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Adobe Photoshop CS5

LJL

New member
Great addition, Jonathon. Glad that this is now posted for folks to start thinking about what they have, or may need. Looks like there still are some gotchas with how you configure PS CS5, such as Tile Sizes and such.

Personal comment....while many of us need to use PS for lots of things, it is becoming more apparent with every new version that they should really consider rebuilding the app from the ground up, and get past some of the legacy cobwebs that are still part of things. Besides an ever steepening upgrade cost for every new version, the hardware demands seem to be growing at an even more frightening pace. I am sure all of us have 32GB of RAM in those tricked out Mac Pros just waiting to tackle things.....LOL.

LJ
 

Terry

New member
Personal comment....while many of us need to use PS for lots of things, it is becoming more apparent with every new version that they should really consider rebuilding the app from the ground up, and get past some of the legacy cobwebs that are still part of things. Besides an ever steepening upgrade cost for every new version, the hardware demands seem to be growing at an even more frightening pace. I am sure all of us have 32GB of RAM in those tricked out Mac Pros just waiting to tackle things.....LOL.

LJ
Sadly I settled for 24gb :ROTFL::ROTFL::ROTFL: Just kidding around your comments are so true.
 

LJL

New member
Sadly I settled for 24gb :ROTFL::ROTFL::ROTFL: Just kidding around your comments are so true.
Ah, but as long as you keep those 24GB "warmed up", you should not have any problems with most things you need to process at the 5-10GB file sizes.:ROTFL::ROTFL:

That was a really interesting thing that Lloyd Chambers commented on....needing to get the RAM pre-allocated and warmed up before things can begin to rock. I do not ever recall seeing that sort of thing in any app before. :eek:

LJ
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Ah, but as long as you keep those 24GB "warmed up", you should not have any problems with most things you need to process at the 5-10GB file sizes.:ROTFL::ROTFL:

That was a really interesting thing that Lloyd Chambers commented on....needing to get the RAM pre-allocated and warmed up before things can begin to rock. I do not ever recall seeing that sort of thing in any app before. :eek:

LJ
Yea this is bugging me a great deal. Have to see how this shakes out
 

LJL

New member
It might not be a big issue if all you are running is PS CS5, but most of us have other things working at the same time also. That is sort of the point about multi-tasking, multi-core, multi-threading on modern computers. I wonder how well CS5 will release that RAM for say C1 or Phocus or Aperture to grab to use for its needs, and then what does that do to the "pre-allocation" configuration in CS5? Does one have to restart CS5 and get it warmed up every time? This seems very strange. Hope somebody that knows what is going on can explain this.

LJ
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
The "Warming up" that he refers to is the usual bit that is seen when items needed for use by a program are initially loaded, and from that point on are cached, or files that have been referenced are available in file system cache rather than on physical disk.

Most of the hit I believe is due to the synthetic nature of the benchmark and will probably not be noticed in typical usage.

I have stopped paying attention to that particular set of synthetic benchmarks since they are so different from what I do on a daily basis.

Although Lloyd mentions that Adobe has some tuning to do, which I agree is probably true especially in the more interactive areas involving the interaction of on-screen graphics in synchrony with pen or mouse events, I think that these benchmarks need to be re-designed to reflect the actual use of most users who routinely do not do massive batch actions on large files, but rather manipulate them at least to some degree with hand and eye at human speeds. If such a benchmark were to be created, I am sure that it might display some of the issues that show up particularly with graphics acceleration turned off or with older graphics cards.

From my own experience with months of use with CS5, I suggest that it is a worthy upgrade, but not based on any particular benchmark.

A simple meaningful benchmark for the large file folks (like me) might be something pretty simple, like the time it takes to save a 4G psb. You will find no particular advantage there; it is as slow as ever.
-bob
 
D

DougDolde

Guest
Anyone tried 3rd party scripts or plugins like Photokit, Nik, Perceptool, etc? I'm guessing they are not 64 bit compatible.
 

billbunton

Subscriber Member
In 64-bit mode none of my plugins (all the PixelGenius, Nik, Imagenomic, etc.) show up. I'm currently undecided whether it will be better to restart CS5 in 32-bit when I need to use one, or better to load the image in CS4 for that step. I thought of that when I was getting ready to uninstall CS4; decided to keep it around a little bit longer.
 

LJL

New member
Bob,
I am tending to agree with you about the somewhat less realistic tests in the benchmarking, which is designed more to show overall speeds and handling of larger stresses, and not so much actual use. What I have been wondering about is if PS CS5 is just a slow start from not being open already. So if you were working on something in say C1 or Aperture or whatever else, and needed to shell out to PS for some finish work and maybe saving to PSD or PSB files, you would be better off having opened PS before and just let it sit open and ready to run. When in a long working session, that is not much of a problem, but I have many times needed to open PS from some other app just to do one or two things, and that start-up is just slow, and then the file writing you mentioned is also slow. (This is my gripe about the legacy cobwebs still in the app.)

Not trying to run it down, as I think there are some really nice new features, and am glad to see it 64-bit capable, but it still looks like there are speedbumps, inefficiencies, and other issues still lingering after many, many generations of this app. The tests from Lloyd Chambers suggest it does well, but they also suggest that there are some glitchy things that are harder to explain, like working speeds from first start. The way I process, I try not to have more things open and running than I really need, as my systems were always a bit RAM lean, but other apps, as I mentioned about Aperture, are more than capable of doing quite well under those conditions. I still think many of the Adobe apps need rebuilding from the ground up to get rid of so much of the legacy sludge.

As for the concerns about the plug-ins....Bill, that was my worry also. Until those plug-ins and PS CS5 get coordinated to truly operate in a 64-bit environment, there is not much gained yet, so CS4 or even CS3 with most plug-ins will get the job done about as fast.

LJ
 

ustein

Contributing Editor
I use CS5 in 32 bit for some time now to have all plugins. Using it seems about as fast as CS4 before (don't have P65+ images though).
 
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Bob

Administrator
Staff member
The interesting scratch behavior of CS5 might be worth noting.
Despite its capability for using large memory, it still allocates scratch whether it actually needs it or not. For example, when one loads a 346M file, for example, PS12 allocates a 2.24 G scratch file before anything has been done at all. The information panels at this point displays 346M/346M. At this point PS 12 is using only 847 M of real and 1.06G of virtual memory.
Performing a stamp visible, increases the information panel sizes to 346/692, and gratifyingly memory usage increases to 12.5GR/1.51GV and the scratch file did not grow remaining at 2.24G.
Duplicating layers to grow the image to 346M/3.38G caused the scratch to grow to 3.37G and memory usage to 2.85GR/3.09GV.

Next, closing the file but leaving PS12 running... behold scratch. It remains at 3.37G. The file remains allocated even though there is no present demand. PS12 also held on to its real memory allocations with no change there either.

Re-opening the original file caused no change in memory or scratch allocation. to demonstrate that this behavior is really static, and that there is no time based garbage collection, I allowed PS to continue running over night. The next morning, there was no change in memory usage or scratch file allocation.
When PSCS5 was finally quit, the scratch file was deallocated.

While looking at the usage of scratch, I also noticed an interesting tidbit.
Although scratch had been allocated, the file was nowhere to be found!.
the usual place "/Volumes/Scratch/.TemporaryItems/folders.501/Cleanup\ At\ Startup/ was empty even though activity monitor as well as the "du" command indicated that 3.37G had been used. So the file had been allocated, but where was it? More on this mystery later when I research the details of the new "Disable VM Buffering" plugin when it is released.
-bob
 
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Bob

Administrator
Staff member
On actions and synthetic benchmarks...
I noticed an interesting footnote concerning actions in the writeup adobe provides at http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404440.html#ram 64 cs5
in that article it notes that
Photoshop writes data to the hard disk incrementally while you pause in Photoshop. When you run actions, there are no pauses for Photoshop to write to the disk, so Photoshop writes to the disk while the action runs.
So what that means is that benchmarks that consist of a series of operations in one unbroken action do not provide the opportunity of photoshop to perform its disk operations during user think-time. In other words, a blur might be complete, but its results might not be written to disk until later, so it is not really that meaningful to perform one action in an action several times then to divide to determine the time that the individual operation takes since the factor of i/o overlap will have been not considered. Of course, the i/o operations are necessary, but humans tend to take time to move their arms and think about what to do between operations, so the system is "released" to the user sooner then the total timed of the effects of the user's input.
-bob
 

woodyspedden

New member
I have tried loading both Viveza II and Silver Efex pro into CS 5. Neither seems to work. Does anyone know if CS 5 requires new versions of these products?

Thanks

Woody
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
I have tried loading both Viveza II and Silver Efex pro into CS 5. Neither seems to work. Does anyone know if CS 5 requires new versions of these products?

Thanks

Woody
from NIK's support web site
"Photoshop CS5 will for the first time, run in 64-bit on Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) and Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Currently all Nik Software products are 32-bit compatible. For this reason, none of our products will work natively in Photoshop CS5 while in the default 64-bit mode. To work around this issue, until the 64-bit version of Nik Software products are released, Photoshop CS5 will need to be forced into 32-bit mode.
Typically the user will need to locate the Photoshop CS5 application file (Macintosh HD | Applications | Photoshop CS5. Once located, select it, press Command + I (apple key + I) to get the Information dialog window. In the information dialog window, midway down there should be a check box that will allow you to select "Run in 32-bit Mode", then close the information window. Once this is done, each time Photoshop CS5 is launched it will automatically be running in 32-bit mode and all Nik Software product will work as they did in previous versions of Photoshop.
"

-bob
 

docmoore

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Noticed today that TWAIN resources may or may not be supported...

Case in point...my Epson 4990 TWAIN (reinstalled!) will load and preview in
CS5 but when I click SCAN an error message states Scanner not installed.
However it shows in System Preferences and the TWAIN is in Presets:Input/Output. And this is in 32 bit mode...did not even bother with 64 after NIK/OnOne/Imagenomic/Akvis/Photokit do not work. :eek:

What a crock...I have been using Photoshop for the past five years to scan with different Epson scanners...in addition to my Nikon 4000 and Hasselblad 343.

Nice to upgrade....get to wait for 64 bit upgrades on the vendors end and Adobe to get its act together....my $849 upgrade may help them get temp help to make this work? :ROTFL:

Bob
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
Noticed today that TWAIN resources may or may not be supported...

Case in point...my Epson 4990 TWAIN (reinstalled!) will load and preview in
CS5 but when I click SCAN an error message states Scanner not installed.
However it shows in System Preferences and the TWAIN is in Presets:Input/Output. And this is in 32 bit mode...did not even bother with 64 after NIK/OnOne/Imagenomic/Akvis/Photokit do not work. :eek:

What a crock...I have been using Photoshop for the past five years to scan with different Epson scanners...in addition to my Nikon 4000 and Hasselblad 343.

Nice to upgrade....get to wait for 64 bit upgrades on the vendors end and Adobe to get its act together....my $849 upgrade may help them get temp help to make this work? :ROTFL:

Bob
It seems that the twain plugin is part of the optional plugins to be released "real soon now"
-bob
 

gogopix

Subscriber
CS5 i will upgrade to but Indesign 5 i will wait also since I have to deal with press houses. They always seem to be at least one generation behind. CS5 is 64 bit that alone is worth it.
Guy,
That would be good news indeed. However, I am just loading CS5 now and I see that it loaded the 32-bit emulator of MS!!!! on 64-bit Windows 7

WTF as they say en France. Is it 64-bit or not. (sorry, since I have a non-graphics business, we need to use MS OS )

So, what is going on. If the 64bit on mac is real but on MS is just 'faked' that is important to know.

Anybody out there know?

regards
Victor
 
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