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Author Topic: CS4 VERY NICE!  (Read 72270 times)

dwdallam

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« Reply #20 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.

« Last Edit: November 24, 2008, 10:58:30 pm by dwdallam »
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dwdallam

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« Reply #21 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.
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BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #22 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

dwdallam

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« Reply #23 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 . . . .
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BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #24 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

dwdallam

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« Reply #25 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.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2008, 02:49:34 am by dwdallam »
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DiaAzul

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« Reply #26 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.
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David Plummer    http://photo.tanzo.org/

dwdallam

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« Reply #27 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.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2008, 07:03:09 am by dwdallam »
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jjj

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« Reply #28 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.
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Jack Flesher

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« Reply #29 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,
« Last Edit: November 26, 2008, 11:00:58 am by Jack Flesher »
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Sheldon N

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« Reply #30 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.
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dwdallam

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« Reply #31 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_
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Ben Rubinstein

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« Reply #32 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.
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jani

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« Reply #33 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.
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dwdallam

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« Reply #34 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.
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dwdallam

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« Reply #35 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.
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Sheldon N

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« Reply #36 on: November 26, 2008, 03:48:09 pm »

I'll email you the speed test action file, test image and instructions.
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Sheldon Nalos
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DiaAzul

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« Reply #37 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  
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jjj

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« Reply #38 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!!  
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Ben Rubinstein

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« Reply #39 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!  
« Last Edit: November 27, 2008, 11:55:19 am by pom »
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