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Photoshop CS2 Performance Issues—Could It Be Your Video Card?

Is the performance of Photoshop CS2 worse than CS1? Some users out there are saying yes, particularly in Windows. What do these performance woes look like? Well, for one, Photoshop CS2 can take a long time to open files. You may also experience significant redraw problems, with files that worked just fine in CS1, rendering CS2 just about unusable.

Though the culprit has yet to be smoked out, the primary suspect is video card support. These performance and redraw problems are thought to be caused by an incompatibility between older video cards with either built-in memory or less than 128MB of RAM. Also, the code that deals with the user interface was changed for CS2. Adobe is still trying to pinpoint the exact cause of these performance problems. If you are also experiencing performance issues, you might want to try either updating your video card to the latest drivers or, worse case scenario, buy a completely new video card. Contact technical support for recommendations or keep an eye on Adobe's web site. You can also read more here:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@840.5JbUeisIluJ.2@.3bba6ade

BIGGER Tiles in Photoshop CS2

Photoshop CS2 ships with a new plug-in installed, but it's not used until you say it should be. The plug-in is called 'Bigger Tiles.' The Bigger Tiles plug-in is installed in the Extensions folder, within the Adobe Photoshop Only Plug-Ins folder that lives in the Adobe Photoshop CS2 folder. To activate the plug-in, simply remove the '~' from the beginning of its name. This is actually a trick you can use to disable/enable any Photoshop plug-in (put a '~' at the beginning of the plug-in file name). WHAT DOES IT DO? The Bigger Tiles plug-in allows Photoshop to process image data in larger chunks. With the plug-in enabled, the overall time to complete many operations is reduced, especially on computers with lots of RAM (more than 1 GB). Bigger Tiles can also reduce the responsiveness of the application under some circumstances.

Using the Lens Correction Filter in CS2

Here is a cool tutorial posted by Colin Smith on how to use the Lens Correction Filter in Photoshop CS2:  http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=207

Colorizing Objects in Photoshop

Click on the image below to see this technique in action (quicktime movie).

Ran across this process as I was reading through Design Graphics Magazine #114  yesterday, and thought our readers and customers would find it quite useful. It's both a very powerful, yet very simple technique.

The next time you need to change the color of an object, (or present something in a variety of colors) just create a new Layer that overlays the object, fill it with color, and create a Layer mask so the color only affects the object to be "painted".

The next move is to simply choose the right Blend Mode from the Layers Palette. For lighter colors, "Vivid Light" mode works best. For darker tones, use "Color Burn".

Every month Design Graphics Magazine offers articles presenting essential Photoshop techniques, and is a must-read for all of us at Avondale Media. A compilation of dozens of the best tutorials from the magazine are in two excellent books by Design Graphics:

Photoshop Studio Skills: For Photoshop 7 and Photoshop cs published by Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Click here to purchase from Wiley.com and receive a 15% discount. Discount calculates upon checkout.  Use code w5558 if discount does not calculate automatically.

You can subscribe to the magazine here.

Photoshop CS2 (9.0) leaked - sneak peek

Cached on Google:  http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:ikpkIo53mrMJ:www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200404/040405Photoshop.html+Photoshop+CS2&hl=en

On Slashdot.com: http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/03/28/1413236.shtml?tid=152&tid=164

Crash when using Motion Blur?

If you experience occasional crashes in Photoshop, while trying to apply a Motion Blur, you're not alone. Here is a lengthy thread on Adobe's User to User Forum with one possible suggested fix, offered up by Adobe's own Chris Cox. He says, “You can try disabling the AltiVecCore plugin and see if that solves it.” Check out the juicy details here: http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@577.aqjYdcPbNG7.1@.3bb5a616

Can't Save for Web, Error: “File not Found”

This problem has to do with the “Preview in Default Browser” setting in the Save For Web dialog. Here is one user's solution:

In Photoshop's “Save for Web” dialog, at the bottom right (to the left of the “Edit in ImageReady” button) is a drop-down “Select Browser” menu. It's one of those things most people don't normally pay any attention to. If left as the default, with no browsers in the list, I have the problem previously described. Once I put Firefox in that list (whether I make it the default previewer or not) my problems are solved. I would guess it's because I don't have the Firefox application in the main Applications directory with the other browsers and Photoshop wasn't able to locate the application on its own.

More details at: http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@369.omQfdVFWNaW.0@.3bb830b2

Photoshop Elements 3 VCD/Slideshow quality woes?

Have you created a VCD using PSE3 and found that the quality is crappy? The problem with VCD format is its resolution and video bit rate. Images are down-sampled to 352x240 and constant video bit rate is set to 2000 kbps during the WMV encoding process. When the VCD is played on a television, the 352x240 images are displayed in full-screen mode and you lose the quality of the image.

The Elements 3.0 slideshow, which is based on WMV and VCD spec, is very strict about how the movie file is encoded for VCD purposes. The reason for low video bit rate is that VCD was originally intended to display 1 hour of video on a 650MB CD. The higher the resolution size and video bit rate, the larger the individual movie file on VCD. If you feel adventurous, you can increase the bit rate by editing the existing VCD NTSC Output.prx file, but that gets pretty technical and you don't want to dig yourself into a hole you can't get yourself out of.

Album 2.0 is a little different in as it is merely wrapping creations to PDF. Images are not down-sampled to 352x240 and it is not encoded in VCD movie file. It's merely a PDF creation with a movie file on a CD.

Photoshop Elements 3.0.1 Update (Win only, English & Japanese)

The Photoshop Elements 3.0.1 free updater for the English and Japanese versions is now available online at:  http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/new.jsp

Here are the facts:

• Which Platform: Windows only
• Which languages: English and Japanese (the updater won't work with German, French, etc.)
• This updater fixes 3 things:

    1. Provides new access point to download new creation templates for photo books and calendars.

    2. If a version of Photoshop Album or Photoshop Album Starter Edition is installed on the PC but was never launched, the Organizer in PSE3 failed to launch with a catalog error. This won't happen any longer with 3.0.1.

  3. British and Australian users are able to change the date format in the Organizer to day/month/year by using the shortcut key combination Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D, the same way as they could in PS Album 2.0.

Using the Cookie Cutter tool in PSE3 as mask tool

Here is a cool alternate use of the Cookie Cutter tool in Photoshop Elements 3. You can use any of the shapes available with the Cookie Cutter tool, in conjunction with adjustment layers, to create some fun and neat effects in your images. Here are some quick steps to try:

• Open an image
• Click on the 'Create adjustment layer' icon in the Layers palette (looks like a half white/half black circle) and select the type of adjustment layer you want to apply.  For this example, let's select the 'Hue/Saturation' adjustment layer.
• In the Hue/Saturation dialog click on the 'Colorize' checkbox and move the sliders until you get a result you like (I did Hue:50, Saturation:50, Lightness:-20) and click OK
• Select the Cookie Cutter tool (looks like a heart icon with a little person inside) and select your desired shape in the options bar (by default the shape is a heart).
• Click and drag your shape on the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer you just applied.
• Adjust the position, scale, and rotation and then apply your Cookie Cutter crop by double-clicking within the shape you created or click on the check icon in the options bar.
• There you go. You've used the Cookie Cutter tool to create a mask on your adjustment layer!
• If you want to play further, try applying some Layer Styles (See Styles and Effects palette) to your adjustment layer.  WOW!