CS2 Speed Problems

[Blindman]

I've been looking in this forum for the best links on the issue of CS2 vs CS speed. I've found lots on the Bridge (which runs great on my computer), but only a couple of links on the CS2 program itself. It's getting so frustrating that I'm opening CS (not CS2) and then the Bridge (to use w/ CS). Everything ran speedily (never noticed any delays on anything) in CS, but even the levels command has a delay when moving the sliders in CS2.
My computer:
XP Professional
Asus MB w/ AMD 2500+
1.5G DDR333 memory
ATI 9600 Pro card
2 160G WD Hard Drives

I keep the drives dragmented, followed the guidelines for page file, working directory, etc. I know Norton AV causes a performance hit, but it never caused CS to slow down. I even did projects w/ 40 files open at once while running actions on them. Any ideas?

--
JC

 

[Kent C]

JC,

See this post:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=13405318

Most of the slowness reported on the adobe boards are from old video cards or old drivers - with the exception of ATI :-\ It seems that some are still having problems with the catalyst drivers which is why I'm still using drivers prior to that (2003).

Keeping memory allocation in Edit> preferences at the default 55% to start and then experiment by adding 5% increments - too much will slow down some computers.

European copies are speeded up by not having the 'info' window open - it appears there's a bug.

Here's what I did to drop some fonts (btw, a good font manager will do this for you):

In Windows open the fonts directory.
Create a new directory - fonts back up.
Copy the original into the backup.
Make a new sub directory of the backup called 'cuts'

I then went into word and saw what fonts I wanted to say and what I wanted to get rid of.

In the backup directory I highlighted (control click) each font I wanted to delete as I went through them in Word. When finished I right clicked on the selections and 'cut' and pasted into the 'cuts' directory. Then used that directory to match to the Windows fonts directory and deleted those fonts.

Caution: there's some fonts you can't delete:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/aboutgraphics/a/fontoverload_3.htm

And there will be some that are used by some programs but already I've seen that those programs will substitute a similar font - so far haven't had to reload any fonts. Like I said, I still have 330 left and adobe engineers are suggesting leaving only 200 or so.

As far as setting PS to 'high priority' in Task Manager, there is a routine listed in one of the threads at Adobe on how to do that each time PS is started - but it is listed by a user not an engineer, so decide accordingly.

--
Kent

http://www.pbase.com/kentc
For prior discussions on most questions:
http://porg.4t.com/KentC.html
or d/l 'archives' at:
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[Blindman]

Thanks for the info. I tried setting the priority to high and it helped. You can watch the CPU usage in the performance tab and see a dramatic difference. Try viewing the upper left bar graph in the performance tab while dragging a slider in the levels command. Try this at normal priority and high priority. When in normal, the bar goes up to almost 100% while moving the slider. In high, it stays low, the picture responds quickly to the movement, and for an instant it will go up to 100% while applying.

Just curious, will reducing the fonts quicken the programs response or just the load time. The fonts were not a problem in CS performance. I tried disabling font preview and it didn't seem to help.
--
JC

 

[Kent C]

Thanks for the info. I tried setting the priority to high and it
helped. You can watch the CPU usage in the performance tab and see
a dramatic difference. Try viewing the upper left bar graph in the
performance tab while dragging a slider in the levels command. Try
this at normal priority and high priority. When in normal, the bar
goes up to almost 100% while moving the slider. In high, it stays
low, the picture responds quickly to the movement, and for an
instant it will go up to 100% while applying.
Just curious, will reducing the fonts quicken the programs response
or just the load time. The fonts were not a problem in CS
performance. I tried disabling font preview and it didn't seem to
help.

Re: fonts - just on loading. Some people are at 30-45 seconds!

There's a post on adobe re: task manager as far as deciding the % used in preferences - has to do with the amount of Physical memory - don't have the link but if you go there and search task manager physical you should find it. I think it's a faq.

--
Kent

http://www.pbase.com/kentc
For prior discussions on most questions:
http://porg.4t.com/KentC.html
or d/l 'archives' at:
http://www.atncentral.com

 

[Blindman]

I just wrote a simple batch file that loads CS2 in High Priority mode. I experimented w/ Bridge in High Priority but it made no difference in the performance (which I'm perfectly happy with).
Here is the script for the batch file (remembered how from the old DOS days):

@echo off
cd d "H:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\"
start high Photoshop.exe

Created in Notepad and saved as CS2.bat
Where H: is my drive w/ CS2 on it

I put the batch file in My Documents, then right clicked on the PSCS2 icon on the desktop, clicked on properties and changed the target to:
"F:\Documents and Settings\John\My Documents\PSCS2.bat"

Now when I double click on the PSCS2 icon on the desktop it starts CS2 in high priority mode each time and loads bridge in Normal priority.

--
JC

 

[Kent C]

As long as it works

Here's the batch from adobe poster dave milbut:

rem---start batch file---
@echo off
c:
cd "\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\"
start high photoshop.exe
rem---end batch file---

--
Kent

http://www.pbase.com/kentc
For prior discussions on most questions:
http://porg.4t.com/KentC.html
or d/l 'archives' at:
http://www.atncentral.com

 

[Ronald Ward]

Could you please give step by step instructions on how to set the priority mode?
Im running win xp home

Thanks RON

 

[Jay Bean]

All you're actually seeing is that PS is now running at a higher priority than the performance monitor, hence, the performance monitor cannot get and display data points while PS has the CPU pegged.

Thanks for the info. I tried setting the priority to high and it
helped. You can watch the CPU usage in the performance tab and see
a dramatic difference. Try viewing the upper left bar graph in the
performance tab while dragging a slider in the levels command. Try
this at normal priority and high priority. When in normal, the bar
goes up to almost 100% while moving the slider. In high, it stays
low, the picture responds quickly to the movement, and for an
instant it will go up to 100% while applying.
Just curious, will reducing the fonts quicken the programs response
or just the load time. The fonts were not a problem in CS
performance. I tried disabling font preview and it didn't seem to
help.
--
JC

 

[Blindman]

Since TaskManager also runs at High Priority by default, are you sure of your statement? Just curious...
--
JC

 

[Kent C]

Do just what Blindman say two posts up (right now). Except make sure you put in your path with the correct drive in both the batch file (which is the Adobe path) and the bat file (which would be the Documents and Settings path).
--
Kent

http://www.pbase.com/kentc
For prior discussions on most questions:
http://porg.4t.com/KentC.html
or d/l 'archives' at:
http://www.atncentral.com

 

[eddie]

One thing is MUST with all photoshop's DO not use volume where photo shop is installed as primary scratch disk.

If you have other partitions or spare drive, Go to Preferences > PLug-Ins & Scratch> and select different partition/drive as no 1.
Restart photoshop.

Second thing, you must have minimum 3 times the file used free space on your drive.
And RAM - never too much
See help file - improving performance.
Good luck

Eddie

 

[Jay Bean]

I stand corrected. Strike that theory (unless of course he was setting PS all the way up to Real Time priority and just just one notch up).

Since TaskManager also runs at High Priority by default, are you
sure of your statement? Just curious...
--
JC

 

[Barry F]

I've seen quite a bit here on CS2 running very slowly but nothing about it actually freezing (which it does for me very regularly). I'm currently in the process of working my way through some of the slowness fixes but I'd be interested in knowing if anyone else has freezing problems and what they do about them. I don't find the Adobe help site or forum very useful. I'm no expert but it looks like a memory problem which is strange since I just installed CS2 on a new machine with 1 GB of RAM. I never had this problem with PS7.