A few questions about OpenGl acceleration

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

My system:
Vista Ultimate 32bit, Intel Q6600, Geforce 8600GT/512MB, 4G Ram, newest card driver.
1. Do the graphics driver setting have any influence on Photoshop? If yes, what are the recommended settings?
2. Flick panning is stuttering a bit. Is my card too slow then?
3. When I do "flick-panning" it sometimes happens, that I get to an area of the picture that is displayed extremely blurry. That means I start flick-panning in a sharp area and after a second or so I get to a blurred area. The graphics card seems to wait until the pannnig stops completely before it renders the picture sharp. Why doesn`t it render the picture sharp WHILE panning? Again, is my card too slow?
4. Birdseye view. If I`m zoomed in in a very large picture and press the H-key and press the mouse button to zoom out (birdeye view) I often get a view of the picture that is partly blurred. As soon as I release the mouse to zoom in again it gets sharp....but not before (in the zoomed out-view).
5. Color management: To get colormanagement I have to switch on "color matching" in the advanced OpenGl options. Otherwise the picture is displayed like in a browser without colormanagement. But if this option is on, I get slight banding in a black/white gradient in the shadows.
This gets really ugly if I make a black/white gradient in a huge colorspace like ProPhoto.
6. When OpenGl is off, screen redrawing is much slower than in CS3.
In CS3 it takes about 1/10sec for the whole picture (my screen res is 1024/1200), in CS4 it takes about 5/10sec (just estimating).
The side effect of this is that even with OpenGL "on", moving parts of the picture with the move tool is slower than in CS3.

After all, don`t get me wrong....I really like the new GPU stuff. Just trying to figure out wether I can get it even better.

Can some of you Adobe guys explain, please?

[Wolf_...@adobeforums.com]

Do the graphics driver setting have any influence on Photoshop? If yes,
what are the recommended settings?

When I installed the latest 178.24 drivers I noticed that the 3D settings had included presets for Photoshop CS4. Presumably these would be the optimal settings.

(Note that I have not yet installed CS4.)

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

I would appreciate it very much if one of the developers could give some answers. Thanks in advance!

[Bart_...@adobeforums.com]

Stefan:

I have the same card and ran tests on my system to answer your questions:

1: Don't know and not going to find out.

2: I have a slight stuttering, but it is not that bad, I assume this is probably true for everyone. Probably to facilitate speed.

3: I get the same thing, I would assume that this facilitates speed over accuracy. Don't find this to be a big problem, I'm just trying to get from A to B quickly.

4: Same, see #3.

5: I see a slight banding only noticeable if I stare really hard. Not a concern for me.

6: Not sure, I didn't use CS3, I thought it was a real dog and didn't upgrade.

Personally, I think you're expecting way too much. I have Vista64 with 8Gb of RAM, still think CS4 rocks.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Bart, thanks for your reply!
I agree with you, CS4 rocks!
Now I know that what I`m experiencing is "normal".
The question now is wether a faster card could make those things even better and wether there are recommended driver settings.
So I´m still waiting for some Adobe guys.

[Bart_...@adobeforums.com]

Koogle: Ditto what JJ said.

[Koo...@adobeforums.com]

And Adobe employees don't use there own crappy products.. otherwise I'm sure we might actually have better tools and improvements instead of this weak noob shit.

[John Joslin]

Koogle

Why don't you stop making yourself look like an idiot?

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Curt,

I know that Chris Cox (Adobe) for example is participating in this forum. Maybe he has some answers.

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

same as what bart and yoko john said.

[Bart_...@adobeforums.com]

Hey Robert: Give the kid a yellow card!

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Okay, can we get back to my question?
Any Adobe guys that can answer my questions? Please?!?

[BJNicholls]

Stefan, I just installed a new EVGA nVidia GTX 9800 card with 512MB onboard. I've been looking for any help on the advanced "use OpenGL drawing" preference options and haven't found anything.

Is "flick panning" where you use the hand tool to activate a pan - and with hardware acceleration you get a ballistic response? Adobe calls it a hand toss. I get some mild stuttering doing that. Compared to the ATI FireGL v3400 card I just replaced, dynamic zooming is smoother with the new card, but the ballistics is something I'd like to disable so there's no lag when I lift my stylus before zooming stops.

Doing bird's eye view most of the time I'm not seeing any artifacts, but occasionally I see a rectangular area within the full image view blurry (as if it's the first step in a progressive rendering).

The 178.24 nVidia control panel lets you adjust settings for individual applications. As far as I can tell, only the feature "Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration" is different than the global settings with its boldface "compatibility performance mode" enabled.

If I disable "color matching" in the advanced drawing GPU preferences, if convert a wide gamut image to sRGB, the preview in the conversion control panel is fine, but after conversion the image is no longer color managed. It's very obvious on my wide gamut display. If I save the image, it converted as previewed and will display accurately when reopened.

I think CS4 without GPU enhancement is a slug compared to CS3. I think there will be a mass movement to graphics card upgrades with this release.

Bridge color management turns off if I enable "software rendering" in preferences. So I can either have scrambled pdf previews after page one in some documents, or I can have CM working - not both. This is consistent between my new graphics adapter and my old one. I got the new one to get past the severe 128MB limitations on Photoshop's OpenGL performance. PS gave me warnings that GPU acceleration would work with only two windows open, and tonight I found technotes with some tantalizing but unspecific information:

This technote talks about the features vs. onboard graphics memory:

<http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb405745>

This technote has troubleshooting info, and some information on the advanced GPU preferences:

<http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb404898>

"Q. What are all those Advanced Settings options and what do they mean?
A. Advanced Settings options:

Vertical Sync: Reduces tearing by syncing the frame rate to that of the display.

3D Interaction Acceleration: Increases the clicking speed when working with 3D forms. If you experience drawing problems that correct themselves when you let up on the mouse button, turn this option off.

Force Bilinear Interpolation: Tells the GPU to perform high precision modeling and smoothing functions when you use a card that doesn't support those functions for certain image types.

Advanced Drawing: Allows the GPU to perform, and therefore speed up, certain tasks, such as color matching, depth conversion, HDR tone mapping, and checkerboard compositing.

Use For Image Display: Doubles the use of video RAM used to display the main image when you use multiple images, large images, or large 3D models. It's available only on display cards that have 512 MB RAM or more.

Color matching: Can be used to avoid the display of visual artifacts."

So is color management going away a "visual artifact" - as usual, you have to dig to find basic help info and it's usually very sketchy when you do find it.

I'd like to invite all the self-appointed forum enforcers to take a hike. If you have a problem with a post or reply, save us from having to wade through your petty, snarky responses. You're not contributing and you're not entertaining anyone but yourselves.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

The "temporary blurry rectangle" means that Photoshop is still loading the data onto the card. Previous versions of Photoshop would have just displayed the old image or the transparency grid.

The color matching control is there for debugging problems with some GPU cards - the color matching should always be on if your card supports those features. The "visual artifacts" mentioned are caused by bugs on certain cards and drivers. Um, yeah - if you turn off color matching, you won't have color matching....

[BJNicholls]

"Um, yeah - if you turn off color matching, you won't have color matching....:"

Not true. Color management works with color matching turned off, it just fails in my test displaying the converted image after making a conversion from one color space to another. The image previews correctly in the preview before doing the conversion, and it previews correctly when opened directly.

What's more, I don't use the LUT in my card even if that's somehow bypassed by turning off "color matching". My display has a hardware LUT and I'm using a calibration tool that applies hardware calibration at the display level.

[John Joslin]

I didn't read "Color Matching" in that context as quite the same thing as "Color Management".

Maybe it is – Chris may explain.

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

No way. This is not what color management is about.

This passage from BJN doesn't make any sense to me:

If I disable "color matching" in the advanced drawing GPU preferences,
if convert a wide gamut image to sRGB, the preview in the conversion control
panel is fine, but after conversion the image is no longer color managed.
It's very obvious on my wide gamut display. If I save the image, it converted
as previewed and will display accurately when reopened.

...no longer color managed? It's sRGB isn't it? If it doesn't display correctly (and assuming that is "convert" and not "assign") that is a completely different matter. Then I would look at the monitor profile.

Unless I'm missing something obvious here. On the other hand, untagged images don't play too well with wide-gamut monitors.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Chris,
so why do I have banding as described in my original post? If I make a black/white gradient in a large colorspace I get shadow banding (if color matching is on). I do not get that banding in CS3! If I turn colormatching off CS4 behave like a browser in tems of color. The banding is realyy bad with large spaces like wide gamut, but even with Adobe RGB it`s visible.
The blurry image.....if I zoom out in birdseye view in large images the image NEVER gets sharp. Why doesn`t PS load a sharp picture into the card.
When flick-panning I get to a blurry part of the image. Sometimes after flick-panning even stopped the image does not get sharp UNTIL I release the mouse button.
Does a faster card or card with more RAM (mine already has 512MB) help.
And now something really strange:
Normally flick-panning is stuttering. But when I do retouching within an alpha channel for a while flick-panning gets VERY smooth without stuttering. Even if I go back to the RGB channel, it does not stutter any more! But I really have to be in an alpha channel before.......

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

Maybe I replied a little too quickly in #17. Some people seem to have problems with screen refresh, and this may be another variety. But I still can't understand why that should display an image sans profile.

[BJNicholls]

Freeagent:

It doesn't make sense, but that's what's happening. On my wide gamut NEC 3090 display, it's quite obvious when you view an sRGB profiled image in a non CM application - colors are oversaturated, especially reds. I see the same non-CM look when using the save-for-web tool set to "monitor color" (BTW, it's nice to have CM viewing options in the PS CS4 "save for web" control panel).

Stefan:

I'm not seeing banding in a ProPhoto RGB test gradient, or converting the gradient to other spaces, or viewing sans profile.

As I experimented last night with GPU settings, the bird's eye view block blurring increased dramatically. It's not a matter of time holding down the h key to allow the image to fully load, a rectangular patch of the overall image is blurry and remains blurry no matter how much time the view is held. I'm not able to replicate the issue with those settings this morning and I'm wondering if this problem shows up more when doing the bird's eye zoom from certain image zoom percentages.

[PeterK.@adobeforums.com]

It doesn't make sense, but that's what's happening. On my wide gamut NEC
3090 display, it's quite obvious when you view an sRGB profiled image
in a non CM application - colors are oversaturated, especially reds. I
see the same non-CM look when using the save-for-web tool set to "monitor
color"

That's expected. sRGB is a smaller gamut, so of course viewing the rgb numbers in sRGB will look less saturated than when viewing them on your wide gamut monitor outside of a colour-managed application.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

BJ,
my B/W gradient in ProPhoto looks terrible in the shadows, where I get red and green color shifts as well as posterization.
The blurry birds-eye view is depending on how large the picture is.
I don`t get any blurred areas on a 3000*4000px picture, but on a 4000*6000px it gets extremely blurred.
I have a Geforce 8600GT with 512MB and Vista 32 Ultimate with 4G RAM.

[BJNicholls]

Peter K:

I agree that viewing with "monitor color" (no CM) the saturation is expected. I just mentioned it as an illustration of what I see after applying a profile conversion, indicating that post conversion the image window is no longer color managed - or at least it looks just like it lost CM.

Stefan:

The image that I've been testing the bird's eye view is 10,000 x 3700 pixels. Sometimes I see a blurry block but the occurance varies - as well as size and location. I'm not seeing color shifts or posterization. My current card is an EVGA nVidia 9800 GTX, 512MB (installed yesterday). XP Pro 32, 4GB machine. With this new card, 2D performance is testing really slow - half or less than my prior ATI 3400 card. Not sure if that's setting related. CS4 will certainly drive graphics card sales, at least for those of us used to buying cards for 2D quality and not worried about rendering speed.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

BJ,
how did you test 2D speed?

[BJNicholls]

PCPitstop's Overdrive scan. It has separate 2D and 3D tests and the new card is a 2D slug - not sure if that's related to settings or hardware. I may need to drop a few hundred more on a higher up FireGL card - I'm thinking the nVidia card may be all about rendering performance for gaming and 2D is sacrificed to keep the price low.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

In this case someone used a bad description - the GPU setting for color matching means "color manage the display using GPU shader code to perform the color conversions".

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Chris,
does that mean that if "color matching" is off I have no colormanagement for my display? On my machine colors are totally off and wrong if I switch it off. But if it`s on I have shadow banding (red green bands) and posterization in large colorspaces.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

That's what it meant when first written, but I'm not sure if the engineer changed that before we shipped or not. But it does sound like that is still what it means (colors off and wrong). You may want to disable all of "advance drawing" on your card. What's odd is that other people aren't seeing banding on that card.

[Dan_...@adobeforums.com]

Hello,
Everything works just fine in CS4 for me, except that when I "Enable OpenGL Drawing" the open file will be all broken up in squares of crazy colors and lines, except when I zoom in to 200%. At 200% and above, everything and all the OpenGL features look great and work just fine. I've tried checking and unchecking all the Advanced GL settings to no avail.
Any suggs?
Thanks, Dan

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

Dan - your video card or driver has a problem. Can you try updating your video card driver? If that doesn't work, then we need to get details on your system, card, and driver.

[Dan_...@adobeforums.com]

Hello Chris,
Got the latest drivers (3 days ago) and everything works just fine except the mentioned above. I also used the "AllowOldGPUS_ON.reg" file recommended by Adobe for the Registry. (After running that file, the "Enable OpenGL Drawing box became accesible).

Card: ATI RADEON 9800 XT
Graphics Bus Capability: AGP
Maximum Bus Setting: AGP 8X
Memory Size: 256 MB
Memory Type: DDR SGRAM / SDRAM, etc.

AMD Athlon 64 FX-51
2.21 GHz, 2.00 GB of RAM
Win XP Pro SVC pack 3

If you need any more info on the system, please let me know.

Thanks, Dan

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

Some people, also on xp sp3, reported success by updating DirectX.

[Dan_...@adobeforums.com]

All of a sudden, I've lost the Automate/ web photo gallery, contact sheet II and Picture package. These were working well in CS4, since I took the needed files from the Goodies folder and placed them in the folders indicated in the Adobe instructions.

I replaced the files once again and still doesn't work.

I've tried dumping the Prefs., etc, but to no avail.

Any suggs?

Thanks, Dan

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Chris,
I guess I found the reason for the banding:
I have calibrated my monitor with "Basicolor Display4" software and made two profiles from one and the same calibration: one Lut and one matrix profile. When using the LUT profile I get that ugly banding (but not in CS3, only in CS4). If I use the matrix profile I don`t get banding.
But the question remains, why has CS3 no problem with the same LUT profile?

[Bart_...@adobeforums.com]

Dan: You should have started a new thread so you questions does not get lost.

[BJNicholls]

Stephan, here's a forum thread with a discussion on Adobe's CMM and how it interacts with matrix and LUT profiles:

<http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?128@@.3c05828b>

Not sure how helpful this is, but the thread does indicate that some folks have had LUT profile banding issues before CS4.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks, BJ!

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

Stefan - without samples of the profiles, I don't know.

[Dilip...@adobeforums.com]

Is there anything available to improve the response time to open the *.geo files using GL