Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Digital Cameras & Shooting Techniques => Topic started by: dwdallam on November 22, 2008, 01:10:57 am

Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 22, 2008, 01:10:57 am
I've been working with CS4 for a few hours now throughout several days, and here is my initial impression:

1. This is the version we've been waiting for. Everything is smooth and streamlined.

2. Smooth installation, everything works. Remember the problems people were having with CS3's original print to Acrobat, among other bugs? Well there isn't any of that nonsense now. CS4 is smooth, really smooth. It loads, it works. No bull.

3. Real world upgrades that really matter, mainly navigation oriented. This results in a more fluid work flow, at least for me. For instance, all windows are undockable and float even over the borders of the PS windows. The tool tabs are better designed and more intuitive, and now we also have Adjustment tools as a panel also. These tools, when you use them, automatically create an adjustment layer.

Things are just easier to find, and they feel like they are just "right there" when you need them. There is a new concept called a sticky button, and you'll use it automatically because it's part of the system now. You click down on it and when you release it reverts back to the original BEFORE adjustment. So if you make an adjustment, and I'm not sure where this button is, but that's of no concern because I remember using it, and you want to see what it looked like before, you click down on the button, which show you a "before" layer and then when you release it, the adjustment you just made come back, so you don't need to "UNDO" "REDO". Now that is slick. It's just full of those little things like that. Another one, and maybe I'm mistaken about his, but if you right click a layer, you have Merge functions available as the last choices. So you don't need to go to the top of the tool bar>Layers>Merge Down any longer. There is a TON of this stuff in CS4.

4. The entire PS desktop is pretty much configurable, unlike CS, CS2, CS3 where for some reason Adobe confined us to a static workplace. The first thing you'll notice and say to yourself is something like, "Where are the borders and all the other clutter I'm use to?" This version is really streamlined as far as interface goes. I just don't have the ability to explain this aspect of PSCS4. How about, NON INTRUSIVE to a point of fine detail and NIMBLE? It's as if PSCS4 isn't even open.

5. 64 bit!!! YEAH! Although even working with RAW files from the 1DS3, with 4GB of RAM I have yet to run out of physical memory, even with Lightroom, PS, and other programs running in the back ground (I like to convert music while I work for my car stereo, and other things  ). More importantly is that if you need more than 4GB of RAM, you're in business. With a 64bit OS, PSCS4's 64bit, and LR2's 64bit capabilities, you can use infinite amounts of RAM for those three programs. If you don't have a 64 bit OS, Adobe conveniently coded a 32 bit version of PSCS4 also, which loads on install. The two share the same settings. If you have a 64bit CPU, it gets even better, although I haven't noticed a huge speed increase. What I have noticed  is that everything feels much punchier and more crisp. I get no mouse lag at anytime that I've noticed. PSCS4 is probably taking advantage of my dual core 64bit CPU, even though it's a first generation AMD x64. (I'm just now getting to really USE this CPU I bought in 2005.)

Although Adobe may charge far too much for their software, because they can, at least I feel like I'm getting exceptionally refined and top level, SOLID software. This version runs on jet turbine power.

I would like to see an expansion of the tabbed tools that Adobe has started. Like I said above, Adobe has put more tools there, mainly adjustments, such as levels, color, photo filters, etc., which really speeds up work flow and reduces mouse movement and clicking. I'd like to see Layers there too, such as Layer Mask>Reveal all/Hide all. They may be there but I've yet to discover them.

So I have this to say--so far regarding PSCS4+DWCS4+LR2 -- WAY TO GO ADOBE, EYES WIDE OPEN! Nice piece of work. I don't know if they fired people and rehired or hired better programmers/developers, but something has changed. The changes Adobe made this version are not seemingly the decision of one or a few people experimenting, but more like calculated, complex computer generated human interface engineering modeling put into real world use.

For those of you who might think this is a "fan boy" post, those of you who know me would not agree. If you look at my posts, you'll see I'm extremely analytical and critical of bugs and defects in both the hardware I use and the software--sometimes to a fault.

Hope this helps people in some way. That's what this forum is all about, right?

Have a nice day, night, cup of coffee, an so on.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: BernardLanguillier on November 22, 2008, 05:53:21 am
First hours of usage seem to indicate that it is an OK upgrade, I would personnally not call it great. Many useful additions going in the right direction, but I don't think that my workflow will be significantly improved. This only shows that CS3 was already a good product.  

I would probably be more positive if I were on PC, the lack of 64 bits support on Mac remains difficult to swallow, even if Apple is the main culprit.

I would personnally probably not have upgraded to PS CS4 alone, but there is good value in the overall Creative Suite Premium.

Cheers,
Bernard
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 22, 2008, 06:27:38 am
Quote from: BernardLanguillier
First hours of usage seem to indicate that it is an OK upgrade, I would personnally not call it great. Many useful additions going in the right direction, but I don't think that my workflow will be significantly improved. This only shows that CS3 was already a good product.  

I would probably be more positive if I were on PC, the lack of 64 bits support on Mac remains difficult to swallow, even if Apple is the main culprit.

I would personnally probably not have upgraded to PS CS4 alone, but there is good value in the overall Creative Suite Premium.

Cheers,
Bernard

Yeah the MAC version might not be as good as the PC version. I'm working with it right now and it's just sweet. Here's another tidbit: The working windows now support "flicks" where you flick the cursor, using a tablet pen, and the image spools in the direction you flick it. Tap the cursor to stop the motion where you want it. It's very fluid and nice to use. It's tight too in like REALLY crisp.

I wish the "H" key had the option to Toggle the Hand tool. You press it down and you get the hand tool, release it and it reverts back to the tool you were using.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: DiaAzul on November 22, 2008, 07:55:42 am
Quote from: BernardLanguillier
I would probably be more positive if I were on PC, the lack of 64 bits support on Mac remains difficult to swallow, even if Apple is the main culprit.



Cheers,
Bernard

I am a PC, and it's pretty awful. I don't agree with anything written in the original post. A lot of functionality I used previously has been chopped and/or change. The user interface is slow. I constantly need to wait for the screen to redraw when changing between layers, Brushes are a lot slower. The Adjustments panel is of fixed height and takes up 50%+ of the vertical real estate in the tool panel. There are more hooks and locations where subtle advertising is starting to creep in (or at least the opportunity is their for Adobe and their partners to start pushing more crap onto the desktop).

As stated earlier the hype versus the reality of CS4 is widely divergent and I wouldn't recommend it above CS3.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: eleanorbrown on November 22, 2008, 10:41:15 am
First, anyone know of any streaming/downloadable VIDEO tutorials on CS4?  Not Bridge, but CS4.  Also I'm on a Mac and really miss 64 bit.  I've had CS4 "hang"  several times necessitating a "force quit" and loosing all the work I've done on my image files.  In addition I get  "can't complete task" due to low RAM or something like that.  I'm on a high end quad core Mac with 8 gb of ram.  Eleanor



Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Tony Beach on November 22, 2008, 10:55:17 am
Quote from: dwdallam
"Where are the borders and all the other clutter I'm use to?"

With CS2, they are on my second monitor.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Wolfman on November 22, 2008, 01:02:10 pm
Quote from: eleanorbrown
First, anyone know of any streaming/downloadable VIDEO tutorials on CS4?  Not Bridge, but CS4.  Also I'm on a Mac and really miss 64 bit.  I've had CS4 "hang"  several times necessitating a "force quit" and loosing all the work I've done on my image files.  In addition I get  "can't complete task" due to low RAM or something like that.  I'm on a high end quad core Mac with 8 gb of ram.  Eleanor


Eleanor,

Do you have an empty hard drive dedicated to photoshop as a scratch disk? That might help if that isn't the case yet.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: kjkahn on November 22, 2008, 02:09:37 pm
Quote from: eleanorbrown
First, anyone know of any streaming/downloadable VIDEO tutorials on CS4?  Not Bridge, but CS4.  ....  Eleanor

Shortly after registering my upgrade to CS4, Adobe offered me a choice of complimentary registration benefits, including 30 days of access to [a href=\'index.php?act=findpost&pid=0\']www.lynda.com[/a]. I'm working through the CS4 video tutorials, as I did with CS3.

Ken
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: eleanorbrown on November 22, 2008, 05:17:28 pm
Ken, nothing comes up with this link.  Could you please repost.. Many thanks, Eleanor

Quote from: kjkahn
Shortly after registering my upgrade to CS4, Adobe offered me a choice of complimentary registration benefits, including 30 days of access to [a href=\'index.php?act=findpost&pid=0\']www.lynda.com[/a]. I'm working through the CS4 video tutorials, as I did with CS3.

Ken
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: madmanchan on November 22, 2008, 05:44:19 pm
Bernard, in the meantime on the Mac you can use a ram disk to use more real memory instead of going to swap. Not as convenient, but better than just using disk.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: BernardLanguillier on November 22, 2008, 10:04:36 pm
Quote from: madmanchan
Bernard, in the meantime on the Mac you can use a ram disk to use more real memory instead of going to swap. Not as convenient, but better than just using disk.

There used to be an optional library on CS3 that managed automatically at the cost of some short time freezes when painting.

- Is this now standard in CS4 or does it still have to be applied on top of the standard install?
- Where can it be found if it still isn't standard?

Thanks.

Cheers,
Bernard
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: kjkahn on November 22, 2008, 10:25:47 pm
Quote from: eleanorbrown
Ken, nothing comes up with this link.  Could you please repost.. Many thanks, Eleanor

Eleanor,

Sorry, I goofed.

Try www.lynda.com (http://www.lynda.com)

If you register, the Photoshop CS4 videos are in four sections:

Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 15
Photoshop CS4 Essential Training 8.25
Photoshop CS4 Getting Started 2
Photoshop CS4 New Features 1.5

The numbers are the durations in hours. The total is almost 27 hours of video. (You won't need the basic stuff).
You also have access to video tutorials for dozens of other progams by Adobe and other vendors, e.g. Final Cut Pro, Mac OS, AutoCad, Dreamweaver CS4, etc. As I look through the list, I realize one could spend as much time watching tutorials as one can stand and more than any of us can spare.

Ken
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: eleanorbrown on November 23, 2008, 10:06:21 am
No I don't but I keep my 500 gb boot (application) drive half full or less so there is lots of open space.  Also I checked the ram allotment in photoshop and it was less than 2 gb (I have 8 gb of ram on my mac quad core). eleanor

Quote from: Wolfman
Eleanor,

Do you have an empty hard drive dedicated to photoshop as a scratch disk? That might help if that isn't the case yet.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on November 23, 2008, 05:28:45 pm
Quote from: eleanorbrown
No I don't but I keep my 500 gb boot (application) drive half full or less so there is lots of open space.  Also I checked the ram allotment in photoshop and it was less than 2 gb (I have 8 gb of ram on my mac quad core). eleanor
"Lots of space" does not necessarily imply "lots of speed".

Ideally, you want your scratch (or swap) disk to be used exclusively for that purpose, and of course on a dedicated channel.

If it's parallel ATA (PATA, IDE), that means it should be the only disk on the same cable.

If it's FireWire, SATA, SCSI, SAS, FC-AL, no worries.

If it's USB, worry.

Regarding your RAM usage, see the advise on trying to set aside a part of the memory as a RAM disk and use that for scratch, that might help (it will probably not help for swap).
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: madmanchan on November 23, 2008, 08:06:26 pm
Hi Bernard, sorry, I'm not familiar with that library. Here's what I do. I open the Terminal on OS X and type:

hdid -nomount ram://4194304

That will create a 2 GB ram disk. If you want a 4GB ram disk, for instance, just double that number.

You then open Disk Utility and can format the new ram disk. It then shows up on the desktop. You can then configure PS to make this your primary swap disk.

Sounds like a pain, but it's not because you can just leave it that way (unless you reboot frequently ...).
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 24, 2008, 12:58:52 am
Quote from: DiaAzul
I am a PC, and it's pretty awful. I don't agree with anything written in the original post. A lot of functionality I used previously has been chopped and/or change. The user interface is slow. I constantly need to wait for the screen to redraw when changing between layers, Brushes are a lot slower. The Adjustments panel is of fixed height and takes up 50%+ of the vertical real estate in the tool panel. There are more hooks and locations where subtle advertising is starting to creep in (or at least the opportunity is their for Adobe and their partners to start pushing more crap onto the desktop).

As stated earlier the hype versus the reality of CS4 is widely divergent and I wouldn't recommend it above CS3.

I would recommend it above CS3 for all of the reason I've posted. The adjustments panel does not take up 50+% of MY screen because I operate at 1900x1200 on a 23"monitor. It takes up a tiny corner at that resolution. But your point about it being a static size is right on and something I missed--that's unacceptable. But you can simply click the right arrow and shrink it down to a postage stamp size anyway. You can also undock it and move it wherever you want it. Move it off all the way off the screen if you want. Then simply grab it and drag it back over to use it. The ability to simply click on the adjustment panel and toggle before and after is priceless too.

CS4 is not "widely divergent." It has not confused at least me in one single way. If you don't want to use the new stuff, you can simply click the tool panel on the above bar and choose "Basic," "Essentials" and 12 other windows layouts, or create your won, sort of like choosing Classic over Vista Aero in  Windows Vista.

Also, the working image panel now supports tabs, so you never have work underneath, just tabbed in the main work window.

My user interface is snappier than it ever has been, but then again I have the hardware for it too.

The fact that you're work flow was interrupted doesn't mean the upgrade is not an improvement. However, I do feel for you. Just give it a chance.

My brushes are faster. The entire program is faster on my rig: AMD X2 4800 64bit, BFG 7800 GTX graphics card. 4 GB Corsair Extreme RAM overclocked to 200Mhz. Western Digital Enterprise level RE2 16MB cache hard drive.

You might try updating your video driver. CS4 does incorporate changes to speed up redraws in teh video department. If you're seeing a slow down, that may be the culprit.

(http://dwdallam.com/shared/PSCS4Screen.jpg)
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 24, 2008, 07:22:23 am
I think I might have discovered a PSCS4 memory leak. It may be my system, but I'll have to set it up and watch the memory tomorrow. Shame, shame--lol. Ah hell I jsut started monitoring it anyway right now. It looks like LR2 might be the culprit . It's taking almost a GB of RAM just sitting there.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on November 24, 2008, 09:03:23 am
Quote from: madmanchan
Hi Bernard, sorry, I'm not familiar with that library. Here's what I do. I open the Terminal on OS X and type:

hdid -nomount ram://4194304

That will create a 2 GB ram disk. If you want a 4GB ram disk, for instance, just double that number.

You then open Disk Utility and can format the new ram disk. It then shows up on the desktop. You can then configure PS to make this your primary swap disk.

Sounds like a pain, but it's not because you can just leave it that way (unless you reboot frequently ...).

If you make a specific partition on a hard disk solely for scratch disk use will that be faster than using a secondry hard disk as scratch IF the secondry disk is in constant use?

I have a 500 gig HD which is used to store my photos that I'm working on. I use this as scratch as it's larger and free'er than the boot HD with PS on. Should I create a partition on the 'working' HD rather than just use it normally as scratch or won't I see a difference?
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on November 24, 2008, 09:50:46 am
Quote from: pom
If you make a specific partition on a hard disk solely for scratch disk use will that be faster than using a secondry hard disk as scratch IF the secondry disk is in constant use?

I have a 500 gig HD which is used to store my photos that I'm working on. I use this as scratch as it's larger and free'er than the boot HD with PS on. Should I create a partition on the 'working' HD rather than just use it normally as scratch or won't I see a difference?
Hard disks are nearly single-task, task-switching devices.

That means that if you use a disk for several tasks simultaneously, the competition for resources may be detrimental to performance.

Sometimes, this works out okay, because the tasks aren't heavy enough to matter. Other times, the next simultaenous task will bog the entire computer down.

The question that must be answered to answer your question is therefore:

Q: Will the scratch space compete with other disk intensive processes on the same disk?

If so, the answer is

A: You ought to keep these on different disks.

In your question, it's a bit unclear what you mean with "constant use". If the hard disk is chirping constantly, that is constant enough use that you shouldn't put a scratch space on it as well.

Partitioning can be relevant to the extent that you can choose where on the disk your scratch partition resides. Usually, performance is better at the beginning of the disk, so that is usually where you want your streaming performance sensitive disk accesses to go.

("Streaming performance" means essentially performance for large, contiguous files.)
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: narikin on November 24, 2008, 11:51:09 am
Quote from: DiaAzul
I am a PC, and it's pretty awful. I don't agree with anything written in the original post. A lot of functionality I used previously has been chopped and/or change. The user interface is slow. I constantly need to wait for the screen to redraw when changing between layers, Brushes are a lot slower. As stated earlier the hype versus the reality of CS4 is widely divergent and I wouldn't recommend it above CS3.
you probably have a low level video card, and the program is unable to utilise that effectively. either upgrade your video card, or disable OpenGL support (in Preferences)

I find CS4 an amazing upgrade. hallelujah for 64bit at last. no more cache disk. ever. am saving close to 2 hours a day on big files. just great.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 24, 2008, 10:54:54 pm
Quote from: jani
Hard disks are nearly single-task, task-switching devices.

That means that if you use a disk for several tasks simultaneously, the competition for resources may be detrimental to performance.

Sometimes, this works out okay, because the tasks aren't heavy enough to matter. Other times, the next simultaenous task will bog the entire computer down.

The question that must be answered to answer your question is therefore:

Q: Will the scratch space compete with other disk intensive processes on the same disk?

If so, the answer is

A: You ought to keep these on different disks.

In your question, it's a bit unclear what you mean with "constant use". If the hard disk is chirping constantly, that is constant enough use that you shouldn't put a scratch space on it as well.

Partitioning can be relevant to the extent that you can choose where on the disk your scratch partition resides. Usually, performance is better at the beginning of the disk, so that is usually where you want your streaming performance sensitive disk accesses to go.

("Streaming performance" means essentially performance for large, contiguous files.)

You can do a simple small partition on a second drive, say 10GB, and tell PS to use that. I also create a small partition for the Windows scratch disk.  It's pretty simple but does require a second HD. You could also plug in a Fire wire external HD--cheap--and use that too. If you have a backup drive, you can use that too.

If you don't want to mess with multiple drives, you can use a SCSI drive and then even if you have the scratch disk on the same drive, you'll be fine--that's what SCSI disks are made for, multitasking. The down side is that they are expensive MB. They're really hot though, really hot.

And last, you can just buy more RAM too.

I really like the idea of a RAM disk to run programs in though. That's an old school trick. You'll need to find or write a script that auto loads the scratch disk on start up though, and all the preference changes you make in PS will be lost on each shutdown--since the entire program is in volatile RAM. I don't think "recent file" will even work on next start up. But that is minor.

Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 25, 2008, 12:03:47 am
One thing I think is long overdue is an built in Plug in similar to Imagenomics Portraiture. But then again it took Adobe years to build a noise reduction option too, now called "Remove Noise" which I might add works quite well for as simplistic as it is.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: BernardLanguillier on November 25, 2008, 12:26:48 am
Quote from: dwdallam
One thing I think is long overdue is an built in Plug in similar to Imagenomics Portraiture. But then again it took Adobe years to build a noise reduction option too, now called "Remove Noise" which I might add works quite well for as simplistic as it is.

Allow me to differ 180 degrees on this. The role of Adobe is to provide a platform, not to waste resources developping competitors to third party plug-ins.

Cheers,
Bernard
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 25, 2008, 12:53:55 am
Quote from: BernardLanguillier
Allow me to differ 180 degrees on this. The role of Adobe is to provide a platform, not to waste resources developping competitors to third party plug-ins.

Cheers,
Bernard


There are many things in PS that use to be exclusively plug-in territory. Would you like to see all of those taken out that have been put in over the years? If you want, I can list those options, many of which you would probably not appreciate if they were only available through Plug-ins. Advanced Masking come to mind, and photo filters is another. The list is long, very long, and includes reduce noise.

I mean if you don't advocate removing those non essential non platform options, why would you object to more of them?

I would say that Imagnomic's Portraiture is a complex piece of software though, but then again so too is reduce noise software, which was exclusively plug-in territory not too long ago. Adobe also use to offer less options in the resize department, also the domain of plug-ins. Hmm, here is a good one for you: "Layer Styles." I remember having to do everything layer styles offers mechanically. I mean you'd have to use multiple layers, offsets, and colors to get a simple bevel or shadow, or glow. Black and white conversion, lens correction, and on, and so on . . . .
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: BernardLanguillier on November 25, 2008, 01:11:17 am
Quote from: dwdallam
There are many things in PS that use to be exclusively plug-in territory. Would you like to see all of those taken out that have been put in over the years? If you want, I can list those options, many of which you would probably not appreciate if they were only available through Plug-ins. Advanced Masking come to mind, and photo filters is another. The list is long, very long, and includes reduce noise.

Taking away things that have already been developped doesn't make much sense, does it? The fact is that I am not using any of these functions because they are typically inferior to the dedicated tools. Panorama and noise reduction come to mind...

Quote from: dwdallam
I mean if you don't advocate removing those non essential non platform options, why would you object to more of them?

Euh.... because they could devote these resources to other more important things? Are you familiar with the concept of opportunity cost?

Cheers,
Bernard
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 25, 2008, 02:39:42 am
Quote from: BernardLanguillier
Taking away things that have already been developped doesn't make much sense, does it? The fact is that I am not using any of these functions because they are typically inferior to the dedicated tools. Panorama and noise reduction come to mind...



Euh.... because they could devote these resources to other more important things? Are you familiar with the concept of opportunity cost?

Cheers,
Bernard

It's a subjective but arguable position you have, I'll give you that. And the fact that those options are inferior--and that's a matter of degree and not kind--to dedicated plugins does not dictate they must always be that way. And there are other ways to incorporate those options into PS, such as hiring Imogenomic to do it for you. Microsoft has done this forever, such as disk tools, which was out sourced to Norton.

It's no big deal man. My point is that almost every non core tool in PS was once upon a time a plugin. And with millions of photographers doing portrait work, they may be well served by a portraiture option. But I do see your point. I can use my action to do a general job on skin texture, and then use masks to reveal what I want. After dialing in portraiture, however, and saving predefined options, the masking, revealing, warming, cooling, smoothing is all done RIGHT NOW, which saves me time that I could be better using by taking more pictures and meeting new clients.


Nice images, BTW, from your website. very inspiring--and man do I need that everyday! Head's up on the English translation where it says "New Website Goes Life!." Unless I misread what you were saying, it should be "Live" not "Life." Tokyo looks fabulous. I have a couple of friends that have been to Tokyo several times, and they love it. It's like their favorite place on earth.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: DiaAzul on November 25, 2008, 04:10:21 am
Quote from: narikin
you probably have a low level video card, and the program is unable to utilise that effectively. either upgrade your video card, or disable OpenGL support (in Preferences)

I find CS4 an amazing upgrade. hallelujah for 64bit at last. no more cache disk. ever. am saving close to 2 hours a day on big files. just great.

Thanks for the suggestion. I had already come to a similar conclusion and decided the only way to get CS4 to work to my satisfaction would be to upgrade the entire PC. My only concern is whether I will also need to upgrade the laptop as well, or whether CS4 becomes just a desktop solution and I need to purchase Lightroom for the laptop...this is getting to be an expensive software upgrade.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 25, 2008, 06:23:17 am
Quote from: DiaAzul
Thanks for the suggestion. I had already come to a similar conclusion and decided the only way to get CS4 to work to my satisfaction would be to upgrade the entire PC. My only concern is whether I will also need to upgrade the laptop as well, or whether CS4 becomes just a desktop solution and I need to purchase Lightroom for the laptop...this is getting to be an expensive software upgrade.


You could just use CS3, if you could get your money back for CS4 somehow. I mean I really like the new CS4, but it's not "that" different from CS3 (with teh exception that you can now use GOBS of RAM), now that I'm more familiar with it. It does seem to have some bugs too, like maybe a mem leak. It seems like the longer it stays open, the more memory it takes. If you have to upgrade your entire system, and you're not ready to do that, CS3 is no problem.

One reason I was anticipating CS4 is that the Dodge and Burn tools were upgraded to keep tones more inline, instead of just turning things gray when you burn or white when you dodge. I see no difference in those tools. Unless I'm doing something wrong, they're still nearly useless for photographic use as they are. Well, they may be a little better, but marginally so, at least working on portraits.

I've noticed now that the clone stamp tool on my system is REALLY laggy. I can hit it ten times and put my tablet pen down and the cursor is still click moving.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on November 25, 2008, 09:33:54 am
Quote from: DiaAzul
Thanks for the suggestion. I had already come to a similar conclusion and decided the only way to get CS4 to work to my satisfaction would be to upgrade the entire PC. My only concern is whether I will also need to upgrade the laptop as well, or whether CS4 becomes just a desktop solution and I need to purchase Lightroom for the laptop...this is getting to be an expensive software upgrade.
I've been testing CS4 on a new Mac Pro and a 3 yr old Vaio laptop. Both worked fine, the main difference being the  new flick pan/rotate/zoom features that are graphics card dependent, simply don't work on the old laptop. CS4 otherwise is much faster than CS3 on the PC.
Most complaints I've come across regarding CS4 are to do with the user not quite getting to grips with the differences, rather than the differences being inferior. A little time reading about the tweaks and learning the feel of them and suddenly CS4 is much better.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on November 25, 2008, 10:09:04 am
Quote from: madmanchan
Bernard, in the meantime on the Mac you can use a ram disk to use more real memory instead of going to swap. Not as convenient, but better than just using disk.

Hi Eric:

I enquired of my local Mac Guru (Lloyd Chambers) about this a while back and he indicated his testing has shown that a good striped array for scratch is superior to RAM disks for scratch.  But I agree that the RAM disk would be superior to a single HD...   The other thing to note is in OSX the maximum RAM disk you can make is 2.2G I think, so instead of making one larger one, you have to make a pair or trio or quartet then set them up as 1,2,3 &4th choices in CS prefs. I understand this is due the "hdid" command being 32-bit not 64...

FWIW,
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on November 25, 2008, 03:48:22 pm
I really like the new CS4 too. I had to upgrade my computer though, since I was on an older single core AMD machine and CS4 was just too much for it to handle (not to mention Lightroom).

The new machine just flies though! It's an Intel Q9550 Quad Core running at 3.4Ghz, 8GB of RAM, ATI Radeon 4850 HD 512MB Video Card, Velociraptor hard drive for OS and programs, with 2 separate additional disks for scratch and images, running on Vista 64bit. Total cost was about $1300 to build it myself.

It runs the Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed Test (http://www.retouchartists.com/pages/speedtest.html) in just 18 seconds, and the video card GPU does screen redraws very fast.

I suppose the new machine has colored my view of CS4 when compared to CS3 on my old box, but regardless I'm very happy with the upgrade.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 26, 2008, 01:39:35 am
Quote from: Sheldon N
I really like the new CS4 too. I had to upgrade my computer though, since I was on an older single core AMD machine and CS4 was just too much for it to handle (not to mention Lightroom).

The new machine just flies though! It's an Intel Q9550 Quad Core running at 3.4Ghz, 8GB of RAM, ATI Radeon 4850 HD 512MB Video Card, Velociraptor hard drive for OS and programs, with 2 separate additional disks for scratch and images, running on Vista 64bit. Total cost was about $1300 to build it myself.

It runs the Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed Test (http://www.retouchartists.com/pages/speedtest.html) in just 18 seconds, and the video card GPU does screen redraws very fast.

I suppose the new machine has colored my view of CS4 when compared to CS3 on my old box, but regardless I'm very happy with the upgrade.


I tired downloading that file and got errors in the zip when unzipping. Do you have a working copy of that zip? I also emailed them about it with the errors, which are below:
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Cannot create Retouch Artists Speed Test\Action\Icon

!   The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Attempting to correct the invalid file name
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Renaming Retouch Artists Speed Test\Action\Icon
 to Retouch Artists Speed Test\Action\Icon_
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Cannot create __MACOSX\Retouch Artists Speed Test\Action\._Icon

!   The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Attempting to correct the invalid file name
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Renaming __MACOSX\Retouch Artists Speed Test\Action\._Icon
 to __MACOSX\Retouch Artists Speed Test\Action\._Icon_
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Cannot create Retouch Artists Speed Test\Icon

!   The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Attempting to correct the invalid file name
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Renaming Retouch Artists Speed Test\Icon
 to Retouch Artists Speed Test\Icon_
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Cannot create __MACOSX\Retouch Artists Speed Test\._Icon

!   The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Attempting to correct the invalid file name
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Renaming __MACOSX\Retouch Artists Speed Test\._Icon
 to __MACOSX\Retouch Artists Speed Test\._Icon_
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Cannot create Retouch Artists Speed Test\Test Image\Icon

!   The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Attempting to correct the invalid file name
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Renaming Retouch Artists Speed Test\Test Image\Icon
 to Retouch Artists Speed Test\Test Image\Icon_
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Cannot create __MACOSX\Retouch Artists Speed Test\Test Image\._Icon

!   The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Attempting to correct the invalid file name
!   E:\TEMP\retouchartists.com_speed_test.zip: Renaming __MACOSX\Retouch Artists Speed Test\Test Image\._Icon
 to __MACOSX\Retouch Artists Speed Test\Test Image\._Icon_
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on November 26, 2008, 04:55:26 am
Well, just tried to go 64 bit yesterday, didn't think it through properly when my scanner, spyder and printer stopped working and there were'nt 64 bit drivers for them (yes they are old). Oh well, maybe next time. Wanted to use more than 3 gig of ram, heck it's stupidly cheap at present. Maybe when I've got a bit more time and money I'll upgrade the hardware all round.

I do have a couple of SATA/IDE ports still available, have to see if I can get my hands on a low capacity disk and maybe make myself a dedicated scratch drive.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on November 26, 2008, 05:02:02 am
Quote from: pom
Wanted to use more than 3 gig of ram, heck it's stupidly cheap at present. Maybe when I've got a bit more time and money I'll upgrade the hardware all round.
Don't worry, upgrading to a given performance level will be cheaper in a year or two.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 26, 2008, 05:44:18 am
Quote from: pom
Well, just tried to go 64 bit yesterday, didn't think it through properly when my scanner, spyder and printer stopped working and there were'nt 64 bit drivers for them (yes they are old). Oh well, maybe next time. Wanted to use more than 3 gig of ram, heck it's stupidly cheap at present. Maybe when I've got a bit more time and money I'll upgrade the hardware all round.

I do have a couple of SATA/IDE ports still available, have to see if I can get my hands on a low capacity disk and maybe make myself a dedicated scratch drive.


Try Ebay for a newer Spyder, or simply dual boot and use the Spyder in the 32 bit system to calibrate, then boot with Win 64.

If you have an external HD, load 32 bit on it, then Spyder it using that OS. Then boot with your new 64 bit system. You can use the 32 bit boot disk for the scanner too.

It's really easy. I have two boot disks I use for various reasons. If you need any help let me know. It's a cheap, as in NO extra money, solution so you can start using more RAM.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 26, 2008, 06:49:37 am
Another thing I'd like to see is an easier way to create real path like circular text. Geeze Adobe.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on November 26, 2008, 03:48:09 pm
I'll email you the speed test action file, test image and instructions.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: DiaAzul on November 26, 2008, 05:25:16 pm
Quote from: Sheldon N
I really like the new CS4 too. I had to upgrade my computer though, since I was on an older single core AMD machine and CS4 was just too much for it to handle (not to mention Lightroom).

The new machine just flies though! It's an Intel Q9550 Quad Core running at 3.4Ghz, 8GB of RAM, ATI Radeon 4850 HD 512MB Video Card, Velociraptor hard drive for OS and programs, with 2 separate additional disks for scratch and images, running on Vista 64bit. Total cost was about $1300 to build it myself.

It runs the Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed Test (http://www.retouchartists.com/pages/speedtest.html) in just 18 seconds, and the video card GPU does screen redraws very fast.

I suppose the new machine has colored my view of CS4 when compared to CS3 on my old box, but regardless I'm very happy with the upgrade.

I have roughly the same system on order, though with Core i7 rather than Q9550. Just tried your speed test on my current computer and beginning to think that an upgrade isn't going to be worthwhile ;-)   Took 4min15 for CS3 and 3min5 for CS4  
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on November 27, 2008, 10:01:38 am
Quote from: DiaAzul
I have roughly the same system on order, though with Core i7 rather than Q9550. Just tried your speed test on my current computer and beginning to think that an upgrade isn't going to be worthwhile ;-)   Took 4min15 for CS3 and 3min5 for CS4  
That's the result you'd expect from a creaky 5-6yr old machine!!  
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on November 27, 2008, 11:52:53 am
I don't think you can run your calibration in x32 then have the computer use the profile in x64 but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thing is that my original spyder has always been perfect for my CRT's (I don't use LCD's) and gives me perfect colour matching, I'm scared to mess with a winning combination!  
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on November 27, 2008, 09:23:50 pm
Quote from: DiaAzul
I have roughly the same system on order, though with Core i7 rather than Q9550. Just tried your speed test on my current computer and beginning to think that an upgrade isn't going to be worthwhile ;-)   Took 4min15 for CS3 and 3min5 for CS4  

I went back and did the speed test on my prior machine... CS4 took me 4 min 40 seconds to complete the same test. Talk about an upgrade!!

Lightroom is super speedy on the new box too. I imported 200 RAW files from the 5D and it can build the 1:1 previews at a rate very close to 1 second per image! Lightroom on the old machine was soooooo slooooow... it was what ultimately forced me to upgrade.

Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 27, 2008, 10:50:14 pm
64 seconds.

I didn't close all my programs, like firewalls, scanners, sound etc.

Are you suppose to hit the stop watch as soon as you hit the start button, or wait for the test to make it's first move? It just sits there for a few seconds. I started it immediately as I pressed the start button.

CPU: AMD x2 64 4800
RAM: Corsair Extreme 4GB (Overclocked to 200Mhz)
Video: 7800GTX
Mian Board: Asus A8N Premium SLI
OS: Vista 64
PSCS4

This system was built by me in July of 2005. At that time the CPU, RAM, and Video was the hottest you could buy.

Your new system is over three times are fast as mine with this test. 18 seconds is smokin' for that. Makes me want to upgrade, but in real world use, I'm not sitting around waiting for things to happen, unless I'm doing same radical rendering like that test does, which isn't often. All the same, it would save me time during days that heavily I process and design.

There is another test thatn likes to circulate also. It's based on radial blur. Apple likes to use it to show how much faster Macs are than PCs. The problem is that when you run a test like this one, Macs get hit hard compared to PCs, but taht was back in the days before Mac went to Intel CPUs.

In any event, it would be fun to see what you system clocks on the radial blur test.

Instructions:

1. Down load the file:
[attachment=9919:20056453...46016_rs.jpg]


2. Open it in PS.

3. Choose Filter, Blur, Radial Blur:
Amount 100%
Blur Method: Spin
Quality: Best

4. Set your PS image window to "Timing." This will automatically time it for you. When the blur is done, read the time in the bottom left of the image window.

I did it in:
1st test: 56 sec. on a fresh PC and PS start.
2nd Test: 34 sec. Closed the image, reopen it. Ran test. .
3rd test: 29 sec. Closed PS, restarted PS, reopened image. Ran test.

This is the exact same speed I got running CS and Win XP back in 2005.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 27, 2008, 10:57:13 pm
Quote from: pom
I don't think you can run your calibration in x32 then have the computer use the profile in x64 but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thing is that my original spyder has always been perfect for my CRT's (I don't use LCD's) and gives me perfect colour matching, I'm scared to mess with a winning combination!  


I don't think it matter as far as the profile goes. Just try it. Shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes. If you download Acronis True Image you can create a boot disk that has the boot level Acronis TI program on it. It never expires and the download is free. After you get the boot image create on a CD you can remove TI from windows, as it is only a trial. If you have 32 bit already installed, make an image and then restore that image to your external hard drive. Then load 64 on your main drive. If thta doesn't work for some reason, use the image of your 32 bit system you made to restore your main drive. Takesa bout 10 minutes and you're back in business again.

In fact, everyone here working professionally should have a boot level True Image disk and an image of your C drive and program partition, if you partition. It's so nice to have that image ready when you boot in and for some reason all your dlls are corrupted. Saved my ass several times now.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 28, 2008, 03:35:41 am
Unless there is a way to disable the Adobe Auto-Run_No_Matter-What-You-Do Updater, this is another serious infraction from my perspective. It's pegs CPU and clogs bandwidth. Poorly written for sure.

For those of you pulling your hair out over this in Windows, here you go:

Browse to:
C:\program files (x86)\common files\adobe\updater6\adobeupdater.exe
Change the file name to something like: adobeupdater.exe.STOP

So tired of that stiupid program launching every time I open an app.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on November 28, 2008, 04:20:58 am
Quote from: dwdallam
1st test: 56 sec. on a fresh PC and PS start.
2nd Test: 34 sec. Closed the image, reopen it. Ran test. .
3rd test: 29 sec. Closed PS, restarted PS, reopened image. Ran test.
Photoshop Elements 4.01, PowerMac Quad G5 with "automatic" performance (i.e.: the processors are running slower and cooler until you need the processing power), 6.5 GiB RAM (no RAM disk, PS El is allowed to use up to 3072 MiB):

1st test: 33.3s (PS El was in the background and was "woken up" for the test)
2nd test: 20.7s (Closed the image, set CPU performance to maximum, reopened the image)
3rd test: 28.3s (Closed PS El, restarted, reopened, CPU perf still at maximum)

I don't think I can run the Action-based test with PS El 4, though. I guess I could download a trial version of CS4, but that will have to wait a bit.

The Quad G5 was acquired three years ago.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 28, 2008, 04:41:54 am
Quote from: jani
Photoshop Elements 4.01, PowerMac Quad G5 with "automatic" performance (i.e.: the processors are running slower and cooler until you need the processing power), 6.5 GiB RAM (no RAM disk, PS El is allowed to use up to 3072 MiB):

1st test: 33.3s (PS El was in the background and was "woken up" for the test)
2nd test: 20.7s (Closed the image, set CPU performance to maximum, reopened the image)
3rd test: 28.3s (Closed PS El, restarted, reopened, CPU perf still at maximum)

I don't think I can run the Action-based test with PS El 4, though. I guess I could download a trial version of CS4, but that will have to wait a bit.

The Quad G5 was acquired three years ago.


Yep it's a test developed for the MAC CPUs.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on November 28, 2008, 10:28:49 am
that "speed" test is not very demanding on the system as it won't force scratch.  My 2-generation old MacBookPro 15", 2.6/4G RAM (2g to CS4), did it in 31, 32 and 29 seconds. I'll run it on my desktop on Monday just for fun.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 29, 2008, 03:09:35 am
Quote from: Jack Flesher
that "speed" test is not very demanding on the system as it won't force scratch.  My 2-generation old MacBookPro 15", 2.6/4G RAM (2g to CS4), did it in 31, 32 and 29 seconds. I'll run it on my desktop on Monday just for fun.

Why do you want to test your hard drive with scratch? My system never writes to the scratch disk, or more technically, the "Page" file. If it did, I'd go from 4 to 8 GB of RAM. The point is to get PS off your hard drive for manipulations. Am I missing your point?

and yeah your MAC will score good on it because it runs best on a MAC. That's why MAC used it back in the day. It was something the MAC CPU could do well, even better than the AMDs and Intel's of the time, until AMD broke open teh flood gates wit the X2 64 generation Dual Core CPUs back in 2005. That's about the same time MAC tossed in the chips and went Intel.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on November 29, 2008, 09:42:39 am
Quote from: dwdallam
Why do you want to test your hard drive with scratch? My system never writes to the scratch disk, or more technically, the "Page" file. If it did, I'd go from 4 to 8 GB of RAM. The point is to get PS off your hard drive for manipulations. Am I missing your point?

First off, page and scratch can be two different things; using accepted jargon, page generally refers to the OS caching or swapping back to the OS drive while scratch generally refers to CS paging for itself.  

The point folks tend to not be aware of (miss) is that CS is still poorly coded when it come to memory utilization. It will reserve scratch even if it has excess RAM available "just in case." It generally needs a fairly large file, like 50MB to force it to start that, so if you only shoot P&S jpegs and don't use many layers and don't open a bunch of images at the same time, then you'll probably rarely scratch.  However, if you regularly work with 16MP DSLR files with a few layers and have multiple files open at the same time, CS will scratch in the background if only to save history states. IOW it reserves scratch by actually setting up the file even if it doesn't need it. If you don't have a scratch disk, you'll see your system temporarily "hang" while it reserves that space on your base volume if you don't have a dedicated scratch partition.  

As for the spin test being Mac specific, I don't think so.  It was posted online several years back, BEFORE Intel Macs came on the scene.  As for Macs being better with the CS spin filter, why should they be any different than PC's -- I mean they're using basically the same hardware nowadays aren't they?  

FWIW, my main machine has 16G RAM and I run a RAID-0 stripe for my CS scratch volume and I see a significant difference in performance over a single-drive scratch.  If you read Lloyd's article in the link above, he explains the why very well.  Here's a better, direct link (note that the section on CS performance holds a lot of good info for BOTH platforms!): http://macperformanceguide.com/ (http://macperformanceguide.com/)
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: mcbroomf on November 29, 2008, 02:53:01 pm
FWIW here are some more numbers with a PC..

XP Pro, Core 2 Duo, E6700 (2.66GHz), 4GB (with /3GB switch)

Without a shutdown, but closing all other apps;
28.7
Close/reopen file
19.6
Restart system
27.8
Close/reopen file
19.7


Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Schewe on November 29, 2008, 04:48:37 pm
Quote from: Jack Flesher
The point folks tend to not be aware of (miss) is that CS is still poorly coded when it come to memory utilization. It will reserve scratch even if it has excess RAM available "just in case." It generally needs a fairly large file, like 50MB to force it to start that, so if you only shoot P&S jpegs and don't use many layers and don't open a bunch of images at the same time, then you'll probably rarely scratch.


Care to explain the "poorly coded" comment? I would argue that Photoshop is very well coded considering it almost ALWAYS pushed the sphere of engineering at the time a particular version comes out. Also, since version 3, Photoshop automatically creates a scratch disk upon launch based on the amount of ram it has access to. This is to ensure that VM operations are always tuned to be available since Photoshop doesn't know whether the next image opened will be a tiny jpeg or massive scan in 16 bits.

The way to determine your relative in-ram performance vs. scratch is in an open doc window at the lower left, click the flyout to select Efficiency. As long as your Efficiency remains 100% then all operations will be performed in ram. If the normal work you do causes the Efficiency to drop under 90% you're hitting a lot of scratch disk and need to either get more ram or work on smaller or less open images. Many people forget that it's the total number of open images x file size x screen caching that dictate your ram needs...so it's useful to not open multiple images at once unless you need to.

But I sure wouldn't describe Photoshop's VM coding as poor...far from it. There is however a lot of poor understanding out there regarding optimizing Photoshop's performance.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on November 29, 2008, 06:27:58 pm
Quote from: Schewe
Care to explain the "poorly coded" comment?

Hi Jeff:

Specifically how or what processes it uses to decide when to scratch...  I am running 7200 RPM SATA2 drives striped that will do both sustained reads and writes at around 120MB/S on real-world data, yet the fastest the I/O clock on CS scratch to the fastest partition on that striped array is only about 50MB/S --- obviously something inside CS coding is limiting the I/O process.   Full disclosure, that was an I/O test I last ran on CS3 and have not tested it yet in CS4, but my seat of the pants tells me CS4 is not significantly better. As far as performance in CS, I have lots of RAM, scratch on the fast part of a dedicated RAID-0 array that nothing else is running on (obviously), use bigger tiles (yes it helps on overall performance) and use the "turn off scratch compression plugin" which helps quite a lot. The VM buffering plug-ins are useless so I don't use either and let CS manage that automatically. I've even set up RAM disks and used them for scratch to no benefit -- at the end of the day, CS still cannot scratch to free RAM at anywhere near capability and in fact is not appreciably different than scratching to my striped array!  So again, I am pretty confident the bottleneck is in CS's coding...  Maybe you have some legacy code buried in there that hasn't been looked at in a while?
 
Cheers,
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Schewe on November 29, 2008, 08:53:28 pm
Quote from: Jack Flesher
So again, I am pretty confident the bottleneck is in CS's coding...


And I'm pretty confident you are wrong...and you are wrong about the Force VM buffering if you are running on Leopard. It can make a huge difference (it's on by default with Windows).

So, just understand, depending on the amount of ram allocated to Photoshop, Photoshop will ALWAYS create a scratch file of a certain size when launched. Whether or not you hit the scratch heavy or at all is viewable using the Efficiency reading. If you are at 100%, neither you nor Photoshop are depending on scratch. What's your standard efficiency %? And I can't comment on your Photoshop performance unless you give the specs. As far as Photoshop's VM and performance, it's pretty darn high-end and not in the least bit "poor". I would look to your system and setup as poor if it's not performing up to speed. Really...
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on November 29, 2008, 09:34:29 pm
Quote from: Schewe
And I'm pretty confident you are wrong...and you are wrong about the Force VM buffering if you are running on Leopard. It can make a huge difference (it's on by default with Windows).

So, just understand, depending on the amount of ram allocated to Photoshop, Photoshop will ALWAYS create a scratch file of a certain size when launched. Whether or not you hit the scratch heavy or at all is viewable using the Efficiency reading. If you are at 100%, neither you nor Photoshop are depending on scratch. What's your standard efficiency %? And I can't comment on your Photoshop performance unless you give the specs. As far as Photoshop's VM and performance, it's pretty darn high-end and not in the least bit "poor". I would look to your system and setup as poor if it's not performing up to speed. Really...

Jeff,

With all due respect, I know my way around setting up both computers and CS efficiently -- and I am confident my machine is up to snuff on both.  FTR it's an 8-core 3.2 new version MacPro with 16G RAM and really fast drives, and blows all the normal benchmark tests off the charts.

My normal efficiency is 100% except on large prints. When files go over a gig, my efficiency usually dips to around 95% on sharpening or filters, etc. My really big print files can get up to 6 gigs with a couple layers, and then efficiency drops down to 55% or so. This is when I see my I/O running way below what my drives are capable of --- and not only that, I watch all 8-cores move almost to idle while CS is slowly paging away...  And FWIW, I am *not* the only person who has noted this behavior from CS in high horsepower Macs with large files.  

As for force VM buffering, it only made a small difference on my machine with larger files, but actually slowed down operations on smaller, more normal files. Since I use both regularly, it's why I said it was useless on my system and why I let CS choose when to apply it.

Cheers,
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: BernardLanguillier on November 30, 2008, 01:15:52 am
Quote from: Jack Flesher
My normal efficiency is 100% except on large prints. When files go over a gig, my efficiency usually dips to around 95% on sharpening or filters, etc. My really big print files can get up to 6 gigs with a couple layers, and then efficiency drops down to 55% or so. This is when I see my I/O running way below what my drives are capable of --- and not only that, I watch all 8-cores move almost to idle while CS is slowly paging away...  And FWIW, I am *not* the only person who has noted this behavior from CS in high horsepower Macs with large files.

My experience as well.

Besides, just compare the opening time of tiff files in PS CS3/4 vs other apps like Helicon focus or PTgui and it will be VERY obvious that PS I/O performance isn' that great on fast macs.

I have not done any rigorous tests, but those apps are at least twice faster opening files.

Cheers,
Bernard
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on November 30, 2008, 02:45:23 am
Quote from: dwdallam
Your new system is over three times are fast as mine with this test. 18 seconds is smokin' for that. Makes me want to upgrade, but in real world use, I'm not sitting around waiting for things to happen, unless I'm doing same radical rendering like that test does, which isn't often. All the same, it would save me time during days that heavily I process and design.

There is another test thatn likes to circulate also. It's based on radial blur. Apple likes to use it to show how much faster Macs are than PCs. The problem is that when you run a test like this one, Macs get hit hard compared to PCs, but taht was back in the days before Mac went to Intel CPUs.

In any event, it would be fun to see what you system clocks on the radial blur test.

Instructions:

1. Down load the file:
[attachment=9919:20056453...46016_rs.jpg]


2. Open it in PS.

3. Choose Filter, Blur, Radial Blur:
Amount 100%
Blur Method: Spin
Quality: Best

4. Set your PS image window to "Timing." This will automatically time it for you. When the blur is done, read the time in the bottom left of the image window.

I did it in:
1st test: 56 sec. on a fresh PC and PS start.
2nd Test: 34 sec. Closed the image, reopen it. Ran test. .
3rd test: 29 sec. Closed PS, restarted PS, reopened image. Ran test.

This is the exact same speed I got running CS and Win XP back in 2005.

Mine does it in 8 seconds... tried it a couple different ways with no difference.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Schewe on November 30, 2008, 02:46:07 am
Quote from: BernardLanguillier
I have not done any rigorous tests, but those apps are at least twice faster opening files.

You want to open large files quick? Set your image cache to 1. You have no idea what goes on under the hood when opening large multi-layered files...Ps must decode all the layers, the masks, the adjustments and then pop the image open at the end. That takes enormous cpu time, and fast disk i/o is not a factor. Course, if you do then zooming into large files will suck. It's always a trade off.

Performance WOULD be much better if Apple had not killed Carbon 64 and Adobe had been able to do a Mac 64 bit version. Unless you actually see a fully loaded Vista 64 multicore running CS4 64, you don't know how pissed you should be at Apple :~(

As for the dual quadcores, Apple's implementation of the memory across all 8 cores suck...but if you have 16-32 gigs and are working on large files, Force VM will speed things that have to hit disk a lot.

Photoshop's VM is pretty high-powered although getting a bit long in the tooth which is why it would have been great to be able to feed Photoshop more ram. It'll happen for CS5 (I'm pretty darn sure) and Mac users will be happy then.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 30, 2008, 03:14:52 am
Quote from: Schewe
And I'm pretty confident you are wrong...and you are wrong about the Force VM buffering if you are running on Leopard. It can make a huge difference (it's on by default with Windows).

So, just understand, depending on the amount of ram allocated to Photoshop, Photoshop will ALWAYS create a scratch file of a certain size when launched. Whether or not you hit the scratch heavy or at all is viewable using the Efficiency reading. If you are at 100%, neither you nor Photoshop are depending on scratch. What's your standard efficiency %? And I can't comment on your Photoshop performance unless you give the specs. As far as Photoshop's VM and performance, it's pretty darn high-end and not in the least bit "poor". I would look to your system and setup as poor if it's not performing up to speed. Really...


That's exactly how I've understood it and using efficiency many times I've not seen my system go under 100% with 4GB available ram while working on 1DS3 files, sometimes two open at once or more with light room open in background too. At two GB I was hitting scratch so often I bought 2GB more RAM. If I do hit the scratch it's not for rendering. When I'm applying heavy manipulation and the scratch disk goes off, I buy more ram. That hasn't happen yet with 4GB and working on 1DS3 files. I'm doing a 4'x2' graphics banner at 300ppi soon, which should be a good test of my available RAM.

Also, CS464 opens on my drive in 11 seconds flat on a fresh start and 4 seconds on startups after the first one.! I'm running a single hard drive (For my OS and PS), which is an Enterprise HD from Western Digital (RE series at 7200RPMs. A fast drive, but not what you would call extra fast in single HD mode.) I had coffee and a shave while opening CS3. It's a real improvement in taht regard, at least for me.

There are things I've noted that I would like to see in the future, but I'm still saying this is a damn good effort by Adobe with PSCS4. PSCS4 is running very crisp and responsive on my rig (Don't know what the deal is with the clone stamp lag though.)

I am, however, not running a MAC, which may be the difference.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 30, 2008, 03:20:36 am
Quote from: Sheldon N
Mine does it in 8 seconds... tried it a couple different ways with no difference.

LOL. nice! Damn that is smoking.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on November 30, 2008, 03:33:25 am
Quote from: Jack Flesher
As for the spin test being Mac specific, I don't think so.  It was posted online several years back, BEFORE Intel Macs came on the scene.  As for Macs being better with the CS spin filter, why should they be any different than PC's -- I mean they're using basically the same hardware nowadays aren't they?  

FWIW, my main machine has 16G RAM and I run a RAID-0 stripe for my CS scratch volume and I see a significant difference in performance over a single-drive scratch.  If you read Lloyd's article in the link above, he explains the why very well.  Here's a better, direct link (note that the section on CS performance holds a lot of good info for BOTH platforms!): http://macperformanceguide.com/ (http://macperformanceguide.com/)


Yeah I posted that before MACs went to Intel that was one of their tests to showcase the MAC CPUs. But enve though MACs use Intel CPUs does not mean they are the same CPUs that PCs use (I don't know if that is true, but just stating the fact it's not necessarily equal). MACs, I think, still have proprietary MBs too, right? And then you have a completely different  OS too. I don't have any idea if that would make a diff or not.

But the point of the test is to test your CPU performance, not hard drive performance. If you want to test Hard Drive performance, use Hard Drive Tack or something like that. If you're hitting the scratch disk, then your work efficiency is suffering. Again, when and if this happens enough to annoy me again, I'll go to 8GB of RAM or maybe even 16. I'm not worried about HD speed using this type of program that is designed to use RAM to prevent hard drive usage--in theory. Well, especially now with 64 bit OS's and CS4, since you can now use as much RAM as you need to keep from scratching.

Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: BernardLanguillier on November 30, 2008, 03:52:24 am
Quote from: Schewe
You want to open large files quick? Set your image cache to 1. You have no idea what goes on under the hood when opening large multi-layered files...Ps must decode all the layers, the masks, the adjustments and then pop the image open at the end. That takes enormous cpu time, and fast disk i/o is not a factor. Course, if you do then zooming into large files will suck. It's always a trade off.

Actually I was talking about plain tiff straight from raw conversion when comparing to Helicon and PTgui.

Could you please ellaborate on why setting a small cache size would speed up opens?

Quote from: Schewe
Performance WOULD be much better if Apple had not killed Carbon 64 and Adobe had been able to do a Mac 64 bit version. Unless you actually see a fully loaded Vista 64 multicore running CS4 64, you don't know how pissed you should be at Apple :~(

As for the dual quadcores, Apple's implementation of the memory across all 8 cores suck...but if you have 16-32 gigs and are working on large files, Force VM will speed things that have to hit disk a lot.

Photoshop's VM is pretty high-powered although getting a bit long in the tooth which is why it would have been great to be able to feed Photoshop more ram. It'll happen for CS5 (I'm pretty darn sure) and Mac users will be happy then.

I am aware of that Jeff. I have been using Force VM in CS3 on Tiger and it seemed to speed things up overall, although the open remain slow.

By the way, what is the status for Force VM on CS4 on Tiger?

Cheers,
Bernard

Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on November 30, 2008, 04:09:25 am
Quote from: dwdallam
Yeah I posted that before MACs went to Intel that was one of their tests to showcase the MAC CPUs. But enve though MACs use Intel CPUs does not mean they are the same CPUs that PCs use (I don't know if that is true, but just stating the fact it's not necessarily equal).
The specs (http://www.apple.com/macpro/specs.html) are just so hard to find.

Yes, Apple uses bog standard Intel CPUs. That's sort of the point. The Mac Pro uses Xeon, though.

Quote
MACs, I think, still have proprietary MBs too, right?
That's likely. Quite a few manufacturers do.

Quote
And then you have a completely different  OS too. I don't have any idea if that would make a diff or not.
That's the most significant difference between a Mac and a PC these days.

It's the OS that manages memory (whether something needs swapping), how to handle I/O, whether you're allowed to poke the hardware more or less directly), ...

The reason quite a few technical people like to run a Unix on their servers isn't that it's "all the same as Windows, just free" (which Unixes often aren't), it's because there are real, tangible differences in how they perform.

MacOS X is a "unixy" (or unix-like) OS, which brings some of these differences to the desktop, with a neat and sweet frosting (the GUI).

Whether the differences float your boat is another matter.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: laughingbear on November 30, 2008, 06:48:24 am
FWIW

I have pretty much the same maschine like Jack Flesher, 8x3.0 ghz with 16 Gig RAM, and thanks to Jack, I run his recommended RAID-0 scratch scenario, which really made a differnce to a single disk in deed. I used HD 2+3 and striped and partitioned them, one for scratch and the rest for PSD files.

Top notch!
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on November 30, 2008, 12:20:11 pm
Quote from: Schewe
You want to open large files quick? Set your image cache to 1.

Yeah tried that -- and guess what? Photomerge stops working...
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on November 30, 2008, 12:28:26 pm
Quote from: Sheldon N
Mine does it in 8 seconds... tried it a couple different ways with no difference.

Sheldon, that is screaming fast! You got me really curious now, so I need to try it on my desktop tomorrow LOL!  Just to clarify, you had the filter set to SPIN, method BEST and 100%?  (I only ask because those are not the defaults and I know the filter runs faster if any of those are set to lower values.)

Cheers,  
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on November 30, 2008, 01:29:42 pm
Quote from: Jack Flesher
Sheldon, that is screaming fast! You got me really curious now, so I need to try it on my desktop tomorrow LOL!  Just to clarify, you had the filter set to SPIN, method BEST and 100%?  (I only ask because those are not the defaults and I know the filter runs faster if any of those are set to lower values.)

Cheers,

Yes, filter set to spin, method best, amount 100%. I was using the image file posted by Doug, set in Adobe RGB color space and saved as a 12 quality jpg in 8 bit mode.

I wonder if it is because CS4 64bit is optimized to use quad cores and more RAM? I had history states at 50 and cache levels at 4 for that test, with memory allocation at 65% which equates to around 5 gigs for Photoshop.

My RAM is 1066Mhz DDR2 running at the full 1066 clock speed, Q9550 quad core processor is running at 3.4 Ghz.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on November 30, 2008, 03:59:03 pm
Quote from: Sheldon N
Yes, filter set to spin, method best, amount 100%. I was using the image file posted by Doug, set in Adobe RGB color space and saved as a 12 quality jpg in 8 bit mode.

Well you did save it differently than I did, I just saved it as it was posted.  I can't imagine that would make any difference as long as you saved it at full 2400x1800 size --

I will still try on my big machine tomorrow.  Ram allocation for 32-bit Mac CS4 is still only 3G, but that shouldn't matter for this since the file doesn't exceed that even with all the history states.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on November 30, 2008, 04:28:48 pm
Quote from: Jack Flesher
Well you did save it differently than I did, I just saved it as it was posted.  I can't imagine that would make any difference as long as you saved it at full 2400x1800 size --

I will still try on my big machine tomorrow.  Ram allocation for 32-bit Mac CS4 is still only 3G, but that shouldn't matter for this since the file doesn't exceed that even with all the history states.


I went back and tried it again saving it straight from the link... the time was the same. If I set the image to 16bit color then it slows down just a little, takes about 9 or 9.5 seconds. Increasing RAM allocation from 65% to 100% and reducing history states/cache levels doesn't seem to make any difference.

I also have the 32bit version of CS4 installed, and it runs a little slower than 64bit CS4. Takes about 8.5 seconds in 8bit color mode and 10 seconds in 16bit color mode.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on December 01, 2008, 11:56:04 am
Well just tried the spin test on my MacPro and got 6.4 seconds, 5.9 seconds and 5.6 seconds, virtually identical to Sheldon.  What's interesting is that I timed these with a stopwatch carefully, so I know the times are right, at least to within a few tenths of a second within my human reaction speed.  However, the "clock" in CS4 was way off, at least for Mac/Leopard, showing randomly between 1.5 and 2 times as long, or between 9 and 12 seconds for these same times!  So again, I suspect some legacy code issues reside in CS. Be curious if anybody else can confirm this on their systems?  Now I need to go back and check my Mac Laptop because I only used the built-in CS clock on it...
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on December 01, 2008, 12:25:34 pm
Laptop update.  I forgot my cell this morning, so had to go back home to get it and decided to run the spin test one more time on the MBP...  Same issue, clock is off.  Stopwatch says between 24 and 26 seconds on multiple runs, but the CS clock showed anywhere between 30 seconds and 45 seconds!

So Jeff, clearly there is at least one coding issue in CS for Mac. And where there's one...
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on December 01, 2008, 01:49:10 pm
Glad to hear that the $5k Mac Pro is still faster than a home build PC.     I would have totally preferred to buy one along with a 30" ACD, but it just wasn't in the budget.

That's strange about the clock issue... I just used a stopwatch for my tests and didn't pay any attention to the CS clock.

How fast does your Mac Pro do the Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed Test action?
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on December 01, 2008, 02:00:11 pm
Quote from: Sheldon N
Glad to hear that the $5k Mac Pro is still faster than a home build PC.
Uh, I'd call it a tie   (Which seems to indicate it isn't any friendlier to Mac OS than it is Win.)

Quote
That's strange about the clock issue... I just used a stopwatch for my tests and didn't pay any attention to the CS clock.
Love to see what your clock says for the same tests.  Win may be different than Mac here...

Quote
How fast does your Mac Pro do the Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed Test action?
Don't know, never run it.  Post a link and I'll be happy to test it out. But I will out of town for the next few days testing the new P65+ back, so this thread will fall to low priority  

Cheers,
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on December 01, 2008, 02:06:28 pm
http://www.retouchartists.com/pages/speedtest.html (http://www.retouchartists.com/pages/speedtest.html)

Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on December 01, 2008, 02:33:31 pm
Quote from: Sheldon N
http://www.retouchartists.com/pages/speedtest.html (http://www.retouchartists.com/pages/speedtest.html)

I got 32 seconds without closing any of my running apps or changing any my CS settings.  Is that good or bad?
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on December 01, 2008, 02:44:45 pm
Quote from: Jack Flesher
I got 32 seconds without closing any of my running apps or changing any my CS settings.  Is that good or bad?

My machine does it in 18 seconds, but that is doing the test according to their prescribed methodology.

You need to set Photoshop History States to 1, Cache Levels to 4, RAM usage to 100%. Then restart your machine fresh and run the test with no other applications open.

That should give you a more comparative result.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on December 01, 2008, 03:01:42 pm
Quote from: Sheldon N
My machine does it in 18 seconds, but that is doing the test according to their prescribed methodology.

You need to set Photoshop History States to 1, Cache Levels to 4, RAM usage to 100%. Then restart your machine fresh and run the test with no other applications open.

That should give you a more comparative result.

Okay, did all that.  After fresh re-boot with those settings I got 18.8 seconds...
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on December 01, 2008, 03:41:34 pm
Quote from: Jack Flesher
Uh, I'd call it a tie   (Which seems to indicate it isn't any friendlier to Mac OS than it is Win.)
The performance advantage to the Macs was due to the PowerPC CPUs, which have a different architecture than Intel x86 CPUs.

This architecture favoured some operations more than x86 CPUs did, while other operations were slower. Some were nearly a tie, and so on.

AMD have - at least in the past - made different choices regarding which areas of performance were important than Intel did, so you might see similar effects if you pick your tests.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on December 01, 2008, 04:16:29 pm
Quote from: Jack Flesher
Okay, did all that.  After fresh re-boot with those settings I got 18.8 seconds...

Yup, let's call it a tie.  
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 02, 2008, 05:59:57 am
Quote from: Sheldon N
Glad to hear that the $5k Mac Pro is still faster than a home build PC.     I would have totally preferred to buy one along with a 30" ACD, but it just wasn't in the budget.

That's strange about the clock issue... I just used a stopwatch for my tests and didn't pay any attention to the CS clock.

How fast does your Mac Pro do the Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed Test action?

MACs are not faster than PCs for anything, except at draining your wallet for less power. Build a dual Intel® Core™ i7 Processor Extreme Edition with a dual slot MB for less than 5K anytime any day. CPUs = 2, 000US, MB 300.00. Bye bye Mac. Not fast enough? Get two Kryotec cooling systems wrapped around those i7s and OC them to about 3.6Ghz each stable for a total of 7.2Ghz at about 3800 for the entire system including power supply and RAM. I just don't understand MAC anymore, at all, except they take money from Bill Gates, and that's always a good thing
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on December 02, 2008, 10:35:07 am
Quote from: dwdallam
MACs are not faster than PCs for anything, except at draining your wallet for less power. Build a dual Intel® Core™ i7 Processor Extreme Edition with a dual slot MB for less than 5K anytime any day. CPUs = 2, 000US, MB 300.00. Bye bye Mac. Not fast enough? Get two Kryotec cooling systems wrapped around those i7s and OC them to about 3.6Ghz each stable for a total of 7.2Ghz at about 3800 for the entire system including power supply and RAM. I just don't understand MAC anymore, at all, except they take money from Bill Gates, and that's always a good thing

Yeah, I used to be a hard-core PC guy too.  Then came Vista...  I grudgingly made the switch and frankly, now see the Mac light .  Bottom line is PC apps run faster in a Fusion/XP window on my Mac than they ever did on my Dual Xeon 3.6 workstation.  Plus, the case is the best thing going .
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on December 02, 2008, 03:48:14 pm
Quote from: Jack Flesher
Yeah, I used to be a hard-core PC guy too.  Then came Vista...  I grudgingly made the switch and frankly, now see the Mac light .
Join the crowd.  

I used to be a hard-core PC guy, too.

Then came Windows 95.

That's when I switched to Linux for home use (I'd already been using DEC, SGI, and SUN workstations at the university), and I never really looked back, except when I wanted to play games and have a colour managed workflow in Photoshop.

In December 2005, I got my first Mac - a PowerMac Quad G5 - which I still use as my primary imaging workstation.

Both Windows and MacOS X provide essentially painful GUIs with low usability, especially for those who want an efficient workspace.

Vista actually improves a bit on the situation, since applications don't get to play silly buggers with the GUI too often.

Apple still hasn't learned, and pops the reboot-on-Quicktime-upgrade question to the foreground every friggin' time, resulting in much fun for those of us who actually learned to touch type and work fast.

Oh, I'm ranting, sorry. Nothing to see here, move along.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 03, 2008, 07:38:17 am
Quote from: Jack Flesher
Yeah, I used to be a hard-core PC guy too.  Then came Vista...  I grudgingly made the switch and frankly, now see the Mac light .  Bottom line is PC apps run faster in a Fusion/XP window on my Mac than they ever did on my Dual Xeon 3.6 workstation.  Plus, the case is the best thing going .

I'm not hard core either way, but if you can show me how to get better performance for the he dollar, I'll more to MAC tomorrow. I'm wondering where you got 3.6Ghz Xeons? Intel doesn't have them on their site. Also, Xeons are made for server and database performance. I don't know if that matters, but it is a fact.

Case? dude. Check this out:
http://www.antec.com/uk/productDetails.php?ProdID=15125# (http://www.antec.com/uk/productDetails.php?ProdID=15125#)
[attachment=10083:0_1425_s...93930_00.jpg]

Will blow your mind.

You guys do realize you can set up Vista or XP pretty much anyway you want using registry includes and other tricks, right? For instance, I use this file browser, not Windows: http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm (http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm)

This mod process is one of the things that makes Windows desirable. It's highly customizable. Of course I'd love to see a GUI that has Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux for sure.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Jack Flesher on December 03, 2008, 07:47:08 am
Quote from: dwdallam
I'm wondering where you got 3.6Ghz Xeons? Intel doesn't have them on their site. Also, Xeons are made for server and database performance. I don't know if that matters, but it is a fact.
It was a big Dell "workstation" and about 3 years ago.  It was 2 single-core Xeons, may have been 3.4's but I thought they were 3.6's -- I really don't remember. Anyway, it was the highest horsepower PC Dell sold at the time. And it was fast for the time. Obviously it would be ancient technology by today's standards  

My kids would like that case.  Looks like I'd have a hard time stuffing 6 drives in it though.  And of course then there's the dust issue after a few months.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on December 03, 2008, 03:39:35 pm
Quote from: dwdallam
You guys do realize you can set up Vista or XP pretty much anyway you want using registry includes and other tricks, right? For instance, I use this file browser, not Windows: http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm (http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm)
In Windows I use Directory Opus for file management. It's the PS of File management. Very, very powerful, customisable and usable. Completely the opposite of Finder, the utterly useless piece of shit that OSX uses to 'manage' files.

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This mod process is one of the things that makes Windows desirable. It's highly customizable. Of course I'd love to see a GUI that has Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux for sure.
Well if you use OSX, it's designed to be absolutely perfect, so no customisation is needed!!    Yeah right, like any design, no matter how good will not fit everyone's needs. Customisable tools are always superior. And OSX loses out to Windows a lot in this area


DOpus info (http://nudel.dopus.com/opus9/) - some info re the best file manager. It's expensive compared to all others including the one you linked to, but I'd pay twice as much, as it saves me so much time and effort. I just spent 2+ days doing file managing stuff on the Mac, that would take me 25 mins in Dopus. Not got DOpus installed on the Mac/Parallels Windows yet, as OSX is is a fresh install. Again!
The only 'drawback' to DOpus is that it is sooooooo customisable, it'll take a little while to get your head around all that it does, but handily you can simply save the presets/tweaks and export them to other copies on laptop etc no problem. Something CS4 suite/Lightroom could really do with.
The main thing that shows how good a programme it is, is that when you think 'wouldn't it be cool if it could do blah blah....', usually it already does just that and even better than you thought.

I use Path Finder and Default Folder X on the Mac to make file management a little less painfull, but Finder compared to DOpus is like MS Paint Vs Photoshop CS4 Extended!
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: button on December 03, 2008, 04:25:34 pm
Quote from: dwdallam
This mod process is one of the things that makes Windows desirable. It's highly customizable. Of course I'd love to see a GUI that has Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux for sure.

Hey DWDallam (and anyone else who can help),

Would you mind posting how you have your (presumably Vista 64) OS customized?  I'm getting ready to install Vista 64 home premium for the sole purpose of running CS4 in 64 bit mode.  I want to know how to strip it down as much as safely possible in order to make my machine sing.  I have a pretty decent rig- 8 gig RAM, 512 meg GeForce 7950 gt video card, and two Raptors on RAID 0 as scratch.  How do I take the bloat out of this MS bloatware?  If you would, also please post your optimized PS settings.

Thanks,
John
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on December 03, 2008, 07:29:00 pm
Quote from: dwdallam
This mod process is one of the things that makes Windows desirable. It's highly customizable. Of course I'd love to see a GUI that has Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux for sure.
 

Customization in Windows is cumbersome at best, so I understand that you're coming from a Windows-only world, blessedly free of having experienced other systems.

How do I (easily) change the window functionality in Windows from click-to-focus to sloppy-focus (focus follows the mouse, but if the mouse isn't over a window, the last activated window stays active)?

How do I (easily) create a 3x5 set of virtual desktops that I can navigate between with simple keyboard shortcuts? Can I also see which virtual desktop I'm currently in, and its location in relation to the others?

How do I (easily) set up keyboard and mouse shortcuts for manipulating window sizes, positions, and minimization?

How do I (easily) demote a window to the background without minimizing it?

How do I (easily) replace mouse movement with keyboard shortcuts, while allowing different movement increments depending on the shortcut?

How do I (easily) keep the same GUI configuration across many separate computers?

The answer to the above questions, in Windows XP at least, is: you can't do it without installing third-party software or severe modifications, and even so, it won't work smoothly (distributing user settings to different computers is comparatively painful; in Unix/Linux, you'd mount your home directory on a server and your settings would load from file, locally on the computer you're logged in at).

These features were readily available in the early nineties if you were using something other than Windows, namely a Unix with the X Window System, and all you had to do was to edit a text file and reload your GUI (which you could do without rebooting, and to a certain extent without restarting applications...).

As a configurable GUI, especially for power users, Windows has a LONG way to go. You won't find "Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux" because those systems were more configurable and functionable fifteen years ago.

Today, you probably won't notice quite as much of a difference, since in the interest of commercialization, several desktop GUIs for Unix/Linux have aimed for similarity with Windows, and that process has been ongoing for the better part of a decade (since "FVWM 95", I suppose).

No, the "mod process" isn't what makes Windows desirable. It's possibly what makes Windows bearable, if you can be bothered with setting it up for every computer you're going to use.

What makes Windows desirable is a huge base of hardware and software vendors who make tremendous efforts at Making Stuff Just Work under Windows. It's the platform that "everyone" uses. It makes the OS a very desirable platform for the sake of compatibility, either with other users' expectations, with their software, or simply in the availability of proprietary hardware drivers.

The Mac doesn't come close here; you can't just replace your graphics card and expect it to work, you have to get one with specific Mac support.

Linux/Unix doesn't come close here; the commercial everyday software is released usually for Windows, sometimes for Mac, and rarely for Linux/Unix.

(In terms of server software and hardware, the situation is different.)

In either case, if the third party vendor drops their support, you're thoroughly screwed, q.v. us poor XP Pro x64 users, those who want to run certain software on MacOS 9 or 10.3 (I wouldn't know why), or more than five year old Linux distributions.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on December 03, 2008, 10:14:38 pm
Quote from: jani
How do I (easily) demote a window to the background without minimizing it?
Alt+Tab does it for me, Cmd+ Tab on the Mac. You could try learning the shortcuts that are already there!  
As for virtual desktops, never seen the point myself, due to the very handy Alt+Tab shortcut. I leave everything full sized and tab between programmes. Far less clunky than virtual desktops.
Some 'solutions' you come across, particularly in OSX or you mention above are simply overkill.

Quote
No, the "mod process" isn't what makes Windows desirable. It's possibly what makes Windows bearable, if you can be bothered with setting it up for every computer you're going to use.
Seeing as most people are using Windows or Apple software, the ability to tweak MS stuff [as in the post above] is usually in comparison to Apple's OS.
Other OSs are simply of no interest/use to most people here. Why? They do not run the software we need/use. So the fact that alternative OSs like the ones you mention, are slightly more customisable, is completely moot.

It's like going on about how much better say an LPG car is compared to petrol or diesel cars, but ignoring the fact that you may not be able to actually buy the 'better' fuel. There is only one LPG place in the large city I live in and it's completely out of the way for most city dwellers and only 4 in entire county. But that's still better than Linux is for professional photographers, which has no pro level photo editing packages. And no, The Gimp is still not up to the task.

Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: djgarcia on December 03, 2008, 10:46:11 pm
Quote from: button
Hey DWDallam (and anyone else who can help),

Would you mind posting how you have your (presumably Vista 64) OS customized?  I'm getting ready to install Vista 64 home premium for the sole purpose of running CS4 in 64 bit mode.  I want to know how to strip it down as much as safely possible in order to make my machine sing.  I have a pretty decent rig- 8 gig RAM, 512 meg GeForce 7950 gt video card, and two Raptors on RAID 0 as scratch.  How do I take the bloat out of this MS bloatware?  If you would, also please post your optimized PS settings.

Thanks,
John
If you're going to strip Vista 64 down to the bare bones, why not get XPx64? That's what I'm using, 12GB w/2 quad-core Xeons. I'm running LR 2.1 and PS CS4 in 64-bit mode, no problems. Use MSCONFIG.EXE to turn off start-ups and services you don't need.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 04, 2008, 03:10:54 am
Quote from: Jack Flesher
It was a big Dell "workstation" and about 3 years ago.  It was 2 single-core Xeons, may have been 3.4's but I thought they were 3.6's -- I really don't remember. Anyway, it was the highest horsepower PC Dell sold at the time. And it was fast for the time. Obviously it would be ancient technology by today's standards  

My kids would like that case.  Looks like I'd have a hard time stuffing 6 drives in it though.  And of course then there's the dust issue after a few months.


It only holds two drives, but it has "hangers" where you can hang 4 more drives on the outside right where the intake fans are. The MB "tray" slides out and clips in, no screws. Everything clips in, including DVDs, cards, everything. So you could change a hard drive while you sit at your workstation, really. It's like a Leggo PC case. I'd buy that for my next build, but the downside is that it has, obviously, no sound dampening qualities
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Huib on December 04, 2008, 03:17:00 am
@djgarcia Vista64 takes much better efforts of memory then XP64.
Vista64 runs very stable. Why stay with a old OS?
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 04, 2008, 03:34:22 am
Quote from: button
Hey DWDallam (and anyone else who can help),

Would you mind posting how you have your (presumably Vista 64) OS customized?  I'm getting ready to install Vista 64 home premium for the sole purpose of running CS4 in 64 bit mode.  I want to know how to strip it down as much as safely possible in order to make my machine sing.  I have a pretty decent rig- 8 gig RAM, 512 meg GeForce 7950 gt video card, and two Raptors on RAID 0 as scratch.  How do I take the bloat out of this MS bloatware?  If you would, also please post your optimized PS settings.

Thanks,
John


Hey John,

There isn't really anything to do. Vista isn't anymore bloat than any Windows OS has been. Just load and blow. That said, here are a few tips that I do, but no necessary.

1. Use "Windows Classic" desktop. Aero is just , well, lol--bloat. It has absolutely no functions that you will miss, unless you like staring at your screen stoned.

2. Create a partition on another physical hard drive, and make it about 3GBs. Change the page file--Windows scratch disk--to that partition and set the max and min size to 2.9GBs. Make sure that there are no other page files. Setting the max and min to the same size prevents Windows from shrinking and expanding the page file, which slows down your system.  If you have enough RAM, Windows won't even use the page file.

3. Partition the active drive, where you install Vista, making a partition on the "C" drive at about 35GB. Install Vista on that partition--and nothing else. Create a "D" partition and load ALL programs in that partition. Initially allow the full disk space for the D partition, excluding the partition C that you made first. That way you only have necessary files on the C drive, which means only Vista and it's drivers, etc. and programs files on the other partition. This also keeps the C and D drive form fragmenting, or it will takes a long, long time to fragment. In ordet o prevent fragmentation, I also use another drive for all programs's "temp files" but that's getting anal. I just want as little writing on the C and D drives as possible. It also takes up less space on those drives, and you have all of your temp files--except Vista's--in one location. So you know what each program is doing. I create a "Program_Tempfile" directory and then use subdirectories inside that to identify each program's temp files.

Another bonus of doing your system this way is that you can use Acronis True Image, which is a free download, to image just the C and D drives. If you get into any trouble, you can re-image a new hard drive, or the old one, and immediately have all your programs and OS ready to go. If you put everything on one partition, you'll need to image the entire hard drive, and that means your image could be 100s of GB and that won't be too easy to store, nor efficient.

After you get all of your programs installed on the D drive, use Windows disk management to shrink the D partition to about 3-5GB larger than all of your installed programs, such as CS4. Make subdirectories under the install directory to store them all in one place, like Windows does automatically on the C drive. After you shrink the D drive down, that action will force you to create another partition "E" for anything else you want to install or store, while making the True Image images small, probably around 15-20GB total for system and programs you use, and probably much less for you unless you have all sorts of other programs installed besides work type, like I do. You will need to save the image to a different physical drive. NOTE: before you do this, make sure your DVD drive are assigned letters far down the alphabet, such as X or Y or W, X, Y and leave Z open. (Damn I do some funkie shiznit.) I leave the Z drive open for virtual drives or the addition of another DVD. If you're a power user of sorts, you'll "get" this set up as you work with it. It's all very logical.

4. Put all of your images on yet another physical drive, and back that up traditionally anyway you want too an external drive that you SHUT OFF after each back up and UNPLUG. That will prevent you from getting fried from an electrical problem. It happened to my brother with his rig OFF. Fried everything in it--everything, drives, MB, Vid card, RAM, etc.

You probably already have that end of it figured out.

Example of my system:
Physical Drive #1: Fastest Drive you have. Mine is a Western Digital Enterprise RE2 drive.
Partition C: 33GB for the OS only.
Partition D: Program installs only.
Partition E: any other installs you want or storage, other than your images that you want to open as fast as possible.
Physical Drive #2: All of your working images. This is the drive you want the Windows page file on, or any other drive besides your primary #1 drive.


Hmmm. That's about it. I can't really think of anything else except buy that new Intel X25 SSD drive, two of them and a dedicated controller.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 04, 2008, 04:04:42 am
Quote from: jani


Customization in Windows is cumbersome at best, so I understand that you're coming from a Windows-only world, blessedly free of having experienced other systems.

How do I (easily) change the window functionality in Windows from click-to-focus to sloppy-focus (focus follows the mouse, but if the mouse isn't over a window, the last activated window stays active)?

How do I (easily) create a 3x5 set of virtual desktops that I can navigate between with simple keyboard shortcuts? Can I also see which virtual desktop I'm currently in, and its location in relation to the others?

How do I (easily) set up keyboard and mouse shortcuts for manipulating window sizes, positions, and minimization?

How do I (easily) demote a window to the background without minimizing it?

How do I (easily) replace mouse movement with keyboard shortcuts, while allowing different movement increments depending on the shortcut?

How do I (easily) keep the same GUI configuration across many separate computers?

The answer to the above questions, in Windows XP at least, is: you can't do it without installing third-party software or severe modifications, and even so, it won't work smoothly (distributing user settings to different computers is comparatively painful; in Unix/Linux, you'd mount your home directory on a server and your settings would load from file, locally on the computer you're logged in at).

These features were readily available in the early nineties if you were using something other than Windows, namely a Unix with the X Window System, and all you had to do was to edit a text file and reload your GUI (which you could do without rebooting, and to a certain extent without restarting applications...).

As a configurable GUI, especially for power users, Windows has a LONG way to go. You won't find "Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux" because those systems were more configurable and functionable fifteen years ago.

Today, you probably won't notice quite as much of a difference, since in the interest of commercialization, several desktop GUIs for Unix/Linux have aimed for similarity with Windows, and that process has been ongoing for the better part of a decade (since "FVWM 95", I suppose).

No, the "mod process" isn't what makes Windows desirable. It's possibly what makes Windows bearable, if you can be bothered with setting it up for every computer you're going to use.

What makes Windows desirable is a huge base of hardware and software vendors who make tremendous efforts at Making Stuff Just Work under Windows. It's the platform that "everyone" uses. It makes the OS a very desirable platform for the sake of compatibility, either with other users' expectations, with their software, or simply in the availability of proprietary hardware drivers.

The Mac doesn't come close here; you can't just replace your graphics card and expect it to work, you have to get one with specific Mac support.

Linux/Unix doesn't come close here; the commercial everyday software is released usually for Windows, sometimes for Mac, and rarely for Linux/Unix.

(In terms of server software and hardware, the situation is different.)

In either case, if the third party vendor drops their support, you're thoroughly screwed, q.v. us poor XP Pro x64 users, those who want to run certain software on MacOS 9 or 10.3 (I wouldn't know why), or more than five year old Linux distributions.

How do I (easily) change the window functionality in Windows from click-to-focus to sloppy-focus (focus follows the mouse, but if the mouse isn't over a window, the last activated window stays active)?

Vista does that now.

How do I (easily) create a 3x5 set of virtual desktops that I can navigate between with simple keyboard shortcuts? Can I also see which virtual desktop I'm currently in, and its location in relation to the others?


Why would you want virtual desktops? You can do anything you want in Vista live without virtual anything. You can run as many programs in teh background as you have RAM, very smoothly and shrink them down to the task bar where they go un-noticed unless you want them.


How do I (easily) set up keyboard and mouse shortcuts for manipulating window sizes, positions, and minimization?

Windows sizes, positions, and mouse shortcuts? Why not just drag them to the size and location you want them? If you must use keys to navigate and resize/position, I think XP and Vista have a key recorder function. If not there are about 200 zillion macro programs available for any Windows platform, which install in like 3 seconds and are so easy to use you don't even need instructions. This is one area where Windows has it over other OS's--external third party customizations by the zillions.


How do I (easily) demote a window to the background without minimizing it?

Click on the desktop.


How do I (easily) replace mouse movement with keyboard shortcuts, while allowing different movement increments depending on the shortcut?


This is something no iteration of Windows can do, and I have no idea why anyone would want to move the mouse cursor with key strokes--lol. However, again, you can use a macro program like EZ macro, which is free, to move the mouse cursor with assigned key strokes.


How do I (easily) keep the same GUI configuration across many separate computers?


You cannot do that from client to client. You can however deploy the same GUI from a server and have it reset every time the server is rebooted. IT personnel have been doing that since Windows 3.11 for work groups.

As a configurable GUI, especially for power users, Windows has a LONG way to go. You won't find "Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux" because those systems were more configurable and functionable fifteen years ago.

Again, there are any amount of programs you can install and use quite seamlessly to customize the GUI anyway you want it. However, once you get use to the Windows GUI it is quite efficient and intuitive. You have to use the taskbar though. Vista allow you to CNTR click and cycle through each opened window on the desk top.

No, the "mod process" isn't what makes Windows desirable. It's possibly what makes Windows bearable, if you can be bothered with setting it up for every computer you're going to use.

Sometimes the problem is that people do not understand how to do things with Windows, which are very easy after you learn them. Deploy your settings using a server/client process. Done. Windows business Server, included with XP pro and Vista series, is soooo easy, once you know how to start it. If you take teh timie to learn the Windows server/client system, especially in a msall business environment, you will be very pleased with its ease and simplicity.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 04, 2008, 04:23:31 am
Quote from: djgarcia
If you're going to strip Vista 64 down to the bare bones, why not get XPx64? That's what I'm using, 12GB w/2 quad-core Xeons. I'm running LR 2.1 and PS CS4 in 64-bit mode, no problems. Use MSCONFIG.EXE to turn off start-ups and services you don't need.

Vista Enterprise on my drive is using 21GB total and that's with Restore allowing 5GBs, nothing stripped out.

Look guys, I'm not a fan of MicroBrains. But XP and Vista are very stable and strong OS's finally, and Vista is almost IMPOSSIBLE to impregnate with viruses--easy for spyware--but very hard to program a virus that will propagate through the internet to infect millions of machines, because Vista is a "virtual" machine now. All the paths to infection change every time a program is started. With Vista, they really locked things down and have a solid platform stability wise.

I would LOVE for a huge company to adopt unix/linux and make a GUI for it so that people would begin leaving MS to Open Source Kernels, like Unix/Linus runs on, and then MS would need to develop a "better" OS to draw people back in. The only reason MS has so much share now is that all of their programs work in concert with each other across all their platforms. Their word processor can talk to their servers! Corporations like that.

Open Office is fast becoming the choice of college student who don't want to fork out the money for MS Word, so you know what happend? MS lowered the price to something like 99 bucks for students only. Anyway . . . . if you want a workstation for work purposes, Vista works and is very, very stable.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 04, 2008, 06:18:57 am
I knew it was too good to be true. No Contact Sheet, Image Package, web gqallery, etc or any other tool automate that CS3 and versions before had--GONE. They are now "optional." I'm wondering if Adobe has decided that contact sheets and image packager are no longer really necessary today, or that it would be better to install them after you get PS installed, for some reason? What reason is that? Why would Adobe take such a key option like CONTACT SHEET out of Photoshop? The explanation for this one ought to be a good one.

"The ability to create contact sheets and picture packages as a PDF presentation is now available in Adobe Bridge CS4 Output Module. We highly recommend creating your contact sheets and picture packages this way."

So uh now we have to open Bridge to create a Contact sheet?  Sheesh. New Adobe Work flow. I can't even get the "Output" function to work. Click on it and nothing happens.

Open Lightroom, import to Photoshop, open Bridge for options not now available in Photoshop. Close bridge, go back to Photoshop, forget one image, open bridge again, use plugin, close Bridge. Yeah that's a better work flow. Now you get to use all three programs, even if you don't want too!

Well at least it isn't crashing like CS3 did and not working at all, like Acrobat 8 (print module). I guess that's something.

I guess you can download them here:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4048 (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4048)

and maybe here:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/pro...latform=Windows (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=39&platform=Windows)

But it still states that they have been removed for CS4, and "If you still need them. . . ." Uh, CONTACT SHEET/Image packager---DUH?

Baffling.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on December 04, 2008, 09:37:09 am
Quote from: jjj
Alt+Tab does it for me, Cmd+ Tab on the Mac. You could try learning the shortcuts that are already there!  
Indeed, and so should you.

Alt+Tab and Cmd+Tab do NOT do what I described.

I wrote "demote to the background", not "switch to another application", which is what Alt+Tab and Cmd+Tab do.

dwdallam's suggestion of "clicking the desktop" doesn't do that, either.

Quote
As for virtual desktops, never seen the point myself, due to the very handy Alt+Tab shortcut. I leave everything full sized and tab between programmes. Far less clunky than virtual desktops.
Horses for courses, I find Alt+Tab to be extremely clunky in Windows XP, though Vista's copied functionality from MacOS X where you can use the mouse to select which application is an improvement.

Quote
Seeing as most people are using Windows or Apple software, the ability to tweak MS stuff [as in the post above] is usually in comparison to Apple's OS.
Other OSs are simply of no interest/use to most people here. Why? They do not run the software we need/use. So the fact that alternative OSs like the ones you mention, are slightly more customisable, is completely moot.
I believe you should read my post to the end, and you'd see that I'm fully aware of this position.

Quote
It's like going on about how much better say an LPG car is compared to petrol or diesel cars, but ignoring the fact that you may not be able to actually buy the 'better' fuel. There is only one LPG place in the large city I live in and it's completely out of the way for most city dwellers and only 4 in entire county. But that's still better than Linux is for professional photographers, which has no pro level photo editing packages. And no, The Gimp is still not up to the task.
No, the GIMP sucks bigtime.

However, there are professional photographers who are happy to use Bibble, or other photo editing packages for e.g. Linux.

Whether you consider Bibble and these other packages to be "pro level" or not is of course a different matter.

But I haven't claimed that this was one of the strengths of Linux, I was responding to an outrageous claim regarding Windows' configurability.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on December 04, 2008, 10:08:35 am
Quote from: dwdallam
Vista does that now.

(...)

Why would you want virtual desktops? You can do anything you want in Vista live without virtual anything.

(...)

If you must use keys to navigate and resize/position, I think XP and Vista have a key recorder function. If not there are about 200 zillion macro programs available for any Windows platform, which install in like 3 seconds and are so easy to use you don't even need instructions.
You've been able to do lots of stuff in Windows through third party applications since the very early days of Windows, that's nothing new, but it's not configurability, it means that Windows is extentable.

There's nothing unique about Windows in what you say, and you surely must see that I'm describing things that are easily configurable in another GUI - and has been for 15 years! - but which require third-party extensions, obscure incantations, or are simply impossible (you're not even sure what "demote to the background" means, you think I'm talking about activating the desktop!).

Quote
Again, there are any amount of programs you can install and use quite seamlessly to customize the GUI anyway you want it. However, once you get use to the Windows GUI it is quite efficient and intuitive.
I've been using almost every ordinary Windows version since version 1.0. I've never found it efficient and intuitive.

(Exceptions: Windows ME, Windows NT 3.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, plus various specialist releases for mobile/embedded devices and tablets.)

I have, however, found it usable, even if there are many obstacles against efficient use.

Quote
Sometimes the problem is that people do not understand how to do things with Windows, which are very easy after you learn them. Deploy your settings using a server/client process. Done. Windows business Server, included with XP pro and Vista series, is soooo easy, once you know how to start it. If you take teh timie to learn the Windows server/client system, especially in a msall business environment, you will be very pleased with its ease and simplicity.
Somehow, I think you underestimate the possibility that computer industry professionals with a few years' experience might not have been there before you.

I agree that there are things about recent Windows versions which indeed are easy to do and simple, but that's in comparison with earlier Windows versions.

I even know of quite a few things that Windows does better than my OS of choice, even for parts of my work.

But ease of configurability of the GUI is, unfortunately, not where Windows excels. I've already written where I think that is.

I think it's a completely honest mistake to make, to think that the most used OS platform in the world is also the "best" at everything it does, and that it does everything it does well. I don't think that's true for any OS platform. Experience certainly shows otherwise.

As a photographer, I'm torn between Windows and MacOS X, which both have the necessary application base to be the most useful.

Time and again, I end up defending my use of Windows with Photoshop and other software that I think I need.

That doesn't mean I have to think Windows is the best thing since sliced bread.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on December 04, 2008, 10:18:23 am
Quote from: dwdallam
Look guys, I'm not a fan of MicroBrains. But XP and Vista are very stable and strong OS's finally, and Vista is almost IMPOSSIBLE to impregnate with viruses--easy for spyware--but very hard to program a virus that will propagate through the internet to infect millions of machines, because Vista is a "virtual" machine now. All the paths to infection change every time a program is started. With Vista, they really locked things down and have a solid platform stability wise.
Actually, that's not quite true, but yes, Vista is more secure than XP Pro.

Also, spyware is just as bad as viruses, arguably even worse, since they collect personal information (like your usernames and passwords for websites, internet banking, etc.), and use your own mail software to send spam containing viruses and new spyware.

Vista isn't a "virtual" machine. The effect you describe is because Vista randomizes the way memory is allocated, so that simple buffer overflow attacks don't work as readily as they used to.

Still, Vista has had and probably will be discovered to have buffer overflows (http://news.softpedia.com/news/Vista-SP1-TCP-IP-Buffer-Overflow-Vulnerability-Overwrites-Kernel-Memory-98516.shtml) and other vulnerabilities (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-052.mspx) in central code.

Quote
I would LOVE for a huge company to adopt unix/linux and make a GUI for it so that people would begin leaving MS to Open Source Kernels, like Unix/Linus runs on, and then MS would need to develop a "better" OS to draw people back in. The only reason MS has so much share now is that all of their programs work in concert with each other across all their platforms. Their word processor can talk to their servers! Corporations like that.
There have been several attempts at this, but none of them have been concerted enough to achieve anything like unity.

Perhaps the recent netbook surge will make a slow change.

MacOS X has also gained significant popularity, enough that people don't look at you like you're a crazy designer dude for using a MacBook or iMac.

Quote
Open Office is fast becoming the choice of college student who don't want to fork out the money for MS Word, so you know what happend? MS lowered the price to something like 99 bucks for students only. Anyway . . . . if you want a workstation for work purposes, Vista works and is very, very stable.
The current Vista (SP1) appears to be a clear notch above Windows XP, at least.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: button on December 04, 2008, 10:46:24 am
Quote from: djgarcia
If you're going to strip Vista 64 down to the bare bones, why not get XPx64? That's what I'm using, 12GB w/2 quad-core Xeons. I'm running LR 2.1 and PS CS4 in 64-bit mode, no problems. Use MSCONFIG.EXE to turn off start-ups and services you don't need.

I've thought quite a lot about that, but given that Adobe officially doesn't support xp 64, I'm concerned that future PS updates/fixes might create lack of compatibility.  I haven't A-B'd xp 64 against Vista, and I've read mixed reviews for each OS.  It seems that nvidia drivers caused around 30% of vista crashes in 2007:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-...-crashes-in-20/ (http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-20/)

Anecdotal reports indidcate that these crashes happened under heavy video intensive loads, such as gaming (I don't know about PS).  Another anecdotal report (I can't find the link) suggests that nvidia's newest drivers as of late October '08 haven't done much to improve the older cards' performance with vista.  As I have an older GeForce card (7950 GT), I may be in for a bit of trouble.  Is anyone here using older nvidia cards with vista?  If so, please post experiences.

John
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: button on December 04, 2008, 10:58:56 am
Quote from: dwdallam
3. Partition the active drive, where you install Vista, making a partition on the "C" drive at about 35GB. Install Vista on that partition--and nothing else. Create a "D" partition and load ALL programs in that partition.

Thanks, man.  One thing I've read, however, is that a PS install anywhere other than the "C" drive may cause problems.  Apparently, your setup is working.  Is there anything special you had to do to make PS run from "D"?

John
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on December 04, 2008, 11:07:37 am
Quote from: dwdallam
I knew it was too good to be true. No Contact Sheet, Image Package, web gqallery, etc or any other tool automate that CS3 and versions before had--GONE. They are now "optional." I'm wondering if Adobe has decided that contact sheets and image packager are no longer really necessary today, or that it would be better to install them after you get PS installed, for some reason? What reason is that? Why would Adobe take such a key option like CONTACT SHEET out of Photoshop? The explanation for this one ought to be a good one.

"The ability to create contact sheets and picture packages as a PDF presentation is now available in Adobe Bridge CS4 Output Module. We highly recommend creating your contact sheets and picture packages this way."

So uh now we have to open Bridge to create a Contact sheet?  Sheesh. New Adobe Work flow. I can't even get the "Output" function to work. Click on it and nothing happens.

Open Lightroom, import to Photoshop, open Bridge for options not now available in Photoshop. Close bridge, go back to Photoshop, forget one image, open bridge again, use plugin, close Bridge. Yeah that's a better work flow. Now you get to use all three programs, even if you don't want too!
Actually doing those jobs now removed from PS is better done in Bridge, hence why they were placed there. You used to be able open all your images into say the web package into PS from Bridge anyway, so why bother going into PS at all if Bridge can do the same thing? This way you can work in PS whilst Bridge makes a gallery. Though I have a  customised version of previous PS web galleries that I used to use and now doesn't work in Bridge, So I have to do that in PS still, if I want to use it, but it's easy enough to do so.
 Having said that I hated the crappy and clunky interface and lack of any real feedback when tweaking the web galleries. You can preview any change you make now which is a vast improvement. Though a lack of savable presets is not so good.
Bridge is a very useful and powerful programme, much better in many ways than LR is. I've used LR a lot less since installing Bridge CS4.  Not opening it is like removing part of PS's functionality, I have Bridge open all the time and see no need to close it.
Bridge actually used to be an integrated part of PS, it was made a separate programme so other software could utilise it as well.
Sounds like you need to learn how to use Bridge, rather than Bridge itself being bad.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on December 04, 2008, 11:47:36 am
Quote from: jani
Alt+Tab and Cmd+Tab do NOT do what I described.

I wrote "demote to the background", not "switch to another application", which is what Alt+Tab and Cmd+Tab do.
Why would you want to demote to background, unless you are switching to another app? If not switching to another app, who cares  what programme is at front or back? Or is it just the concept of being able to do something and not any actual usefulness that you are on about. If you just want to see the programme behind, Alt+Tabing to it, is very easy. Or if you click on another programme on Taskbar, it comes to front of the programme you want at back.
I'm curious to know why you want to be able to do whatever it is that you want to do, that is so very difficult using the above methods.

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Horses for courses, I find Alt+Tab to be extremely clunky in Windows XP, .....
Simple, elegant, very, very easy to use and extremely efficient is how I would describe it. How could it be any easier? I've used fancier versions and they usually add nothing of value IMO. Though I like how you can also Quit via Cmd+Tab in OSX.
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.....though Vista's copied functionality from MacOS X where you can use the mouse to select which application is an improvement.
only if you don't know how to use it in first place! Why use a mouse to slow down an extremely easy keyboard shortcut, when you can already have selected whichever programme you want, far more quickly by alt+tabbing through the list? From your comments, I would still say you don't know how to use Alt+Tab.


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I believe you should read my post to the end, and you'd see that I'm fully aware of this position.
I did read all the post. But I repeat,  who here cares about OSs that don't run the software needed. The OS being more customisable means nada if it doesn't run the software required.


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No, the GIMP sucks bigtime.
However, there are professional photographers who are happy to use Bibble, or other photo editing packages for e.g. Linux.
Whether you consider Bibble and these other packages to be "pro level" or not is of course a different matter.
One decent piece of software does not make Linux generally usable for pro photographers.

Quote
But I haven't claimed that this was one of the strengths of Linux, I was responding to an outrageous claim regarding Windows' configurability.
We are on a photography forum, populated mostly by pros and I took the comments regarding the customisability of Windows to be relation to OSX not some irrelevant OS that is very unlikely to be used by most people on the forum. If debating about different MFDSLRs attributes in the studio, would you start talking about the benefits of P+S cameras and how much easier they fit in your pocket?  Try reading posts in context for a change, plus you appear to prefer splitting hairs, rather than talk about the actual topic it seems, judging by your recent posts.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on December 04, 2008, 12:03:45 pm
Quote from: button
Thanks, man.  One thing I've read, however, is that a PS install anywhere other than the "C" drive may cause problems.  Apparently, your setup is working.  Is there anything special you had to do to make PS run from "D"?
You just select where to install it on installation!  And it works fine.
Just as the OS doesn't need to be on the C drive. In fact I prefer not to have anything on C drive when using Windows, a lots of malware/viruses work on the assumption of default locations on C drive. I've often run a dual boot machine, so only one OS could be on C anyway.
My last PC desktop was something like C=OS Page File, D=Programmes, E=XP,  F=XP [second test install]  G=Optical drive and H-Z was various storage drives. And yes I got up to Z!
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 05, 2008, 02:16:02 am
Quote from: button
Thanks, man.  One thing I've read, however, is that a PS install anywhere other than the "C" drive may cause problems.  Apparently, your setup is working.  Is there anything special you had to do to make PS run from "D"?

John

Naw. It runs fine on any drive. I forgot to tell you to swap teh Adobe scratch disk from C to anotehr drive, one that adobe isn't on. It's the same concept as the Windows page file thing I wrote about.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 05, 2008, 02:26:51 am
Quote from: jani
You've been able to do lots of stuff in Windows through third party applications since the very early days of Windows, that's nothing new, but it's not configurability, it means that Windows is extentable.

There's nothing unique about Windows in what you say, and you surely must see that I'm describing things that are easily configurable in another GUI - and has been for 15 years! - but which require third-party extensions, obscure incantations, or are simply impossible (you're not even sure what "demote to the background" means, you think I'm talking about activating the desktop!).


I've been using almost every ordinary Windows version since version 1.0. I've never found it efficient and intuitive.

(Exceptions: Windows ME, Windows NT 3.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, plus various specialist releases for mobile/embedded devices and tablets.)

I have, however, found it usable, even if there are many obstacles against efficient use.


Somehow, I think you underestimate the possibility that computer industry professionals with a few years' experience might not have been there before you.

I agree that there are things about recent Windows versions which indeed are easy to do and simple, but that's in comparison with earlier Windows versions.

I even know of quite a few things that Windows does better than my OS of choice, even for parts of my work.

But ease of configurability of the GUI is, unfortunately, not where Windows excels. I've already written where I think that is.

I think it's a completely honest mistake to make, to think that the most used OS platform in the world is also the "best" at everything it does, and that it does everything it does well. I don't think that's true for any OS platform. Experience certainly shows otherwise.

As a photographer, I'm torn between Windows and MacOS X, which both have the necessary application base to be the most useful.

Time and again, I end up defending my use of Windows with Photoshop and other software that I think I need.

That doesn't mean I have to think Windows is the best thing since sliced bread.

Jani, who cares? As long as you can get done whatever you need done w/o writing code, and it's fairly efficient using "extensible" third party programs, which will give you even more configuration options than a very configurable OS, simply because the OS's designers can't include every option everyone wants. I would argue that if you want the arrow in your leg to stop hurting, pull it out, and forget about who shot it. I generally agree with everything you have said, but I don't think there will ever be an OS that does things that are most easy for you, as an individual. I know what you are saying though. I went BALLISTIC when I saw the Vista file explorer. I mean, it's incredibly stupid IQ wise. I just downloaded a free dual pane explorer, and everything was great. I stopped trying to force Windows into my worldview a long time ago. I just "extend" it now. Microsoft just needs a good kick in the ass by some REAL competition for its OS. Then we would see some real improvements in the areas you suggest.

I still don't get the point of the "background" thing you want. How does it make the work flow better, faster, easier? If you want instant access to Windows programs that are opened, you can put the task bar at the top of the screen I guess. That's how I have mine. I don't understand why "demote to background" is so important, but that's because I don't know what you mean.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 05, 2008, 02:39:55 am
Quote from: jjj
Actually doing those jobs now removed from PS is better done in Bridge, hence why they were placed there. You used to be able open all your images into say the web package into PS from Bridge anyway, so why bother going into PS at all if Bridge can do the same thing? This way you can work in PS whilst Bridge makes a gallery. Though I have a  customised version of previous PS web galleries that I used to use and now doesn't work in Bridge, So I have to do that in PS still, if I want to use it, but it's easy enough to do so.
 Having said that I hated the crappy and clunky interface and lack of any real feedback when tweaking the web galleries. You can preview any change you make now which is a vast improvement. Though a lack of savable presets is not so good.
Bridge is a very useful and powerful programme, much better in many ways than LR is. I've used LR a lot less since installing Bridge CS4.  Not opening it is like removing part of PS's functionality, I have Bridge open all the time and see no need to close it.
Bridge actually used to be an integrated part of PS, it was made a separate programme so other software could utilise it as well.
Sounds like you need to learn how to use Bridge, rather than Bridge itself being bad.


I've been using Bridge since it was available, but I use LR2 now. The bridge options don't work for me. Do I need to install them in bridge? You do have a good point in that Bridge can do the contact sheets while I work in PS, which is an improvement. However, there is no reason to have Bridge open when I use LR. And Bridge is only a file browser, not a database. LR's search and tagging function is far superior to anything you can do in Bridge. Not only that but I can take just the catalog from LR and work on the images that are NOT EVEN ON THE DRIVE I'M WORKING ON, such as a laptop while traveling. Synchronize it with the drive the images are on, and they update automatically--the adjustments. Bridge CS4 is an improvement though for sure.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on December 05, 2008, 09:25:22 am
Quote from: button
I've thought quite a lot about that, but given that Adobe officially doesn't support xp 64, I'm concerned that future PS updates/fixes might create lack of compatibility.  I haven't A-B'd xp 64 against Vista, and I've read mixed reviews for each OS.
XP Pro x64 edition seems to have been a hidden customer beta.

Vendor support has been dwindling fast lately, and e.g. Apple have started disabling features in their software if you run it on XP Pro x64 (their Vista x64 versions won't install, and the 32-bit versions are crippled).

New drivers for other hardware is hard to obtain, also.

I'd say that XP Pro x64 is rather dead.

That's unfortunate for my laptop, which is based on that OS. I'll probably have to convert it to other use.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on December 05, 2008, 09:46:38 am
Quote from: jjj
Why would you want to demote to background, unless you are switching to another app?
Let's say that I have limited screen real estate, and that I'm editing a photo.

While editing it, I have the need of comparing another photo.

Both cannot be displayed at the same time, but I don't need to view more than the part I'm editing at a single time, yet still need to occasionally view a larger view of the image.

It's far quicker to demote the working image to the background, thereby keeping the reference image in the foreground, while continuing to work on the the working image.

You might say "just reduce the window size and use the scrollbars" is the answer to that, and in some cases, yes it is.

There are other uses as well, e.g. commenting on something in text while looking at it; then you might need to see the whole picture, and it won't bother you as much if only one line of the text you're writing is visible at any time.

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Or is it just the concept of being able to do something and not any actual usefulness that you are on about.
Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't mean it's not useful.

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Simple, elegant, very, very easy to use and extremely efficient is how I would describe it. How could it be any easier? I've used fancier versions and they usually add nothing of value IMO. Though I like how you can also Quit via Cmd+Tab in OSX.
only if you don't know how to use it in first place! Why use a mouse to slow down an extremely easy keyboard shortcut, when you can already have selected whichever programme you want, far more quickly by alt+tabbing through the list? From your comments, I would still say you don't know how to use Alt+Tab.
I'll cede the possibility that I "don't know how to use Alt+Tab", since there may be a hidden shortcut there somewhere that I don't know about, that will accurately let me select application number 8 of 17 quicker than hitting Tab another seven times after the first Alt+Tab.

What is that shortcut, BTW?

Quote
One decent piece of software does not make Linux generally usable for pro photographers.
What about seven? Seventy? Five hundred? Twenty thousand? Where is the limit?

As I said, I know pro photographers who exlusively use Linux. That's their choice, and -- interestingly enough to you, I suppose -- I wouldn't.

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If debating about different MFDSLRs attributes in the studio, would you start talking about the benefits of P+S cameras and how much easier they fit in your pocket?
No, but I might point out usability features on the P+S cameras which are far superior to MFDBs, when an MFDB owner went "OMG! The new Aptus back has GreatFeature! Aptus backs have the best, most easily used, configurable interface for everyday use for anybody, why didnt ANYONE think of this before?"

Then it might be relevant to point out that P+S cameras had that (and other features) for the past ten years or so, might it not?

Quote
Try reading posts in context for a change, plus you appear to prefer splitting hairs, rather than talk about the actual topic it seems, judging by your recent posts.
Good luck with that.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on December 05, 2008, 09:52:01 am
Quote from: dwdallam
I still don't get the point of the "background" thing you want. How does it make the work flow better, faster, easier? If you want instant access to Windows programs that are opened, you can put the task bar at the top of the screen I guess. That's how I have mine. I don't understand why "demote to background" is so important, but that's because I don't know what you mean.
Essentially, it lets you continue to place the active window in the background, while not necessarily switching focus to the foreground window. It just makes for a faster workflow, especially with focus-follows-mouse or sloppy-focus.

I'm not quite as grossed out by the Vista interface as you are, though.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on December 11, 2008, 05:13:46 pm
Quote from: jani
Let's say that I have limited screen real estate, and that I'm editing a photo.
While editing it, I have the need of comparing another photo.
Both cannot be displayed at the same time, but I don't need to view more than the part I'm editing at a single time, yet still need to occasionally view a larger view of the image.
It's far quicker to demote the working image to the background, thereby keeping the reference image in the foreground, while continuing to work on the the working image.
You might say "just reduce the window size and use the scrollbars" is the answer to that, and in some cases, yes it is.
There are other uses as well, e.g. commenting on something in text while looking at it; then you might need to see the whole picture, and it won't bother you as much if only one line of the text you're writing is visible at any time.

Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't mean it's not useful.
I considered this for quite a while and still cannot see why I would ever do what you suggest. I think this is where a video screen grab is needed as sometimes these things can make far more sense when viewed in action.
This idea may work fine for you, but it just seems unecessary, I would simply tile the two images. The fact that one is background and one foreground is irrelevant. You also said 'both [images] cannot be displayed at same time' How would you have this issue? As that sounds like a programme isue and not anOS issue.


Quote
I'll cede the possibility that I "don't know how to use Alt+Tab", since there may be a hidden shortcut there somewhere that I don't know about, that will accurately let me select application number 8 of 17 quicker than hitting Tab another seven times after the first Alt+Tab.

What is that shortcut, BTW?
It's still Alt+Tab actually.
Do it quickly and you simply switch to last app, that's the one I use the most.
Alt+Tab and if you don't release Tab, you cycle through the apps. Let go when it hits whatever you want, how simple is that?
Alt+ repeated Tab to step cycle through is also so easy, I certainly wouldn't want to use a mouse to select the icon. Plus it isn't really a good option if using mouse left handed, as I do.
Alt+Shft+Tab does it backwards. Cntr+ Tab cyles through document and shift is also modifer for opposite way there too. Though Apps aren't too consisentent about this, Firefox does it really clumsily when moving through tabs and Opera does it well.

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What about seven? Seventy? Five hundred? Twenty thousand? Where is the limit?
Enough good apps is the right number.    Just Adobe software would suit most people. Not that that will ever happen.


Quote
No, but I might point out usability features on the P+S cameras which are far superior to MFDBs, when an MFDB owner went "OMG! The new Aptus back has GreatFeature! Aptus backs have the best, most easily used, configurable interface for everyday use for anybody, why didnt ANYONE think of this before?"

Then it might be relevant to point out that P+S cameras had that (and other features) for the past ten years or so, might it not?
As I said, if debating use of studio cameras, pointing out say the pocketability of a P+S is not relevant.
Though it almost goes without saying that a P+S will have some other features that MFDSLRs should have, like say a decent screen.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on December 11, 2008, 07:04:16 pm
Quote from: dwdallam
I've been using Bridge since it was available, but I use LR2 now. The bridge options don't work for me. Do I need to install them in bridge? You do have a good point in that Bridge can do the contact sheets while I work in PS, which is an improvement. However, there is no reason to have Bridge open when I use LR. And Bridge is only a file browser, not a database. LR's search and tagging function is far superior to anything you can do in Bridge. Not only that but I can take just the catalog from LR and work on the images that are NOT EVEN ON THE DRIVE I'M WORKING ON, such as a laptop while traveling. Synchronize it with the drive the images are on, and they update automatically--the adjustments. Bridge CS4 is an improvement though for sure.
The important thing to remember is that LR and Bridge that they have different strengths. 'Only a File Browser' misses the point that a file browser is much better than a database in some situations and obviously vice versa.  By using each programme where each is better than the other, you end up with a better workflow.  You need to spend time learning them both to realise when best to use them for your needs.

When testing Bridge CS4 [before LR2 came out], I simply stopped using LR altogether as Bridge was simply so much faster [and it had ACR 5 as well]. Once LR2 came out, I reverted to using both again, but still favour Bridge a little, particularly as LR is still much slower for rendering.
Bridge is quite clever at searching, it also does keywords too and it's Sort panel is way better the the clumsy copy that appeared in LR recently.
You can batch images into PS too for things like running actions, not possible with LR.

If you equate Bridge with weedy file browsers like Explorer or Finder, you are missing out on how very good it is.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 12, 2008, 03:13:12 am
Quote from: jjj
The important thing to remember is that LR and Bridge that they have different strengths. 'Only a File Browser' misses the point that a file browser is much better than a database in some situations and obviously vice versa.  By using each programme where each is better than the other, you end up with a better workflow.  You need to spend time learning them both to realise when best to use them for your needs.

When testing Bridge CS4 [before LR2 came out], I simply stopped using LR altogether as Bridge was simply so much faster [and it had ACR 5 as well]. Once LR2 came out, I reverted to using both again, but still favour Bridge a little, particularly as LR is still much slower for rendering.
Bridge is quite clever at searching, it also does keywords too and it's Sort panel is way better the the clumsy copy that appeared in LR recently.
You can batch images into PS too for things like running actions, not possible with LR.

If you equate Bridge with weedy file browsers like Explorer or Finder, you are missing out on how very good it is.

I agree with you on most of this. LR is painfully slow at rendering. The Sort options in Bridge are much easier to use and LR's sorts are like you say clunky. I don't "equate" Bridge with file browsers, but Bridge is a file browser based image manipulator. LR is a database based image manipulator. If Bridge had LR's workspace, I'd probably use Bridge exclusively. Still LR does offer some nice extras that Bridge doesn't have, such as painting tools for exposure, that I use. Having to open ACR each time to adjust an image, and not having two up capabilities is clunky compared to LR. It would be be nice if we could get ONE program with two options: Browser or database modes. I'm still not understanding how to use picture packager or Contact Sheet II in Bridge.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on December 12, 2008, 06:08:50 am
Quote from: jjj
I considered this for quite a while and still cannot see why I would ever do what you suggest. I think this is where a video screen grab is needed as sometimes these things can make far more sense when viewed in action.
I don't really know how to go about that, sorry.

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This idea may work fine for you, but it just seems unecessary, I would simply tile the two images.
This may work for you, but ...

Quote
The fact that one is background and one foreground is irrelevant.
It's hardly irrelevant in GUIs where activating an image means that you have to pop it to the front, hiding whatever was in the other window.

Quote
You also said 'both [images] cannot be displayed at same time' How would you have this issue? As that sounds like a programme isue and not anOS issue.
Not having infinite screen real estate leads to this issue.

Granted, it's less of an issue with MacOS X since I started using a screen with 1920x1200 pixels of real estate. Plus, MacOS X has the nifty F9 and F10 shortcuts for providing an overview and easily selecting other application windows.

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It's still Alt+Tab actually.
What you list below this is nothing new to me. Like I tried to tell earlier, I've been using Windows since it became publicly available. I'm not a newbie, okay?

I just found it clumsy and cumbersome, because I've also used something that's quicker and easier to use.

I can see how someone who hasn't used something quicker and easier, or who doesn't care about those things, may think that the standard solution in e.g. Windows XP is good enough.

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Enough good apps is the right number.    Just Adobe software would suit most people. Not that that will ever happen.
LightZone, Bibble, jAlbum, Inkscape, Audacity, Evolution, Xfig, xv, ... it's a pretty long list of good apps, most of them are Unix/X specific rather than Linux specific and may work on a Mac as well, some are cross-platform and work even on Windows. Some are amazingly good, but won't work under anything but X, which means that the market impact is low.

But you're right in that you won't get Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Suite applications without quite some hassle. Some products that were pretty decent have been killed off, such as FrameMaker.

You win some, you lose some, and that's how it goes for most OS-es.

You might say that's why we've got VMWare, Parallels etc.

Anyway, it's been pretty clear to me for the past few posts that we're not on the same planet, so I'll stop whipping the dead horse now.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on December 12, 2008, 09:12:23 pm
Quote from: jani
Anyway, it's been pretty clear to me for the past few posts that we're not on the same planet, so I'll stop whipping the dead horse now.
So what 's it like on Pluto? Didn't realise they had dial up!
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 12, 2008, 10:35:35 pm
Quote from: jani
Anyway, it's been pretty clear to me for the past few posts that we're not on the same planet, so I'll stop whipping the dead horse now.


What OS are you using?
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Ray on December 13, 2008, 12:05:48 am
Quote from: jani
XP Pro x64 edition seems to have been a hidden customer beta.

I've recently downloaded the trial version of CS4. In the Programs menu where I open programs, there's an option of Adobe Photoshop CS4, or Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 bit). Since I have a Win XP 64bit OS, I ckick on Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 bit). It seems faster than Cs3.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on December 13, 2008, 04:53:58 am
Quote from: Ray
I've recently downloaded the trial version of CS4. In the Programs menu where I open programs, there's an option of Adobe Photoshop CS4, or Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 bit). Since I have a Win XP 64bit OS, I ckick on Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 bit). It seems faster than Cs3.


If you mean opening, opening files, and general crispness, it is in my opinion too.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: DiaAzul on January 07, 2009, 03:01:54 pm
Quote from: DiaAzul
I have roughly the same system on order, though with Core i7 rather than Q9550. Just tried your speed test on my current computer and beginning to think that an upgrade isn't going to be worthwhile ;-)   Took 4min15 for CS3 and 3min5 for CS4  

For feedback to those who are interested. I just ran the speed test on the new system (Core i7 2.66GHz) with 6Gb of RAM which gives a result of around 17 seconds and the spin test which was 7.3 seconds -- comparable with a 3.4GHz 4-core system. The top of the range i7 (3.2GHz) should do the speed test in about 13 seconds or less.

I guess Apple will be updating their desktops soon.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on January 07, 2009, 10:59:54 pm
Quote from: DiaAzul
For feedback to those who are interested. I just ran the speed test on the new system (Core i7 2.66GHz) with 6Gb of RAM which gives a result of around 17 seconds and the spin test which was 7.3 seconds -- comparable with a 3.4GHz 4-core system. The top of the range i7 (3.2GHz) should do the speed test in about 13 seconds or less.

I guess Apple will be updating their desktops soon.


That's very snappy indeed!  Have you looked into overclocking it? From the little bit that I've read, the i7 920 will easily overclock to the mid 3 GHz range if you have a decent CPU cooling fan/heatsink.

No need to spend a huge amount of $$ for the next processor up, just dial things in for what you have now.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on January 08, 2009, 02:55:15 am
Quote from: Sheldon N
That's very snappy indeed!  Have you looked into overclocking it? From the little bit that I've read, the i7 920 will easily overclock to the mid 3 GHz range if you have a decent CPU cooling fan/heatsink.

No need to spend a huge amount of $$ for the next processor up, just dial things in for what you have now.


This is absolutely true. I just bought a Vendetta 2 fan and heatsink for my AMD 4800 64 and I'm getting 3Ghz out of "her" now at under 65C on full load. That's up from 2.4Ghz stock clock. But I've been looking at the i7s.  They clock really well.

If you are interested in OCing, I'd use this forum:

Hard OCP --jsut google it.

Then download these three programs, and don't ask, jsut do it becaue you will sooner or later anyway if you decide to OC. You can't get around it:

Temperature of your CPU Cores as determined by the ON DIE heat sensor.
http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ (http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/)

Allows you to see what your bus speeds, CPU clock, RAM speeds & timings, and other relevant information:
http://www.cpuid.com/ (http://www.cpuid.com/)

Orthos: This is a CPU/RAM stress program. It will MELT your CPU if you don't cool it properly, so be careful. Most modern CPUs will just shut down if they get too hot, but you've been warned. It's main purpose for living is that it stresses your RAM and CPU in the OCed configuration to see if either spit out any errors, which means you need to give it more power, which means it heats up to a higher level. This is absolutely the best program out there for this purpose.
http://sp2004.fre3.com/ (http://sp2004.fre3.com/)

Finally, this program can be downloaded to replace both CPUZ and Core temp, but I use all three:
http://www.lavalys.com/ (http://www.lavalys.com/)
Program is called: EVEREST

This program is not free, but you can run it as long as you want, and all of the stuff you need is allowed on the shareware version. It shows CPU fan speeds, chassis speeds, and CPU temps, among much more, all in one program, and it's sensor reading are the "real" deal, like Core Temp and CPUZ, that is, from the on die digital sensor. This is a very nice program. Everything on your computer is displayed in one easy location window, including all system hardware information, DX10 version, and all graphics elements, hardware configs, system installed software, drivers, everything. You have to scratch your head in wonder why it is that MS cannot do this. This is the way system monitoring  and configurations SHOULD be done.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jing q on January 10, 2009, 04:18:50 am
btw, something I never noticed for awhile until I pushed down the mouse scroll button by accident...the application windows pop up as thumbnails and you can select which application you want to jump to with the mouse.
Also, Alt+Tab is a very elegant and simple solution, it speeds through the programs just by holding down the Tab key


I think alot of the drama here is that the different OS have different working methods and workflows to achieve similar results.
I personally much prefer XP even though I have a MBP for my Leaf software. I find it extremely customizable, whereas I feel locked down by the Mac OS.
There must be an easier way to be able to close the Macbook Pro screen without it going into hibernation.
I like how barebones XP is, no fancy transitions, nothing too organic and round (yes I actually like my sharp edged digital looking fonts and menu bars, I like them 2D not 3D)

Quote from: jjj
I considered this for quite a while and still cannot see why I would ever do what you suggest. I think this is where a video screen grab is needed as sometimes these things can make far more sense when viewed in action.
This idea may work fine for you, but it just seems unecessary, I would simply tile the two images. The fact that one is background and one foreground is irrelevant. You also said 'both [images] cannot be displayed at same time' How would you have this issue? As that sounds like a programme isue and not anOS issue.


It's still Alt+Tab actually.
Do it quickly and you simply switch to last app, that's the one I use the most.
Alt+Tab and if you don't release Tab, you cycle through the apps. Let go when it hits whatever you want, how simple is that?
Alt+ repeated Tab to step cycle through is also so easy, I certainly wouldn't want to use a mouse to select the icon. Plus it isn't really a good option if using mouse left handed, as I do.
Alt+Shft+Tab does it backwards. Cntr+ Tab cyles through document and shift is also modifer for opposite way there too. Though Apps aren't too consisentent about this, Firefox does it really clumsily when moving through tabs and Opera does it well.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jing q on January 10, 2009, 04:22:19 am
btw I've gone back to CS3 because I found CS4 to boot up very quickly but seemed to slow down my process overall...the clone and heal previews are great but require much more processing power to render the previews, plus redrawing seemed to take more time than usual (I zoom in and out with my mouse scroll wheel quite alot)

I'm back on CS3 and I only use CS4's ACR for RAW conversion
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on January 10, 2009, 05:01:36 am
Quote from: jing q
btw I've gone back to CS3 because I found CS4 to boot up very quickly but seemed to slow down my process overall...the clone and heal previews are great but require much more processing power to render the previews, plus redrawing seemed to take more time than usual (I zoom in and out with my mouse scroll wheel quite alot)

I'm back on CS3 and I only use CS4's ACR for RAW conversion

There are definitely requirements to have CS4 run smoothly. But I have an old system, AMD x2 64bit running at 2.4Ghz, and it runs wonderfully. You must have a very old system, since mine is 3.5 years old now  and runs it very nicely.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on January 11, 2009, 03:14:21 pm
Well, just upgraded to XP 64 bit with 8gb RAM and raid 0 disk for page file/scratch disk/cache, ran the Retouch Artist test in CS4 - 69 seconds on a 2.2ghz dual core. Does that make sense or should it be faster? To be honest I have to try it on my regular XP partition because the entire rest of PS/Bridge seems no different at all speedwise. Bit of a disappointment actually 8gb doesn't feel any faster than 3gb.

*edit* Just ran it on my regular XP, running with 3gb ram and no raid, 120 seconds exactly. Somehow I though the over double ram and raid 0 would give a bigger boost in speed than that...
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on January 11, 2009, 05:16:33 pm
Quote from: pom
Well, just upgraded to XP 64 bit with 8gb RAM and raid 0 disk for page file/scratch disk/cache, ran the Retouch Artist test in CS4 - 69 seconds on a 2.2ghz dual core. Does that make sense or should it be faster? To be honest I have to try it on my regular XP partition because the entire rest of PS/Bridge seems no different at all speedwise. Bit of a disappointment actually 8gb doesn't feel any faster than 3gb.

*edit* Just ran it on my regular XP, running with 3gb ram and no raid, 120 seconds exactly. Somehow I though the over double ram and raid 0 would give a bigger boost in speed than that...
Why?

You've managed to reduce the time for the benchmark by over 40%. That's no mean feat, considering that you've merely upgraded RAM and disk, and not done anything to your CPU.

The rest of the system won't feel any faster unless you need more RAM to do your job and the application is capable of taking advantage of it and the operating system manages large amounts of memory efficiently (which XP does not do very well).

((When I write "not very well", it simply means "not" and "very well", not that it does it very badly.))
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on January 12, 2009, 02:51:58 am
Quote from: pom
Well, just upgraded to XP 64 bit with 8gb RAM and raid 0 disk for page file/scratch disk/cache, ran the Retouch Artist test in CS4 - 69 seconds on a 2.2ghz dual core. Does that make sense or should it be faster? To be honest I have to try it on my regular XP partition because the entire rest of PS/Bridge seems no different at all speedwise. Bit of a disappointment actually 8gb doesn't feel any faster than 3gb.

*edit* Just ran it on my regular XP, running with 3gb ram and no raid, 120 seconds exactly. Somehow I though the over double ram and raid 0 would give a bigger boost in speed than that...

There is something wrong. I can get it in 54 seconds with my AMD 4800 running at an overclocked 2600Mhz.  I think you should be a lot faster than that. Did you make sure your CPU was idling before you started the test? It almost sounds like you CPUS are not spooling up to their full 2.2 level.

EDIT---
I just read Janis post. You didn't upgrade the CPU? You got 40% increase in speed upgrading RAM, so yuo were HD swaping. I think you did good, but I thought a 2.2 Dual Core would cripple my AMD 4800 x2 64. I think I posted my test score here. Scroll up and see.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on January 12, 2009, 02:58:13 am
Quote from: jani
Let's say that I have limited screen real estate, and that I'm editing a photo.

While editing it, I have the need of comparing another photo.

Both cannot be displayed at the same time, but I don't need to view more than the part I'm editing at a single time, yet still need to occasionally view a larger view of the image.

It's far quicker to demote the working . . . .

I think I know what you mean now. You can, what is called in Windows, "Keep on top" a windows you are wanting to see while using teh windows below it. The windows you want stays on top of all other windows, even if they are active. YES!  I wish Windows could do that. That has always pissed me off. I hate it. Some programs allow you to tick an option "Always on top." But that is no anywhere what you want, and what I've always wanted. You should be able to right clock any window and choose "always on top," or "Demote," whichever method is more productive.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on January 12, 2009, 05:48:01 am
Quote from: dwdallam
There is something wrong. I can get it in 54 seconds with my AMD 4800 running at an overclocked 2600Mhz.  I think you should be a lot faster than that. Did you make sure your CPU was idling before you started the test? It almost sounds like you CPUS are not spooling up to their full 2.2 level.

EDIT---
I just read Janis post. You didn't upgrade the CPU? You got 40% increase in speed upgrading RAM, so yuo were HD swaping. I think you did good, but I thought a 2.2 Dual Core would cripple my AMD 4800 x2 64. I think I posted my test score here. Scroll up and see.

I left my antivirus running but that was it. I didn't watch what the ram usage was with this test but PS doesn't seem to be using more than 2gb and usually less when you would assume it would want more, very intensive filters, etc. I have 5gb dedicated to PS in the preferences, assumed it would use the RAM to go faster rather than taking ages at 1.5gb usage..
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on January 12, 2009, 05:56:45 am
Quote from: pom
I left my antivirus running but that was it. I didn't watch what the ram usage was with this test but PS doesn't seem to be using more than 2gb and usually less when you would assume it would want more, very intensive filters, etc. I have 5gb dedicated to PS in the preferences, assumed it would use the RAM to go faster rather than taking ages at 1.5gb usage..

You must have a first generation Core. Are you sure it's a Core 2 Duo? If it's a Core 1 then that's about right.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on January 12, 2009, 05:58:39 am
For example, running lens blur on a selection from a 5D file took 3.5 minutes, PS was using 450K of RAM and 50% CPU usage, not touching PF. I'm going to run the test again this time watching how much ram it actually ever uses.

BTW it is core 2 duo.

Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on January 12, 2009, 06:07:18 am
OK just ran the test again, 53 secs, photoshop used the max amount of RAM (just over 5gb) and 99% CPU. Weird.

Whats even weirder is that every subsequent test (restarting PS in between each test) took exactly 65 seconds.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: antonyoung on January 12, 2009, 10:41:45 am
Quote from: dwdallam
I've noticed now that the clone stamp tool on my system is REALLY laggy. I can hit it ten times and put my tablet pen down and the cursor is still click moving.

This drove me insane and would have been a deal breaker if I hadn't figured out how to stop it. Disabling Open GL rendering makes it responsive and accurate again.

Now does anybody know how to get the palettes to stop floating and have PS respect their positions when zooming in and out like it used to? CS4 keeps putting the window behind the palettes, and then I have to minimize them to get to the corner of the window so that I can resize it so it's not behind the palettes, and then the next time I zoom out I have to repeat the process. How do I set it to behave like previous versions of Photoshop?
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on January 12, 2009, 11:17:08 am
Quote from: antonyoung
This drove me insane and would have been a deal breaker if I hadn't figured out how to stop it. Disabling Open GL rendering makes it responsive and accurate again.

Now does anybody know how to get the palettes to stop floating and have PS respect their positions when zooming in and out like it used to? CS4 keeps putting the window behind the palettes, and then I have to minimize them to get to the corner of the window so that I can resize it so it's not behind the palettes, and then the next time I zoom out I have to repeat the process. How do I set it to behave like previous versions of Photoshop?

Go to the preferences, disable tabs, animated zoom, flick panning and enable floating window docking. That together with a disabled Open Gl make life so much more worth living!
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: antonyoung on January 12, 2009, 02:26:53 pm
Quote from: pom
Go to the preferences, disable tabs, animated zoom, flick panning and enable floating window docking. That together with a disabled Open Gl make life so much more worth living!

Yep, I already have it set like that, with the exception of floating window docking, which I like. I tried turning it off on your suggestion though and unfortunately still get the same result. Interestingly, a fresh installation does not exhibit the problem- zooming takes the window up to the palettes and stops there like it used to. After the palettes have been moved around though, I can't get them back to that behavior. Zooming a window will put the right half behind the palettes, and the palettes float on top. On my main machine zooming a window will also now expand it behind the tools on the left, so it drives me crazy from both sides.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Ben Rubinstein on January 13, 2009, 04:53:24 am
Quote from: antonyoung
Yep, I already have it set like that, with the exception of floating window docking, which I like. I tried turning it off on your suggestion though and unfortunately still get the same result. Interestingly, a fresh installation does not exhibit the problem- zooming takes the window up to the palettes and stops there like it used to. After the palettes have been moved around though, I can't get them back to that behavior. Zooming a window will put the right half behind the palettes, and the palettes float on top. On my main machine zooming a window will also now expand it behind the tools on the left, so it drives me crazy from both sides.

I used to have the same thing but then when I reinstalled from a format I unchecked all the boxes before even opening the first image and it worked like you have seen. I also hated the way it worked before that, Adobe seem to have gone very wierd recently, I wouldn't have touched CS4 if it wasn't for the new ACR (dodging and burning has changed my raw processing forever) and the huge improvements to bridge.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on January 13, 2009, 06:19:51 am
All those things seem to bother me much less tehse days. I think it's the Nafazodone. Try it.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on January 16, 2009, 09:36:14 pm
Vaguely on topic -
I did some PS speed tests a while back where I did so with an empty desktop [on the Mac] and then one with some files on it.
The empty desktop was faster. I'd heard this was the case and was why I was testing it.
This is only the case for Macs not PCs IIRC.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jani on January 17, 2009, 04:39:13 am
Quote from: jjj
Vaguely on topic -
I did some PS speed tests a while back where I did so with an empty desktop [on the Mac] and then one with some files on it.
The empty desktop was faster. I'd heard this was the case and was why I was testing it.
This is only the case for Macs not PCs IIRC.
I don't know if that's true, but on Windows (XP and earlier), the amount of installed software has a bearing on the performance of the computer.

In earlier versions, the amount of icons visible would bog down performance quite a bit, whereas in XP it apparently is the implementation of software management (i.e. the registry) that causes the problems. This is why selling "registry cleaners" etc. has become pretty popular.

In addition, Windows is often slowed down by anti-virus and anti-spyware software, which is not quite as critical a need on the Mac - for now.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on January 17, 2009, 06:00:54 pm
Quote from: jani
I don't know if that's true,
I thought it odd, so tested it and my results confirmed it.
Quote
but on Windows (XP and earlier), the amount of installed software has a bearing on the performance of the computer.
Could also be the quality of the software. And the more there is, the more likely the chance of iffy software.

Quote
In earlier versions, the amount of icons visible would bog down performance quite a bit, whereas in XP it apparently is the implementation of software management (i.e. the registry) that causes the problems. This is why selling "registry cleaners" etc. has become pretty popular.
Which I'd heard did sweet FA.

Quote
In addition, Windows is often slowed down by anti-virus and anti-spyware software, which is not quite as critical a need on the Mac - for now.
Norton simply being installed could screw up your computer and used to be harder to remove than a virus - which would be ironic if it wasn't so annoying.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on January 28, 2009, 06:11:45 am
Quote from: Sheldon N
Mine does it in 8 seconds... tried it a couple different ways with no difference.

I'm wondering what system you have.

I just finished building my new system and got 11 seconds with the radial blur and 16 seconds on the Retouch Pro test. I did have things running in teh background though, like Anti-virus, etc., but that should not affect performance.

Vista 64
PSCS4
CPU: Core i7 920 @ 2.7Ghz (no overclocking, but that is coming
MB: Gigabyte x58 UDF5
RAM: OCZ Triple Channel Performance Series Matched Set @ 12GB
PSU: 1000wt Kingwin Mach 1 Moduler
Disks: (2) 640GB Western Digital Caviar Blacks in RAID 0

Test: Radial Blur 11 sec
Test: Retouch Pro Eagle: 16 sec

From my old system listed above, I tripled my performance in the radial blur and quadrupled it in the Eagle test.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on January 28, 2009, 05:53:42 pm
Very nice, that is a huge upgrade indeed.  

Let us know what you get after overclocking.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on January 29, 2009, 03:45:59 am
Quote from: Sheldon N
Very nice, that is a huge upgrade indeed.  

Let us know what you get after overclocking.


Sheldon, you got 8 seconds. What are your rig specs?

LOL--I find this type of analysis fun about once every three years for about a week or two, then back to normalcy.

I do have my system running stable and I've moved ALL of my work to it now. I'm very happy with it. It's faster than crap.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: jjj on January 29, 2009, 09:28:29 am
Quote from: dwdallam
I just finished building my new system and got 11 seconds with the radial blur and 16 seconds on the Retouch Pro test. I did have things running in teh background though, like Anti-virus, etc., but that should not affect performance.
It can if it's scanning as it will affect your hard disc performance. AV software is a common slower of systems.
I believe when doing these tests, that everything should be turned off bar PS and PS set to certain preferences to measure as comparably as possible.
Then it will interesting to test machine with the usual stuff running, to see how much difference that makes - leaving PS the same as in previous test - which is not the same as you would normally have it.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: Sheldon N on January 29, 2009, 04:25:20 pm
Quote from: dwdallam
Sheldon, you got 8 seconds. What are your rig specs?

LOL--I find this type of analysis fun about once every three years for about a week or two, then back to normalcy.

I do have my system running stable and I've moved ALL of my work to it now. I'm very happy with it. It's faster than crap.

Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard
8 GB of 1066Mhz DDR2 RAM (4x2) running at roughly 1066Mhz after FSB overclock/multiplier adjustments
Q9550 Intel Quad Core Processor, overclocked to 3.6GHz (424Mhz front side bus x 8.5 multiplier)
150GB WD Velociraptor OS Drive
640GB WD Caviar Black x 2, one for scratch disk + music, one for image storage.

No stability or temperature issues at 3.6GHz, been running fine for several months now. I didn't disable anti-virus for my tests, but I use ESET NOD 32, which is not very intrusive or demanding on the system.

I would guess the primary reason for my faster radial blur test is the CPU clock speed. i7 is faster clock-for-clock, but 3.6GHz vs. 2.7GHz gives a slight advantage to the older quad core. I'd bet yours will be faster after you overclock it to a similar clock speed.
Title: CS4 VERY NICE!
Post by: dwdallam on January 30, 2009, 03:33:07 am
Quote from: Sheldon N
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard
8 GB of 1066Mhz DDR2 RAM (4x2) running at roughly 1066Mhz after FSB overclock/multiplier adjustments
Q9550 Intel Quad Core Processor, overclocked to 3.6GHz (424Mhz front side bus x 8.5 multiplier)
150GB WD Velociraptor OS Drive
640GB WD Caviar Black x 2, one for scratch disk + music, one for image storage.

No stability or temperature issues at 3.6GHz, been running fine for several months now. I didn't disable anti-virus for my tests, but I use ESET NOD 32, which is not very intrusive or demanding on the system.

I would guess the primary reason for my faster radial blur test is the CPU clock speed. i7 is faster clock-for-clock, but 3.6GHz vs. 2.7GHz gives a slight advantage to the older quad core. I'd bet yours will be faster after you overclock it to a similar clock speed.

Yep. The i7's are suppose to get incredible gains from very conservative OCing. After you take them to 4Ghz, you gain nothing though because the bus is saturated, not to mention the RAM. That's pretty incredible. I CPU OCing past the Bus capability--on air. The i&'s can go to 100C too. Is that incredible? This is the CPU I was waiting for.