Photoshop CS4 slow, why?

The Scop · 9 Jul 2010 at 10:38

Hi guys, firstly I apologise if i put this thread in wrong section of forum, didn't know where best to put it.

Basically the problem is with Photoshop CS4. This is at the place I work (I'm a I.T Technician at a school). I installed Adobe Design Premium CS4 onto some new machines we got for a photography room/suite. From memory the specs of the machines are a C2D 2.93GHz (can't remember exactly which processor), Nvidia GT210 512mb GPU, 4GB DDR2 RAM. Not the besrt I know, but bear in mind its a school, and we were buying in bulk from some company, lolwe should have bouht them fom OcUKif you ask me as my home gaming pc i got from them is amazing. Still back to problem - using the brushes is slow and laggy, and the same with the text and near evrything else. Surely a machine with those specs should be able to run photoshop cs4 smoohly to an extent at 1440x900 resolution? I thought it may be the OS, we have a networked system where any pupil can log on to any machine in school, the networked os thing to pt it basially is xp professional sp2.

I'm quite baffled as to what the poblem is and what to do, we spent a frtune getting cs4 (mass license thing) and we want to be able to use it properly.

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.

The Scop.

Participant · 9 Jul 2010 at 10:45

Does anything else run slow? That PC should be able to destroy CS4.

Cosimo · 9 Jul 2010 at 12:47

Have you checked to see what drive the scratch disk is on. Is it on the same drive as the installation or sitting on the network. It's location can have an impact on performance of it's not located on another logical drive on the pc in question. I presume that you've updated CS4 with all it's bug fixes.

Cosimo · 9 Jul 2010 at 13:51

Make sure that you have the 11.0.1 update which addresses many performance issues:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4292

Creelers · 9 Jul 2010 at 14:03

Are you running 64bit XP? It might be running out of useable RAM.

Participant · 9 Jul 2010 at 14:14

Creelers said:
Are you running 64bit XP? It might be running out of useable RAM.

Even 3GB is plenty if he doesn't have loads of other stuff open.

timmy222 · 9 Jul 2010 at 14:23

Hmm

Should fly on that spec bro.
My pc eats it up no problem even with large scanned pictures. :confused:

asim18 · 9 Jul 2010 at 15:20

Dry disabling hardware acceleration (Edit>Preferences>Performance) AND/OR make sure the graphics drivers are up to date.

Terrier_Jimlad · 9 Jul 2010 at 15:38

CS4 use to run like a dog on my i5 @ 4ghz with 4GB on an SSD. Removed it and put CS5 on and that thing really does fly! I figured it was just some dodgy parts of CS4 lol

asim18 · 9 Jul 2010 at 15:54

Is it just photoshop that runs badly or the whole suite?

Inazuma · 10 Jul 2010 at 01:56

As simulatorman said, you should make you have the latest update. The 64bit version for me was very laggy until I patched it.

The Scop · 10 Jul 2010 at 23:18

As i say it is at work not home, at home my i7 920 oc'd, 6gb win 7 hp 64bit monster would obliterate it but i'm talking about a work machine, looking under the specs only 3gb of the 4 shows up as usable so yeah the xp operating system-like thing must be 32bit, bear in mind this is a networked machine, but i've tryed cs4 over the network (saved on a server in network office, and accessed from this machine, and alternatively at a local level (installing it on the machine hdd) and both show the same result).

I admit its running as straight off disk with no updates (being a pc gamer and knowing the benifits of getting the latest updates/patches i always stress this but my boss always fobs this off unless the near last option claiming it takes too long to get updates and such, man annys me a lot, lol)

how would i find where the scratch disk is? other software wise i haven't tryed any other software, but i know from students using the machines that office and photoshop 7 (boss has machines using old photoshop for now) work absolutely fine.

_TubbZ_ · 10 Jul 2010 at 23:40

There are a few things you can do to help it out a bit like setting up the scratch disk, reducing the undo's and allocating more memory to PS. Heres a nice guide:
http://blog.ramin-hossaini.com/2008/11/15/improving-photoshop-cs4-performance/

obviously theres no reason not to install the latest updates and if you don't then thats one hell of a lot of money wasted on photoshop and PC's for it to not work as well as it should.

BTW i had CS4 running on my laptop which is only 2.5Ghz C2D, 3GB RAM and it never seemed too bad performance wise. But i removed it and went back to CS2 which i know and love. CS4 didn't really have enough new things for me

Destination · 11 Jul 2010 at 07:15

Since it isn't updated, that'll be the problem.
As seveal folks have said adobe are atrocious, and it took the most recent update to get performance out of recent hardware.
Just convince your boss to update, or download the latest update and install it.

Job done.

Cosimo · 11 Jul 2010 at 17:21

The Scop said:
how would i find where the scratch disk is? other software wise i haven't tryed any other software, but i know from students using the machines that office and photoshop 7 (boss has machines using old photoshop for now) work absolutely fine.

Edit, Preferences, Performance.

To update:

Help, Updates.

The Scop · 12 Jul 2010 at 08:40

Oh my goodness thanks so much guys, installed the update, works well now oddly, thanks everyone and cheers simulatorman for suggesting updating.