IMac runs slowly in Photoshop

Question

Hi all,
I have a fairly new iMac (mid-2008 20" model) with a 2.4ghz Intel processor. I am a web designer and use this machine every day for my work. Several months after installing Adobe Creative Suite 3, I noticed that Photoshop was causing the cursor to jump and/or become jerky, as if the video card or processor were not keeping up with what's going on. This tends to happen after the computer's been in use for several hours or days after a restart, and it gets so bad I can't work. I have been following this in Leopard's Activity Monitor, and I noticed that Photoshop (being memory- and processor- hungry) taxes the processor more heavily than many other programs, which I expected. The strange thing, though, is that over time the Activity Monitor shows the "System" as taking up more and more processor capacity. I.E. when I first start up, the system is using 0-20% of the processor, the rest being available for the user; but after awhile, the system is requiring 50-90% of processor capacity, the result being that as soon as I switch into Photoshop from another program, the system is immediately overtaxed and starts moving very slowly (especially the cursor, as I said).
Now, here's the really strange part. As I said, this began happening a few months after I first installed Adobe CS3. I re-installed the software at Adobe's recommendation, and it was fine for another few months, but it began happening a few days ago, which is exactly the same time I shared a jump drive with a friend's worm-infected Windows XP machine. I know Macs don't get Windows worms, but is it possible that this thing has lodged itself on my system somehow and is causing it to run generally more slowly?
I appreciate any help you can give,
Nathan

Answer 1

> That is a flat out lie, Phil Shock.
Right ... I'm actually
i lying
about your Leopard experience because that would benefit me in so many ways ... 8/
Whatever, Castaneda. You've never mentioned using it that I recall and I'm fairly certain you haven't bought it - you're obviously not running it on your ancient G4. Maybe cursory glances with your wife's Macbook? (which you also hate as I recall) .... feel free to enlighten me about your vast Leopard experience. What
b specifically
don't you like about it?
> Leopard is arguably and easily the worst OS ever released by Apple.
No. It's not.
Buko-
> ...the lack of stability is with InDesign is stopping me plus the fact that Epson is not updating the 2200 drivers.
I can't speak for stability with InDesign because I don't use it much but everything else I use is (and has been) rock solid. And the NON-updated Epson 2200 driver works just fine with Leopard - as well as it did in 10.4 anyway.
I totally agree that there's no
i highly compelling
reason to upgrade to Leopard, but the little things do add up. I love the ability to view content in the Finder - movies, images, PDFs, etc., without the need to open an app. Spotlight works fantastically - huge improvement over the version in 10.4. Networking has been much improved, Mail is much better, and on and on .... as I said, there's no killer feature but the combined overall improvements make the upgrade worthwhile.
FWIW - I use both 10.4 and 10.5 on a daily basis - 10.4 on a G5 Quad at work, and 10.5 on my Mac Pro at home. I prefer 10.5.
Ann-
> Just a sample of Leopard's history if you haven't been following it:
C'mon, that proves nothing. You could find similar threads about every OS released in addition to every version of Photoshop released. There will always be problems that may or may not be related to the software - and people will post about them.
The only real issue I recall with PSCS3/10.5 was the text input glitch that was rectified with 10.5.2. I've been using 10.5 full-time since then and haven't suffered
b ANY
of the "trauma" you mentioned.
> ... so Apple is apparently abandoning it and bringing us a whitewashed version which is to be called Snow Leopard.
If only other developers would follow suit. Imagine if Adobe would concentrate on actual performance improvements, rather than worthless bells and whistles (adjustment layer panel, anyone?), that cater to the newbie because the bean counters know new features and dumbing down the app will move more product. There are improvements in CS4 that make it worthwhile of course, but it's obvious that some stuff is only there for a perceived sales increase.
Only Apple has the guts to pull this off and I say good for them.
-phil