Photoshop CS quitting after 10.4.6 upgrade

Question

Since upgrading to 10.4.6 Photoshop CS quits every time I try to open it. It goes through the usual process of installing drivers/plug-ins etc and then quits when it gets to the 'Building TWAIN menu lists' stage. I have reinstalled the 10.4.6 upgrade using the Combo version on the Apple website and have repaired disk permissions.
Unlike other people who have reported problems with CS2 after 10.4.6 I am not on a network but am working locally with approx 20GB free space on my HD.
Have just removed and reinstalled Photoshop (and then repaired permissions again) and the problem is still happening.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Summary:
Group Logic has determined the cause of the Photoshop crash that occurs when saving file to an AFP server from a Mac OS X 10.4.6 client. Photoshop appears to be using an older Carbon call that creates and retrieves Mac OS 9 comments instead of the Mac OS X comments stored in the .DS_Store file. Mac OS X 10.4.6 changes how those older comments are handled which triggers a crash in Photoshop.
Details:
The following is a summary of the actions which cause Photoshop to crash:
Copy a Photoshop file with no comments to the server
Open it in Photoshop
Save it in Photoshop
Photoshop will request the OS 9 comments from the server
Server returns “no comments” because they don’t exist
Photoshop writes comments to the server, usually over 128 or 200 characters (depends on what file format is used)
Resave the file in Photoshop
Photoshop will request the OS 9 comments from the server
Mac OS X Server returns “no comments” whereas ExtremeZ-IP, SFM, Helios and Mac OS 9 return the actual comments
Save completes to the Mac OS X Server or crashes on all other AFP Servers.
The AFP 3.1 specification supports comments of up to 199 characters. In addition we found that AFP 2.2 in Mac OS 9 personal file sharing allows comments of up to 199 characters. However servers running Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 do not permit comments over 128 characters (this may be true in earlier versions of Mac OS X, but we did not test them).
These are the facts we were able to determine via packet traces and standard testing:
1. If a client wants tries to add an OS 9 comment that is greater than 128 characters to a file on a Mac OS X 10.4 AFP server, the server will return success but not modify the existing comment. The server simply ignores the request.
2. Photoshop will not crash if an AFP server returns OS 9 comments that are less than 128 characters
From this evidence we have come to the conclusion that Photoshop incorrectly assumes that OS 9 comments cannot be larger than 128 characters. Since the 10.4.6 upgrade it appears that the OS X client will correctly return to Photoshop the entire 199 characters of the Mac OS 9 comment. Since ExtremeZ-IP and most other AFP servers conform to the AFP spec they do send the full 199 characters allowed. Upon receiving the comment from the AFP server, the Mac OS X 10.4.6 AFP client will pass the comment to the Carbon File Manager, and it in turn to Photoshop which will then crash.
This is not seen when saving to the XServe, because it never creates comments if they exceed 128 characters. Therefore the change to the AFP client in Mac OS X 10.4.6 would not affect Photoshop when saving to an Xserve.
Fix:
Although ExtremeZ-IP is following the AFP 3 specification, Group Logic will release an ExtremeZ-IP hotfix next week that will workaround the issue. In order to have the least impact on any other applications, we will add an optional setting called PhotoshopCompatibleComments. When that setting is enabled, ExtremeZ-IP will truncate all Mac OS 9 comments to 128 characters. That will prevent the bug in Photoshop from being triggered until Apple or Adobe fix the issue.