Adobe CS2 application performance problems, other issues (#4)

We continue to report on sluggish performance exhibited by virtually all of Adobe's Creative Suite 2 (CS2) applications, including Illustrator, Photoshop, GoLive and InDesign. As previously noted, most affected tool in the bunch appears to be Photoshop 9.0, which exhibits significant slow-down for some users when working with routine (not particularly large or complex) images and when opening or saving documents.

Turning off Spotlight can increase speed A handful of users report that turning off Spotlight -- either via a utility like Spotless or through these instructions -- provides a significant boost in Adobe CS2 application speed.

One MacFixIt reader writes:

"We have discovered that turning off Spotlight has made our CS2 behave more like CS1. We have a variety of workstations, ranging from Dual G5 2.5's to Powerbook G4 500's--14 in all that had varying degrees of slowdowns after installing CS2. We also had a lot of random crashes in the first few days. We did all the normal things--plist deletions, defrags, etc. One of our students noticed that his workstation was really balky, and decided to use Spotlight to search for 'potential problems' (his words...). The workstation immediately froze as soon as he started typing 'P.' Several students had previously noted that CS2 seems to be making more noise--disk access-- than CS1, even though we set the preferences the same. More experimentation on several other workstations led us to disabling Spotlight. Works for us, so far. We did try to turn of Spotlight searches of specific folders of images and other scratch drives, but that didn't help. When the students need Spotlight, they all know how to start it up again. We use mainly InDesign and PShop, and not too much Illustrator and GoLive."

Retrospect a culprit? Meanwhile, MacFixIt reader Scott Rose reports that he experiences CS2 application slow-down after Dantz' Retrospect performs an automatic backup.

Scott writes:

"We have discovered that all of our Adobe applications slowdown after Retrospect runs an automated backup in Tiger. Quitting out of the Adobe applications and relaunching them brings them back to full speed, but we have narrowed down the culprit to Retrospect."

Some users not experiencing slow-down It is important to note that not all users are experiencing the aforementioned slow-down from CS2 applications.

One reader writes:

"Just wanted to weigh in and report I'm not having any significant problems (performance or otherwise) with CS2 (after about 3 weeks of all-day use for complex, mostly print design projects). I kept CS1 on my system in case I ever needed it, but after a couple of days I moved on permanently to the new versions.

"Bridge runs a bit slow at times, but I have a ton of heavy-duty, large, high-res resources to wade through any time I open it, so I was used to that in the old File Browser in Photoshop (although I could do without the added time to open Bridge the first time). It does add another level of functionality I'll have to get used to, and once I do, it won't seem so different or foreign.

"I'm running a Dual 2.5 GHz G5 with 3GB RAM, and OS 10.4.2 (all Apple updates applied). I'm also running Font Agent Pro to auto-activate fonts, and it's working well so far with InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop.

MacFixIt reader Luther adds:

"I haven't found any speed issues with the CS2 suite - if anything, they seem to load faster (Photoshop and Acrobat especially). I'm not sure if I've used Photoshop extensively enough yet to see the slowdown experienced by other users.

"I did, however, make a special point of removing Version Cue. It's nothing but trouble."

In the past we've noted some serious issues with Adobe's Version Cue.

Previous Coverage

• Adobe CS2 application performance problems, other issues (#3)
• Adobe CS2 (Photoshop, Illustrator) performance problems (#2)
• Adobe CS2 (Photoshop, InDesign) performance problems

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