Photoshop CS4 impressions: many problems

[Oliver_H...@adobeforums.com]

I have been using CS4 for two days. It is slower than CS3, the interface is horrible and help does not work at all. I have posted elsewhere on the major bug that cursor outlines either vanish, go to a partial arc or freeze. This is really not good enough.

Help: the on-line help does not work. You get a generic page. If you try to download the PDF, it fails. The on-line help is useless. There is no help supplied withthe disk.

Image resize: if you want to resize and image you cannot do so in pixels. Why woudl anyone resize a screen image in - for example - points, which is one of the options on offer?

Brushs: Load gives a windows screen that is blank, withthe option to load .abx (I think)- files. None are shown, despite Win Explorer showing dozens of them.

The standard windows maximise - minimise-exit symbols are sometimes surrounded with windows colours and sometimes grey. Maximising an image window hide them and tabbing with F through the options never shows them.

Stacking when minimised does not allow the stack to be moved, but when you size to minimum it leaps unpredictably so you get a stack that just happens to be where it wants.

I find it extraordinary that actions such as dodging is noticably slower than in CS3, where it was essentially real time on any good processor. This has a 200-400mS lag. Menus take noticable time to disappear and dragging causes skewing and leaping in ways I haven't seem since Photoshop 8.

Frankly, I think I want my money back. Certainly, the company will not be buying this upgrade for our staff.

[Buko]

does your computer meet the minimum system requirements? for most of us using CS4 its much faster than CS3.

[Monty]

I have been using CS4 now for a couple of weeks with no problems at
all.It's as fast as CS3,if not faster, really pleased with the
upgrade.My system is nothing special. XP sp3, 3gb ram, Core 2 Quad 9650
Cpu and an Asus Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT 256 ram. Open GL works a
treat.Dodging is as good as CS3 or better.Unfortunately it sounds as
though it's a bit of a lottery when it comes to what system CS4 is
installed on, as to whether it works bug free.

Pete

[Michael...@adobeforums.com]

All I can say is you must have a sub-par system. I am experiencing not a
single problem you describe and Photoshop is actually faster for me than
CS3. My online help works, I was also able to download the PDF of the
manual. You can set pixels to change the image size. All my brushes show
up fine. Dodging is fine as are the menu items with no lag at all. Have you
installed the latest video drivers? What video card are you using?

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

I'm slowly becoming convinced that many of the problems people are seeing are really conflict issues, not problems with CS4 or graphic cards as such.

For instance, I once had an ATI card that tried to install 4 or 5 additional apps in addition to the driver and CCC control panel - unless I actively stopped it. These would remain after a driver uninstall.

Check add/remove programs. Check startup items in msconfig.

I'm still waiting for someone with problems to reformat and try on a fresh, minimal Windows install. I'm sure that would solve a lot of issues.

[Robert_...@adobeforums.com]

I disgree. I think video card drivers by and large are total sh!t and this
just proves it. Probably a good 85% of problems people are having with
display issues and such in CS4 is because of really bad drivers. Video card
drivers have been notorious problems for a very long time.

If anything Adobe's mistake was deciding to use GPU's in the first place.
They should have known that the state of video card drivers was this bad. It
isn't hard to look around online and see what a mess they are.

Personally what I would like to have seen is Adobe design and release their
own video card with drivers, designed for their products from the ground up.
If they could release a good quality card with dual monitor support (or quad
monitors if you install two cards in one machine) tuned with features that
CS4 was designed to us and keep the price to less than $200 they could sell
a ton of them.

Since I don't do games on my machine I would drop my two ATI Radeon 1650
cards for two Adobe cards in a heart beat. In fact that would happen so fast
the ATI cards would need neck braces from whiplash.

But, instead they decided to rely on the poor quality of the drivers out
there and now we are paying the price. Please keep in mind I am talking only
about drivers, video card from the hardware point has always been very good.
It is those damn drivers that are the killers.

Robert

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

Well, that too... B-)

But still...I'm waiting for that reformat. Not one that I've seen complaining on this forum has done that. At least not that I'm aware of.

[David...@adobeforums.com]

Regarding image resizing, with "Resample Image" selected, of course you can resize in pixels. If you deselect "resample image", it only makes sense that you CAN'T resize in pixels, because without resampling, the pixel dimensions will remain constant no matter what. All you're doing is resetting the pixels per unit, and you get a choice of units, including cm, inch and points. Makes perfect sense to me.

As for the Help issue, there are other threads on this forum about that. It's truly annoying that you need to go online to a slow-as-tar website to access Help. But there is a workaround:

Go to Window/Extensions/Connections. There you'll have the option to select the Offline option. Then Help will load from your local disk, not from the Adobe website. But then you won't be able to access online connections like Kuler (no big loss). I still hate that it comes up in a browser window, but at least there's no delay.

I have my own complaints about CS4 and sincerely think it was released prematurely to meet marketing deadlines. But the resize issue is a non-issue. And the help problem is partially fixable.

[Paul_...@adobeforums.com]

Freeagent.

I deleted partitions/ created new partitions/ reformated/ installed windows and drivers/ then installed CS4 ONLY. And still had the issues. And yes, I'm using an "approved card. By the way I did it a second time just to try Adam's workaround, which did nothing. Now it's off my system for good until there's a fix.

System:
GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS4 LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard
Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz
CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
Nvidia Quadro FX3700 512MB 256-bit GDDR3
CORSAIR CMPSU-620HX 620W
Two: Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10000 RPM Drives
One: Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM
NEC MultiSync LCD2490WUXi at 1920 x 1200
XP sp3 with all the latest drivers

[David_E_...@adobeforums.com]

I reformatted....... but I am not much of a complainer either

[Ge...@adobeforums.com]

I'm one of those who is out of luck because my latest drivers do not work with CS4. (Intel GMA X3100) At least an Intel tech stopped by the forums and gave us an update.

However,it's faster than CS3 on my laptop and a it's a keeper :)

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

And still had the issues

OK, that's one. Anyone else?

I reformatted....... but I am not much of a complainer either

Yes, and that's the point I was trying to make. At least, you gotta try.

[Oliver_H...@adobeforums.com]

First, thank you fro the help work-around. I took me a while to realise that the 'work offline' option was concealed under the little arrow tab top right.

I am, however, at a loss about you comments on image resize. I do not have 'Resample image' selected. However, selecting it or deselecting it, the menu of options remains the same: one can resize to percent, inches, cm or mm, points or picas. If I want an image that is exactly 100 pixels high, how am I supposed to attain this? Yes, I could crop it but that is imprecise and why should I have to do this? Who wants to resize an image in points or picas, anyway?

[Oliver_H...@adobeforums.com]

I suspect that peoples' interest in my progress may be limited, so I will be brief. As advised, I downloaded drivers for everything in sight - useful utility, Driver Detective <http://www.drivershq.com/> . That has indeed cured the 'incomplete brush' problem and speeded things up beyond measure. It has also changed the tendency of the menus to change to windows colours and back erratically, and the 'pulse-while-drag' situation.

Oddly, it has also cured the 'resize image' problem: that is, with or without resample image selected, it was impossible to change the pixel setting in Edit > resize image. It now is possible, for reasons I cannot begin fathom.

Thank you too for the 'Help' issue, which is solved offline.

For those with a technical interest, the video card is a Nvidia quadro NVS 285. The machine is a 4x win-xpv2-tel quadcore with maxed out ram, scsi and so on.

[Oliver_H...@adobeforums.com]

However, two hour later, CS4 crashed, spent 30 senconds communicating with Microsoft and lost an hour's work. An error message pointed to incompatible drivers, and that it had disabled GPU drivers. I have no idea what that means, but it reinforces the sense that this is a beta product released far too soon.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

The message means what it says - your video card driver has a problem, and Photoshop had to disable the GPU support because of the problem with your video card driver. You blame Adobe for your video card driver bugs? Really?

[BJNicholls]

I don't blame Adobe for card driver bugs, but the OpenGL implementation seems half-baked at best. I recall seeing a pre-release demo video with some impressive real time filter effects, but that apparently was nixed prior to delivery. Adobe obviously was aware of driver problems prior to CS4's release and the big two (ATI and nVidia) apparently did some quick tweaks to drivers or default driver settings in preparation for the CS4 release.

With the exception of a few high end rendering workstation cards, the cards and drivers are optimized and tweaked for gaming. OpenGL has been on the decline and I've read articles declaring it dead for Windows game development. Windows game development is the 1000 lb. owl driving the graphics card industry. So here comes Adobe, adopting OpenGL because it's a Mac platform standard. It shouldn't be surprising that Photoshop users used to choosing cards for 2D speed and quality are finding drivers and card selections a real mess now that non-gaming OpenGL is important to making Photoshop perform acceptably.

Is CS4 acceleration market force enough to get OpenGL optimization onto the card maker's priority list? I don't know. Are there enough CS4 users on Windows platforms to influence the industry or do we need to prepare to pay a lot more for workstation market cards?

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

OpenGL is a very cross platform standard, and one still supported on Windows.

[David_E_...@adobeforums.com]

Opengl is supported by windows using a wrapper around directx.

[David...@adobeforums.com]

I'm far from being tech savvy, but it seems to me that Adobe got something very wrong in their implementation of OpenGL on Windows. I've been using other 2D programs for a few years which use OpenGL to enhance performance - the one I use most is Toon Boom Studio, a 2D animation program. Enabling OpenGL greatly enhances performance in that program, particularly with the drawing tools. They've had this option in at least the last 3 versions. I don't recall any complaints on their user forums about OpenGL problems or card or driver incompatibilities. How is a small company able to do this, while Adobe with its much greater resources and programming staff, seems to have made a mess of its implementation, and then spends half the time blaming the users' graphics cards, blaming nVidia for its drivers? I certainly hope Adobe engineers are putting every ounce of resources into fixing this. There has been an ominous silence from Adobe engineers about this, after an initial flurry of postings, questions, and updates on their progress in isolating the problem.

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

Opengl is supported by windows using a wrapper around directx.

what?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL>

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

You blame Adobe for your video card driver bugs?

Me, I blame Adobe for relying on the video card manufacturers to make CS4 run correctly. Nice try, Chris, but YOU have more power with them than I do, and you know it. I've tried every avenue available to me to communicate with ATI. They are not responsive.

I guess it's nice that you respond here on this U2U forum, but it would be better if you had something to say, other than "update to the latest driver", etc.

[David...@adobeforums.com]

Maybe OpenGL is or is not a wrapper around DirectX. But something is definitely bringing DirectX into the picture with this problem. Numerous people have reported on this forum that updating to the November 2008 redistributable DirectX drivers improves things. I'm one of them. On one computer, after the DirectX update, both the drawing tool lag problem and the issue of free-floating windows sticking when trying to move them improved significantly (but didn't go away entirely). On my other computer, the clone tool wasn't working and "Advanced Drawing" was greyed out in the GPU Advanced settings in Photoshop. After the DirectX update, the clone tool works and "Advanced Drawing" is no longer greyed out.

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

could just be a shared common dll got updated with the directx drivers. never can tell what ms throws in their updates. kitchen sink and all. sometimes you get lucky.

[David_E_...@adobeforums.com]

Here is a link about the wrapper. Read the last paragraph under the windows section.

More support for the posters who always say update drivers. You will see why having the correct drivers and the correct card to support 2.0 is so important.

<http://www.opengl.org/wiki/index.php?title=Getting_started&printable=yes>

[Jim_F...@adobeforums.com]

Hi Everyone;
I'm a CS3 user but I'm in the software industry. I expect to get CS4 soon however. I have some ideas here you might find helpful.

OpenGL is pretty much a standard in the industry but the video drivers in Windows particularly Vista are important. Here are a couple of sites to look at:

<http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol003_9/>

and

<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa477537.aspx>

For example my entry for OpenGLDriverName in the hive is nvoglv32 which is from the latest driver for my 7800GT from NVidia and not the MS standard driver. I do currently use some high performance OpenGL software on my computer and I experience no issues.

Note that if you don't have the correct drivers or don't have them correctly installed the GPU on the graphics card won't be doing the rendering, it will be done in software on the CPU. Basically slowing the whole experience down.

So after you read the first article and search a bit on MSDN what you come away with is that Adobe did get it correct in using OpenGL. However the correct configuration of the graphics board software is the responsibility of the user and must be correct to get the performance. So in this case the latest NVidia drivers (or ATI if you lean that way) are particularly important.

Also the use of the Aero interface can suck a bit of the OpenGL performance so I recommend using the Classic interface settings in Vista (and disable the widgets).

And if you are an XP user - all I can say is that Vista is a much better OS. The anti Vista hype is really too bad and once you get used to the interface it has much to offer someone who uses his system to edit and process photographs.

And no I don't work for Microsoft and for those of you that know Linux I have a Debian and two Ubuntu systems I use as well.

[Oliver_H...@adobeforums.com]

Thank you, Jim Farmer. Yours is a most helpful post. However, a number of people have posted to this thread to the affect that 'it is not Adobe's fault that [your] drivers are out of date'. This would, perhaps, be a reasonable position if the release that fixed some of the worst problems (from nVIDIA) was not dated 11 November 2008, that is, released long after the Adobe product. The original, allegedly malfunctioning drivers had a July 08 date - hardly ancient.

That said, it is very definitely the task of a software developer to ensure that the client has the support utilities on their computer that they need for the product to function. Adobe could easily check during the installation process, for example, and ask the user if they want to install the relevant drivers off the web. They could equally easily put a message somewhere - on the packet, on the CD - to the affect that new drivers would probably be needed.

As matters stand, however, the raw software package is typically unable to access help. The download of the help pdf fails (three times.) The user side PDF is hidden, and accessed only if you do occult things. (See an earlier post.) I telephoned Adobe support and got a young man who giggled a lot. He was unable to tell me how to access help in any form, promised to e-mail back and didn't do so. In all, it has teaken around two person days to get this package operating in a way that is acceptable, does not fail without warning and has GUI oddities which are tolerable rather than show-stopping. It remains a Beta product.

I am writing this in the - altruistic, public spirited - hope that Adobe monitor these Forums and that they will take some action in later releases. It is quite unreasonable to expect designers and photographers to have knowledge at the level displayed by Jim Farmer, any more than a mobile telephone user should know about telephone operating systems, network domain multiplexing or other technical underpinnings of what they do. It seems evident to me that Adobe has a nest of suits and a separate herd of techies, and never the two do speak. The result of this is paid for by the customer, but for many people, I suspect, just this once, and on sufferance. Certainly, we shall stay with this one copy until matters are acknowledged and improved.

[oble...@adobeforums.com]

I've had CS4 on Windows XP in daily use for about two weeks. Loaded on my desktop and laptop. CS4 performs noticeably faster for me than CS2 from which I upgraded. I am liking the interface more as I get more experience with it and begin to understand the "zen" behind it.

The GPU function is enabled on both my machines, and applying filters, etc. is MUCH faster, and in some cases, unbelievably faster. My laptop is a dual-core Thinkpad with ATI V5250 FireGL card and it's obviously well-suited for the new functionality in CS4.

I've had no issues with installing CS4 on either machine, and no usability or performance issues either. It works for me.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

How can applying filters be faster? They are not GPU accelerated.

[Steve_...@adobeforums.com]

My PS CS4 lacks a Help index and the on-line help simply won't down load. Is PS CS4 a Beta for computer geeks or a real help for hard working, time restrained, professional photographers? Think about it.

At this time I am sorry I upgraded from CS3 (as are most the pros I associate with). I think Adobe is trying to do too much, and in so doing, is making Photoshop too problematic.

Anyway can I return the product and get my money back?

[Buko]

You have 30 days to return the product.

[John Joslin]

Help is available via F1 and the Help menu. It defaults to the on-line "Community Help" page with links to HTML Help, PDF Help and a whole raft of tutorials.

If you're off-line, pressing F1 takes you to the in-product help that shipped with the software, which is not kept up to date. To default to going to in-product help, you need to go off-line in Photoshop. Instructions for doing so are in the Product Help topic at <http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/11.0/WS2BE9B3A7-44AF-4d86-AC08-912E2D9F1ECB.html>.

I copied the PDF to my desktop for quick reference.

[Steve_...@adobeforums.com]

Well, with the help from Abobe on the phone, we were able to pin point my problems to a need to upgrade my video driver - which I did. Everything WORKS FINE NOW.

Now for the missing Index. In CS3 I was simply able to hit the Help pull down menu, and go to a sortable alphabetical Index. This almost always solved my problems. Now it seems this wonderful feature is gone, and replaced with a 700 page non-sortable PDF file that you are free to print - all 704 pages of it. I had already discovered your link above - but, again, it has NO INDEX (that I can find). Try searching for something specific and it soon becomes very tiresome!

We we have a CS3 style Help sometime in the future?

[John Joslin]

Searching via the index is the slowest and most uncertain method I know.

For many versions now I have use the search box at the top of the Help page. It's not as convenient but if you tick "This Help system only", it's pretty good.

Did you try the method for going off-line and accessing the "in-product help"?

[trouble]

The GPU accelerated functions of CS4 are a great achievement in programming,
given the status of OS and video card driver software, but utterly
underwhelming in practice. I can see no real practical difference in CS4 on
XP and on Vista.
As to the comment that Vista is a superior OS but you have to disable the
Aero interface and the widgets: are you Steve Balmer posting this under a
pseudonym? C'mon, confess.
Lest anyone think Vista is superior to anything I dare you to perform this
test: install XP and Vista in a dual boot configuration on the same computer
with matched hard drives. Then time everything like program installations,
program openings, file transfers. You can time the difference between the
two OSes with your wristwatch. Every single third party test bears this out.
The best you can say about Vista is that it is usable.

[Linda...@adobeforums.com]

I just loaded CS4 yesterday, and am very disappointed. When PS starts up, I get a message saying that GPU/OpenGL has been disabled by PS.

Everything is SO SLOW - ctrl-t resizing has a lag time, and the icons on the PS GUI "jump around" or "flicker" a lot the time.

I downloaded and installed the latest drivers for the NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT card, rebooted, but found PS still displays the same message, even though this video card supposedly supports GPU/OpenGL.

Can someone more "tech-savvy" tell me if there is something else that I need to do to the NVIDIA settings to make this work more seamlessly?

[David_E_...@adobeforums.com]

Linda,

What version of vista or xp? Type of processor? how much ram?

Did you defrag after install? After you defrag run the updater. There are updates. Then defrag again.

Updated directx lately? Latest version is Nov 2008. How much download depends on what is already installed. This only updates 9.0c. This has helped a lot of people on here.

.net run time? It is up to 3.5 service pack one. Worth checking out and may or may not help. Won't hurt either way.

Also there is a c++ 2008 runtime version posted. I did not notice any difference when I updated. Didn't hurt either

[Oliver_H...@adobeforums.com]

Linda - you will need to turn the GPU thingy on again under Edit > Preferences > Performance, if I recall that correctly. The NVIDIA driver that (sort of) works is very recent - the quadro one is called 178.46_quadro_winxp2k_international_whql.exe but I can't help under geforce. (God only knows why NVIDIA has so many cards, families of cards; or such a totally uninformative web site.)

A CS4 bug that others may have found is this: when you get CS4 limping along, it (repeatedly) throws a wobbly if you are using the polygonal outline tool for more than about 50 points. The entire screen goes to white, and you get it back after 3-4 seconds with the focus lost and the menus in windows colours. Surprisingly, you can continue working but with concentration (and trust) dissipated. Yes, maybe drivers; no, not satisfactory.

We are shifting the installation to a new box today - eight processors, FX3700 card, 2400 x 1600 screen with dual dvi connections, crispy fresh drivers and all. If the product still doesn't work properly then we will know exactly where to allocate the blame, will we not?

[Erbs_B...@adobeforums.com]

Exactly the same thing here!
PS CS4 is extreeemly sluggish and choppy with redraws and various inputs.
Even small documents handle like they we´re 10 x 10 feet large.
It´s beyond ridiculous.
I´m testing the trial version atm, but boxed version is on the way...

I´ve tried every possible checking and unchecking of what preferences
have to offer but to no avail.

My GeForce drivers are the very, very, latest and Vista home is automatically up to date.

I keep my system neat and tidy with registry aids, defrags etc.
Needles to say that PS CS 1 ran smoothly.

Specs are:
Acer Aspire 9920 (20" screen monster), 4GB RAM, 500 GB Drive,
GeForce 8600M GT w. 512 MB

Lost.
Erbs

[iVan_B.@adobeforums.com]

But still...I'm waiting for that reformat. Not one that I've seen complaining on this forum has done that. At least not that I'm aware of.

I did. No help there.

[David_E_...@adobeforums.com]

iVan,
I reformatted about a month or so ago. The reformat fixed my major problems. The remaining issues are minor and are related to drivers. I see no point in posting issues that I have in common with what is already posted. I just wait on updates for the ATI opengl drivers.

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

Oliver,

Image resize: if you want to resize and image you cannot do so in pixels.
Why woudl anyone resize a screen image in - for example - points, which
is one of the options on offer?

I just discovered that problem on my system, as well. (I hadn't tried the Image Size function until today, because I'd pretty much been unable to work productively in CS4.) I went on to discover the same problem in trying to enter sizes in other dialogs, like Crop and Guassian Blur. I don't see how that would be video-card related, but maybe it is.

[Linda...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the input.

Everything on the computer is up-to-date (Windows updates, Adobe updater, DirectX, Nvidia drivers, .net), and defrag has been done.

I'm running:
WinXP Pro 64-bit
Intel Core 2 Duo - 2.66GHz
6 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 7950 GT
Total of 2TB of HDs

The 64-bit version of CS4 wouldn't run on my 64-bit machine (because Win XP 64-bit doesn't support it), so I installed the 32-bit. This causes the GPU Settings in the Performance tab of Preferences to be grayed out. It says no GPU options available with Photoshop Standard.

I'm not sure if "Standard" means 32-bit, or if it means NOT EXTENDED. Why would they make this performance option unavailable for standard PS? Seems ridiculous, but then again, the problems I'm having seem ridiculous.

A friend said that CS4 64-bit runs great on Vista64, so I'm thinking of going with that...we'll see.

Thanks so much.

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

Linda, the OpenGL functions of CS4 work on CS4 non-extended, at least they do for me. There are apparently other problems with GPU acceleration, but the functions are there.

[Lorett...@adobeforums.com]

Do you need 64 bit windows to take advantage of the GL and GPU accel.?
<Nick_...@adobeforums.com> wrote in message
news:59b70...@webcrossing.la2eafNXanI...

[John Joslin]

Do you need 64 bit windows to take advantage of the GL and GPU accel.?

No, but XP64 is not supported whereas Vista 64 is.

[BJNicholls]

I'm not sure what to make of the "use Vista, it handles graphics better" suggestion. PS CS4 system requirements spec XP with SP2 (SP3 preferred) with no qualifications. I'm not about to rebuild my system with Vista, not with Windows 7 on the way, and not when CS3 is perfectly viable.

The latest and greatest driver for the new NVIDIA card I installed to provide more onboard RAM for PS CS4 still provides very slow 2D line drawing performance for all applications (and still triggered an incompatibility message from PS CS4). Even when the OpenGL embellishments are working, my "step up" in GPU specs for PS CS4's requirements (to more onboard RAM in particular) is a big step down in 2D performance. With NVIDIA hawking its $1800 Quadro CX as "a more reliable way to work" with Adobe's CS4, I'm hoping that the real answer to seeing decent drivers that aren't in constant flux with gamers in mind - as well as acceptable CS4 performance - isn't a card at this pricepoint.

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

PS CS4 system requirements spec XP with SP2 (SP3 preferred) with no qualifications.

Exactly! Had I known that CS4 works better on Vista (as per Chris Cox), I would not have upgraded. And before the anti-whiners start in, I'm past the 3-day refund period. Believe me, I'm telling anyone I know that uses PS to avoid this upgrade. Yer rollin' the dice if you do.

[Richard_...@adobeforums.com]

Chris said CS4 works better on Vista, as Vista has addressed issues that limited XP. He didn't say it didn't work well on XP, or that the issues people were having were the expected behaviour on XP - it may well be that (up to going live) the expectation was that XP would be good and Vista would be better. I can't say I'm blissfully happy about the performance of CS4 (with XP SP3 with an nVidia 7600GS), though I don't think I'm as badly off as some people, and I do think that tying some much wanted features, especially canvas rotate, to OGL - given the problems drivers can be - was a serious misjudgement but mis-representing Chris' statements isn't going to help us get information on what's happening from Adobe or its staff.

[BJNicholls]

I said I didn't know what to make of the Vista recommendation. I don't know if any of my OpenGL performance issues are platform-specific, but I'd welcome some clarification of just what aspect of graphics performance should work better on Vista. It's easy to read Chris's comment as a suggestion that users experiencing problems under XP should upgrade to Vista, and if that's not the intended communication, again I wonder what we're supposed to make of it.

[Oliver_H...@adobeforums.com]

Richard Haseltine said:

I do think that tying some much wanted features, especially canvas rotate,
to OGL - given the problems drivers can be - was a serious misjudgement

but [how to get] information on what's happening from Adobe or its staff[?]

...which I admit is a manipulated quote. It is strange, is it not, that nobody from Adobe cares to comment on what has to be a brand disaster for them? At least a dozen people have reported serious issues on this thread alone. Others have much the same sort of things to say. Consider the proportion of people who do not have the habit of posting to forums - 90%? 95%? - and extrapolate to the pissed off user base that must exist.

It seems extraordinary that a FAQ and a pointer to it has not been issued. Perhaps they do not know what to do. Perhaps they simply do not read these forum entries, but in that case, why support them?

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

Oliver,

Perhaps they simply do not read these forum entries...

You can bet that they do, as the forums are a gold mine of support. People come here and often find solutions to their problems, so that means fewer people calling Adobe Support.

I do know that Adam J. posted a while back that he had been able to duplicate at least some of the problems people are reporting. I have no idea how long a fix will take, but you can also bet it won't be overnight. Any updates/fixes will have to go through a lot of testing and QA before being released to the public.

[Robert Enns]

Linda,

The "standard" in that message about GPU is to be ignored. (This officially from Chris Cox). The message should be simply that GPU isn't supported by your current video card/drivers.

Rob

[Linda...@adobeforums.com]

It's been interesting reading about the CS4 problems here and elsewhere. I've spoken with my video card manufacturer, and this card DOES support GPU, but CS4 is ignoring that for some reason.

I am also having serious problems with all of my 3rd party filters, (and I have quite a few of them) - NONE of them will show up in the filter menu in CS4.

Also have found that while the Bridge is pretty stable, Photoshop crashes frequently. When it's actually running, it is painfully slow, and I am finding it difficult to get work done....SO...

I called Adobe technical support and they simply refused to discuss any of the problems because

1. The video card issue isn't their problem.
2. The 3rd party filters issue isn't their problem.
3. They don't "guarantee" a good experience with WinXP 64, and don't provide technical support for it.

I'm pretty much done and will go back to CS3 until they resolve at least some of these issues. I'll stayed tuned and be interested to see how you guys fare with CS4.

[Erbs_B...@adobeforums.com]

CS 4 is such a joke on my vista (32,home,all updates).
It's so slow and sluggish, if you would see it standing by the roadside, you would want to help it cross the street.

I dearly hope help is on the way.
Erbs

[John_St...@adobeforums.com]

I've been following this thread with interest, have been working diligently to get CS4 to work optimally on my own PC (Vista Ultimate, 32 bit, NVidia 8800GTS, 180.xx driver) and finally, yesterday, did a reformat of my machine and rolled back to CS3. I have updated each version of Photoshop faithfully over the past several years and this is the first version where I've finally thrown up my hands in frustration. There are some wonderful new features but the application simply isn't ready for prime time. A few suggestions for Adobe:

a) MANY of your users DEPEND on plug-ins for their workflow; work more diligently with the developers to ensure that they have the information and tools they need to have updates for the plug-ins ready to coincide with the release of your product.
b) I would be the first to admit that many users aren't as diligent about driver updates, OS patches, etc. as they should be...but then again, even the most current drivers available for this build don't seem to always work as they should. The new UI, presumably, isn't core to many of the new feature builds, but the new UI, evidently, is at the root of the many of the issues...a case of rushing something to quickly to market? I don't expect such a complex app from anyone to be flawless...but, for most users, it SHOULD just work right out of the box. Bugs should be evident/discovered by those pushing the envelope, not the typcial user.
c) Be more forthcoming in your communication with the folks who have already purchased the product. We get e-mail announcements about new products...why not e-mail updates that say, "We are aware of xxx problem and expect a fix by xx date." Information is always a good thing.

I'm past the 30 day return on CS4, so I'll hang on to it, monitor what happens, and, eventually, reinstall it when all the bugs seem to be ironed out...maybe.

[So...@adobeforums.com]

Oh how I wish I could disable the hideous and poorly functioning "skin" on all of the CS4. I want my square corners back, I want my title bar, I want my default close/min/max buttons. I want to have control over the window color, etc. And these nasty debossed tabs, and everything sticking when I don't want it to and un-sticking when I want it to stick. The whole thing is like a pair of bad new shoes that just won't break in and cause nasty sores on your feet. Give us option to retro-face it. It's so BETA, it's not funny.