Photoshop CS4 Experience, Problems & Questions

Question

Hi all,
i just installed my Production Suite Premium on the following System (fresh install, clean System, no other versions of Photoshop):
Intel E8500 Dualcore
Nvidia Geforce 9800 GX2 (Driver Version 178.24)
3 GB RAM
Windows XP Professionel SP3
Photoshop has its own Scratchdisk assigned with at least 50 GB free Space.
I know that the 9800 GX2 is considered to be a "Gaming-Card" but as a freelance artist i work for the game-industry on many occasions and I need a decent gaming hardware to test what I am working on. As far as I know, the card meets all requirements for CS4 and Nvidia tells me, that their GPU's are perfect for CS4. (wasn't a problem with any version before, I use Photoshop AND Nvidia-Cards since Photoshop 4)
Here are the things that bug me:
- Photoshop disables the OpenGL Features on random occasions, stating, that it has encountered a problem. This happens either in Two GPU-Mode or One-GPU-Mode.
There's no obvious reason for any errormessage, because IF Open GL is activated it seems to work pretty good, zooming and rotating works quite well and fast. I noticed, that the problem happens either after saving my file or when i open photoshop.
- Photoshop crashed on several occasions mostly concerning heavy transforming of multiple layers. It simply didn't respond anymore in the midst of the transormation-process.
My guess is, that this is also linked to the GPU/Driver. System-Memory is checked, GPU works like a charm in all other applications. CS3 has not once crashed in one year, so i guess it has to do with the changes made in CS4.
Strange thing is, that even with open GL deactivated, the above written problems occur. I would have thought, that with OpenGL dectivated, Photoshop would somehow become kind of CS3 again, but it seems, there had been to much changes to simply disconnect photoshop from it's new OpenGL interface.
Apart from these two Problems, Photoshop CS4 is doing ok. It feels kind of sluggish compared to older versions, but that might also change with some new drivers.
Sad thing is, that the rotate canvas feature and the extended moverange for images, the main reasons why i upgraded to CS4, are only working with
OpenGL activated. I really hope there will be a fix in the near future.
There are other questions concerning PS CS4's usability:
- The Scale-Brush Feature uses alt + right mouse buttons, what seems kind of strange when using a stylus (Even more when using a stylus without buttons like the wacom layout-marker).
I would prefer another combination of keyboard shortcuts plus stylus movement ctrl + alt for example. so far i have not found a way to remap the keys. Am i missing something? Or is this impossible?
- Is there a way to get window behavior back the way it was in CS3? The new way of handling windows is ok, but i liked the old one better. If i disable "floating windows docking" there's no way to maximize a window INSIDE the photoshop workspace. The maximize button on top of every window is right now completely useless because it maximizes the window AND gets rid of all the menus and palettes. I don't see why i want to do that.
That's it. I hope this is useful either for the guys at adobe or for other users. Every new Photoshop-Version has had its problems, i hope that these will just be dealt with like the ones before.
All the best,
Pickman

Answer 1

Photoshop CS4 does cause crashes. I can vouch for that too. When it happens, the first instinct is almost always to assume that something is wrong with the computer and start from there. Comments to this effect are prominent in many threads. It is also Adobe's prevalent approach. So people experiencing these problems will tend not to post on these forums. Statements like 'because there are only a few posts, a significant number of people are not experiencing [these] problems' are therefore unfounded. There simply has not been time yet for people to resolve potential hardware/system problems.
In my case, I started experiencing unexplained crashed with CS3 in July (see below) but it was only when Adobe admitted that they could be partly to blame that I posted my experiences (elsewhere) on this forum.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have installed Photoshop CS4 on a newly reformatted HDD containing a fresh clean installation of Windows XP/SP3, fully patched, with everything working hunky dory, and no legacy installations of Photoshop or other CS software to worry about. All the same PS CS4 keeps crashing. The symptoms are unexplained total freeze ups occurring at random. I may get several hours use, sometimes a lot less, before I am forced to reboot and start all over again. Certainly the ability to do any useful work is severely compromised, and yes, the first inclination is to blame the hardware or system installation.
The thing is I had been chasing a similar, probably related, problem with CS3 (possibly caused by cloning my system drive, see http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b6bd8d/ ) while Photoshop was still activated, so I have had several months head start over anyone who may now be experiencing similar problems with CS4. As a result, Dell, whose support has been great throughout, have replaced just about every component under the hood of my PC, certainly everything that could be causing a problem. (GPU, CPU, memory, MB, PSU, disk controller, disk cables...). As a result, I am running a virtually brand new computer. Hardware and system problems have been all but eliminated. I have all the latest drivers for everything. It is virtually a brand new computer!
Yet PS/CS4 keeps crashing for no reason that can be established. Adobe have given me lots of homework to do to try to find out what affects it or remedies there are. It is all very tedious, but so far, nothing...
I am coming to the conclusion that there must be something intrinsically wrong with PS/CS4 that makes it incompatible with some systems and software installations, but not necessarily because of any fault with the latter. I have to say that, after initially trying to push me away, Adobe are being very helpful and clearly want (need?) to get to the bottom of this. The trouble is that when the system locks up, it is completely and utterly paralysed, so any diagnostic and error reporting systems are inoperative. This suggests something beneath or beyond Windows, and, if it is not hardware, this points the finger of blame squarely at the activation software, which uses rootkit technology. (Would this be the same on a Mac, I wonder?)
For the record, my system is a Dell Precision 370 desktop with Dell/Phoenix BIOS A08, 3.2GHz Pentium 4 CPU, Intel 925X chipset, 2MB ECC SDRAM, Nvidia Quadro FX3450 graphics, 2x Seagate 146MB Cheetah 5.5k disks (SCSI) in non-RAID configuration. From the limited experience I have had, it seems perfectly capable of running the software (apart from when it crashes, of course.)