well, we couldn’t cover it all.

People are advised to update their drivers because many still have not done that, and because the drivers are still being updated to fix many of the bugs reported here.

People are advised to contact the video card makers because some of the bugs are still not fixed, and only the authors of the driver software know what details might be important (or missing) to figure out the cause and fix the bugs in the driver software. Adobe could report the problem to the GPU makers — but we can’t even reproduce some of these problems because we don’t know all the factors involved (and thus we’d never be able to help isolate the problem, or tell if it was fixed). It is far more useful for the device driver authors to contact the customer directly and find out the exact configuration causing the problem.
HB
harold_berm
Feb 19, 2009
That might have been good info for people to know right upfront, before they made the commitment.

Just sayin’ is all…I’ve been relatively lucky.

Meanwhile poor folks are swapping out video cards, considering new systems, reformatting. Obviously there has to be a better way.
ND
Nick_Decker
Feb 19, 2009
It is far more useful for the device driver authors to contact the customer directly and find out the exact configuration causing the problem.

Let’s see a show of hands of those among us who have been contacted directly by the device driver authors.
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 19, 2009
Um, Nick – they (ATI, NVidia and Intel at least) do have people reading the forums here. And if you contact them, they can contact you more easily.
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 19, 2009
So then what about users like me, that have swapped out their cards to ones that have been "tested" by adobe, and still the problems exist?

The common factor in all of these cases, is Adobe.

I switched from a nVidia 7300 LE (that was on it’s way out anyhow) to a 9600 GT, based on the list provided by Adobe as cards tested with CS4, thinking that there should be no problems… I guess I was wrong in that thought.
AR
Anthony.Ralph
Feb 19, 2009
Michael: Surely Chris Cox just answered your question not three or four posts previously?

Anthony,
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 19, 2009
What I’ve seen so far, is a lot of blame being tossed around.

I’m still waiting for a fix.
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 19, 2009
In the mean time, I do have another system on the way. I sure hope CS4 works on that one.
JJ
John Joslin
Feb 19, 2009
"Blame" is irrelevant in this situation.

Basically the introduction of some brilliant features using the capabilities of the GPU stirred up a can of worms which all the alpha, beta, and pre-release testing did not get to the bottom of.

When Photoshop CS4 was unleashed on the total user base, a whole raft of unforeseen interactions occurred which nobody could have predicted.

Everybody is doing their darnedest to analyse the symptoms which are cropping up for a proportion of users, so let them get on with it.

I wish I could contribute, but unfortunately CS4 worked right out of the box for me so all I can do is commiserate.
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 19, 2009
but unfortunately CS4 worked right out of the box for me

said the man with the 2000 dollar video card! 😛
LH
Les_Helgeson
Feb 20, 2009
Chris, it would be helpful if Adobe would provide just six machines (with specs) that you have direct experience with. Apparently you have "thousands of combinations" to choose from so how about just six! Or is the $2000 video card the dirty little secret to all this mess?

How in the hell is anyone supposed to buy a reasonable upgrade unless we hear from Adobe? I’m not about to fork out 2K (just for the card!) based upon what some stranger has to say on ANY forum! Lots of "fixes" have been offered on the "Disaster" thread and lots of money has been flushed away as a result.

How about some help? Just a handful would do!
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 20, 2009
Les – read the supported cards. That’s what you need to know. That’s about all we can say.

There is no need for expensive cards, just drivers that @#%@#$% work like they’re supposed to.
LH
Les_Helgeson
Feb 20, 2009
ElliR, thanks for the helpful post. I had read this when I first installed CS4 but alas this is apparently only a part of the story.

It would be helpful to be able to pinpoint the other hardware parameters (and driver versions) that were used when my card (for example) was allegedly tested. Base upon chronic evasive answers, I am now wondering if Adobe didn’t simply list cards that supported certain Open GL features without actually testing all of them. Perhaps I am wrong but the result is the same.

At a minimum, why can’t Adobe list the major mobo/chipset and processor parameters for each card listed on the "approved" page? Surely this information exists. I am now using a video card driver which is obviously newer (10/08) than what Adobe allegedly used but problems are still present. Now Chris Cox claims some drivers had bugs and others were fixed. So how come all of these cards are apparently on the approved list?

Admittedly, the issues I’m experiencing are not to the degree that many have reported but I do find myself using CS2 more often than not as a result of performance issues and a bug the engineers are apparently working on.

CS4 is otherwise a great product and the new features are certainly welcome. I also appreciate the helpful interaction from some Adobe engineers via email. But it appears there are some problems that should have been addressed prior to release. For now Adobe could certainly provide some additional information pertaining to the more common hardware parameters that would be invaluable.

I’d be happy if I could simply get CS4 to run without Open GL. But alas, I then experience slow and herky-jerky screen redraws along with a general slowdown in performance as opposed to an annoying cursor drag when using curves that worsens with time and/or increase in viewing percentage. So, it’s a matter of trading one problem for another.

Hopefully, a fix will be forthcoming and/or some reasonably complete hardware recommendations from Adobe.
PS
Paulo_Skylar
Feb 20, 2009
M K,
Just to reinforce one point made by others, it is not simply a matter of picking a golden video card. I am using the 9600GT (512MB)card, and not with the latest driver, and have none of the problems you cite. The rest of my system parameters, which I’ve mentioned in the disaster thread, are different from yours and they matter – unfortunately in unknown ways at the moment. It is not a good state of affairs, but it appears no one can publish of set of HW & SW specs complete enough that those specs will guarantee normal PC-CS4 performance.

Paulo
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 20, 2009
Here’s the problem that I see… are the thousands of different configurations supposed to adapt to Adobe, or should Adobe adapt to the thousands of configurations?

As far as I’m concerned, at the time I decided to install the program, the only requirements were XP, RAM, and a compliant video card. That’s what I had, so why didn’t it work?

I don’t really care what others have for their configurations, nor should I have to. This program was supposed to work on my computer, and it did not. That’s the simple part about it.
PS
Paulo_Skylar
Feb 20, 2009
You are absolutely right! If you met the system requirements "on the box", it should work — AND it does not for many users. CS4 is broke in that regard and many people on this forum contribute their experience and system specs hoping to help Adobe and third parties fix it.
JJ
John Joslin
Feb 20, 2009
Just for information the card in my workstation did not cost anything like $2000. It is a standard card as offered by Dell on their configuration page when I bought the computer.

Regarding the general question as to what will work, I hope that it is becoming clear that even if Adobe did produce the list that some people are "demanding", it would not be a recipe for happy users.

Since the supplied software is not performing as advertised on computers that fulfil the system requirements on the box, Adobe should (already has in some cases) refund the purchase price. In the light of the current well-discussed shortcomings, the 30-day money back clause should not apply.

By the way I am just a satisfied user, not an Adobe plant!
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 20, 2009
Just for information the card in my workstation did not cost anything like $2000.

which card was it again? 🙂
JJ
John Joslin
Feb 20, 2009
I’ve posted my specs a few times already. B)
BC
Bart_Cross
Feb 20, 2009
CS4 worked ‘out of the box’ for me, my card, a BFG 8600GT, is not on the list of cards. My setup:

Asus P5K Black Pearl motherboard
OCZ GameStream 750 Watt power supply
Intel Q6600 (OC 3Ghz)
8Gb Mushkin RAM (low-latency overpriced crap)
BFG 8600GT (512Mb DDR3 RAM, driver 10/7/2008 v7.15.11.7824 WHQL) 2 Dell UltraSharp wide panels (22", 20")
Wacom Intuos3 6×11 tablet
MS Wireless keyboard
Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit (full install)
Office 2008 (full install, Outlook running constantly)
Adobe Master Collection (full install)
Corel X3 (full install)
Quark 6.5 (full install)
Painter X (full install)
2600+ active fonts
5 Hard drives
2 LG DVD drives

Hope the list helps.
LH
Les_Helgeson
Feb 20, 2009
read the supported cards. That’s what you need to know.

Apparently not all the cards are in fact supported. In fact, many of the cards listed use the same driver(s) which are often released for a multiple series of cards.

Adobe tested with the latest drivers at the time we were testing. We found bugs in the drivers, and the GPU makers promised to fix those bugs. Some were fixed before we shipped, but not all.

OK. So does this imply that the list of supported cards is suspect? How about putting an asterik on those cards whose drivers "were supposed to be fixed". As it stands, the list of supported cards appears to be outright fraudulent if the statements concerning buggy drivers above are correct.

Promises, promises!
F
Freeagent
Feb 20, 2009
This is going nowhere.

There are bugs in the drivers that show up in some hardware and software configurations, but not (most) others.

Put your non-working card and driver into another computer, and it may work just fine. And vice versa: a perfectly fine card on one system may crash everything on another.
LH
Les_Helgeson
Feb 21, 2009
Thanks for the input, FA. Been there and done it, though (I own four differently configured PC’s at the present time). Have you in fact put a "non-working card in another computer…" or vice versa as you suggest?

At least two engineers have now stated that Adobe is working on an update release yet one still complains adamantly about video card drivers. Hopefully, Adobe will (at a minimum) incorporate an option to simply bypass the Open GL option(s) without resultant slow and herky-jerky screen re-draw issues. For me anyway, disabling OGL solves all other lag and performance issues.

The new "non-OGL" features are otherwise well worth the upgrade price if CS4 would have the re-draw performance of CS2 as opposed to a serious degradation of performance in this regard.
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 21, 2009
Adobe is fixing Adobe’s bugs.
Adobe can’t fix bugs in the drivers.

Drivers are going to continue to be a problem no matter how much code Adobe changes.
F
Freeagent
Feb 21, 2009
I own four differently configured PC’s

They must have something in common. Very likely you have some of the same software installed on all.
JJ
John Joslin
Feb 21, 2009
No reflection on anyone in particular but it makes my hair stand on end when I see what some people have running on their computers and still expect Photoshop to work.
BC
Bart_Cross
Feb 21, 2009
If you need to know everything that is on your system HW/SW etc, you can download and install Belarc PC Audit software. There is a basic one that is free and very good.
LH
Les_Helgeson
Feb 21, 2009
They must have something in common. Very likely you have some of the same software installed on all.

The only thing these machines have in common is that they are all Intel based – chipsets and processors. One machine is a recent model Dell laptop. In addition, video cards are all NVidia based but all four are different models. MB’s, HD’s, memory, etc. are all from different manufacturers and are different models.

Software versions include XP Pro, XP Home and two versions of XP Media Center Edition. I’m also an absolute minimalist when it comes to programs installed – after all I have they luxury of spreading things out on four machines 🙂

I also religiously minimize start up programs and extraneous processes given past experience using Windows 95 and Windows 98, especially. Also, I do a complete reinstall periodically. All versions of XP have been pretty stable, though.

NVida drivers for my card(s) were released on 10/08 so I suspect they have lived up to their end of the bargain based upon my relatively "mild" (but now extremely annoying) problems with CS4.
F
Freeagent
Feb 21, 2009
Les,

What – no "yeah, Photoshop CS4 is common" -? I had so looked forward to catch that one… 😉

You seem to be running a tight ship. Actually, I’m surprised you have problems – junkware and all sorts of startup gadgets has been a pet theory of mine.

Maybe you’ll be covered by the upcoming dot release.
LH
Les_Helgeson
Feb 21, 2009
Yeah, junkware and gadgets can certainly mess things up big time. I am sure they are a complicating ("exacerbatory" :))factor for many folks.

I’ve got my fingers crossed for the dot release. As stated previously, I’d be willing to sacrifice the OGL features altogether if the redraw problem (and an info. palette bug addressed elsewhere) could be fixed.

Cheers!
ND
Nick_Decker
Feb 21, 2009
I’d be willing to sacrifice the OGL features altogether…

Not me. The OGL features are a major part of why I upgraded.
MP
Mark_Phell
Feb 22, 2009
Yeah, junkware and gadgets can certainly mess things up big time. I am sure they are a complicating ("exacerbatory" )factor for many folks.

This is true, but not new to CS4. In my experience, bloatware tends to break OpenGL less than other things. If anyone has a specific example of this type of app that breaks 3D APIs for other applications, I’d be interested in it–as a testing point, to figure out how it’s interfering, and to see if I can detect its interference from another application.

Not me. The OGL features are a major part of why I upgraded.

Yeah. Most of the major new features require it. There are some nice tweaks that don’t (tool quick switching, the adjustments panel, quick curves adjustments), but much of the meat of CS4 is tied to GPU acceleration.
WE
Wolf_Eilers
Feb 23, 2009
… but much of the meat of CS4 is tied to GPU acceleration.

The real meat of CS4 do not require the GPU at all: adjustments and masks panels, Camera Raw 5, extended depth of field, auto-alignment and auto-blending of layers, better integration with Lightroom, and content-aware scaling.

The Extended version of Ps has more extensive use of the GPU as do some new features of Bridge.

<http://www.adobe.com/go/kb405745>
F
Freeagent
Feb 23, 2009
One OGL feature quickly became indispensable for me – rotate canvas.

Working with less than perfect LCD’s, the narrow viewing angle with resulting uneven lighting from top to bottom is a dangerous trap.

A quick flip of the canvas lets me check.
RK
Rob_Keijzer
Feb 23, 2009
Working with less than perfect LCD’s, the narrow viewing angle with resulting uneven lighting from top to bottom is a dangerous trap.

A quick flip of the canvas lets me check.

Check what?. Rotating the canvas doesn’t rotate the screen, nor it’s narrow viewing angle.

Rob
F
Freeagent
Feb 23, 2009
Not quite Rob, I flip it on its side. Any top-to-bottom gradient will then be left-to-right and easy to spot.
RK
Rob_Keijzer
Feb 23, 2009
FA,

Ah! Now I see.

I shoot a lot of flat artwork

Try some of the curvy subjects! 🙂

<Sybil> Basil!!! </Sybil>
F
Freeagent
Feb 23, 2009
XD
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 23, 2009
<99>Oh, Max.</99>
MK
Michael Kalcevic
Feb 27, 2009
I just want to update here. I got a new system, and CS4 appears to be working fine. I tiny bit of brush lag, but not anything like what I was experiencing before. I guess this is one of the "magic" configurations…

Here’s a copy and paste from the system information if it’ll help:

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name DESKTOP
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model Vostro 420 Series
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2327 Mhz BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. 1.0.3, 10/24/2008
SMBIOS Version 2.5
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.5574 (xpsp_sp3_gdr.080402-1256)" User Name DESKTOP\Michael Kalcevic
Time Zone Eastern Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 4,096.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 1.56 GB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 4.84 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

The video card is a nVidia 9600 GT with 512MB of vRAM.

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