Poor Performance in Photoshop

[JasperJohnSon]

I'm a brand new Mac user, after switching from PC where I've worked for the last 12 years or so.

When I run Photoshop I'm finding the performance very disapointing - switching/resizing brushes is laggy, eye dropper is slow, and even when painting I can hear the machine grinding away trying to keep up. This is not at all what I expected. Swapping between brush and eye dropper (something I do about 1000 times a day) gives me a half second lag, which is unacceptable.

I'm running a MacPro 3 GHz Dual-Core, 4 GB RAM, with the ATI RadeonX video card.

I might be inclinded to blame it on Adobe, yet these very typical operations are handled instantaneously on my 3 year old 1 GHz Dell - I can swap brush with dropper just as fast as I can hit the keys.

1. Is this typical performance for a Mac?
2. Is there something I need to set up differently than 'out of the box' for adequate performance?

Any tips would be great; I'm really puzzled here.
Thanks.

 

[Applespider]

Since Adobe haven't released a Universal Binary for Photoshop, it's currently running in Rosetta (basically emulation) on your Intel Mac Pro. On an old PPC G5, it would be running without those lags.

Since you've upped your RAM already, there's not going to be a heck of a lot you can do... except wait for CS3 which will be Universal to come out and then it should blow you away.

 

[dornoforpyros]

welcome to rosetta I'm afraid. With the switch from power pc chips (PPC) to intel chips most mac software needs to be rewritten in universal binary.

Unfortunately Adobe has kind of left the graphics community high & dry until CS3 is released (spring of 07 I've heard). Given the fact that the graphics community lives on Macs for the most part, this has been one of the soarer spots of the intel switch.

 

[JasperJohnSon]

Thanks for the info. Not the answer I was hoping for, but I really appreciate it.

 

[dmw007]

Thanks for the info. Not the answer I was hoping for, but I really appreciate it.

But just wait until Photoshop is universal, then your machine will really fly!

 

[G.Kirby]

It's not just Photoshop that will give you these problems. Even mid sized PPoint shows can cause problems when running through rosetta. Soon all will be Dual Binary and will scream once more on the Mac. (and I do mean scream in a good way )

 

[dmw007]

It's not just Photoshop that will give you these problems. Even mid sized PPoint shows can cause problems when running through rosetta. Soon all will be Dual Binary and will scream once more on the Mac. (and I do mean scream in a good way )

I hate the lags in M$ Office 2004 as well, but for the most part performance is okay (things have been better with Mac OS X 10.4.8).