Photoshop CS3->CS4 update tips?

[srwatters]

OK, it's been out long enough and I've seen several things I'd like to try from the demo, so I put my order in and await the UPS man...

Let's hear your tips, tricks, and gotchas when doing the CS3 to CS4 upgrade.

- Did you leave CS3 or nuke it? (The trial installed side-by-side with CS3)

- Any issues with Plug-ins? (Portraiture, Alien Skin, Neat Image, Nik)

- Moving actions, possible or not? (What about place, insert, or other file ops?)

Of course I'm a Mac guy (like you didn't know that already), but you PC users are welcome to join in too

Thanks!

[billbunton]

I keep plugins in a secondary folder. The only problem I recall was with Imagenomic Portraiture, which didn't want to install (it wasn't recognized). Imagenomic knew about the problem, and had instructions for manually extracting and installing. I think they've since come out with a new version that installs okay.

Actions are standard transfer -- save from CS3, then load in CS4.

If you use two monitors, with palettes on the primary and the image on the secondary, you're in for a surprise. Each image you open will open on the primary monitor, and you'll have to drag it to the one you want. I finally gave up and rearranged things.

I left CS3 for a couple weeks, then when I was sure CS4 was working okay I nuked CS3.

[Phanee]

I am on PC and most of my issues are PC 64bit related.

I installed CS4 on Windows Vista 64bit. It installed two versions of CS4. One 64bit version and one 32bit version.

I have Imagenomic plugins and OnOne Plug-in suite.

On 64bit version I was able to see only 'Portraiture'. Not able to see Noiseware or Real grain or any of OnOne plugins.

No change(compared to CS3) in 32bit version as far as Imagenomic plug-ins are concerned. But some of OnOne plug-ins went into Automate menu option.

Lightroom 2 by default directly takes me to 64bit version of CS4. I added CS4 32 bit as addtional external editing program.

I guess I will be using 32bit version for now till plug-ins come up with updates for 64bit.

I have 6gb of RAM and I allocted 3GB to photoshop. Other than recognizing additional RAM I don't know of any other advantages with 64bit version.

I uninstalled CS3 immediately and going through Kelby training to learn new features in CS4.

[jeffkohn]

I've found there's as much bad as good about CS4. The OpenGL acceleration is buggy and sucks. I don't like the tabbed windows at all. I also don't like the new adjustment panel, I want the old popup dialogs for adjustment layers back. To be honest, I can't really think of anything off the top of my head that I like better about Photoshop CS4 except that it handles large files much better (and admittedly, that's a pretty big one).

64-bit Photoshop is great in theory, but in reality almost all plugins are still 32-bit which means you can't really use 64-bit PS for much at all unless you don't have any plugins. And I'm not hopeful that all the plugins I use will get updated anytime soon. Sloppy coders are going to find out that it takes a lot more than just re-compiling as 64-bit.

Bridge and ACR, however, have been greatly improved and are well worth the upgrade to me.

[newtune3]

I just sent some dollars to the CS4 fairy myself. I am so ready to have the real thing.

[andyz]

Has anyone upgraded from an educational version? I have CS2, educational, and was told here by one person that it could be upgraded. Adobe chat help indicated to me that educational versions are not upgradable and I'll need a full install. They should know, but I'm hoping to save a few bucks here.

[EdSA]

I had the educational version CS2. I was looking to upgrade and called adobe. They said there is no problem. I bought the CS4 upgrade ~$200 they shipped me the CD and it found the previous serial # and installed fine.

[andyz]

Well, I bought the downloadable version and yes, it installed fine. Thanks.

Now, gotta shell out for some books/tutorials.

[andyz]

Have you seen a performance hit after going to CS4?

I went from 2 to 4. My PC is a 3GHz CPU with 2 GB RAM. It is XP Media with all the MS updates so I am running Service Pack 3. The new install didn't remove the older Bridge or CS2. I figured I'd wait and remove them when I am more comfortable with CS4.

But there are such delays switching to a brush or lowering the opacity of a brush setting for example. I've got plenty of scratch disk space and set memory usage from its default down to 50% and up to 80%. But it still seems slow.

Are there recommended setting anyone can share, or would more RAM do it?

[srwatters]

I'm on a Mac and can't really help you much with PC specific issues. If you can, I'd suggest at least 3GB of RAM. Since you're on 32 bit Windows, you won't get more than 3.5GB if you upgrade to 4GB due to the memory architecture and 32 bit addressing limitation.

[andyz]

I was thinking 3 was my max.

It is faster with CS4 on and Bridge off, but its a pain going back to my 5 star shots to edit. I have to keep restarting Bridge.

[PeteQ]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

I don't like the tabbed windows at all.

FWIW You can change this in the preferences to not open in tabs but rather regular windows.

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by PeteQ

FWIW You can change this in the preferences to not open in tabs but rather regular windows.

Not really. If you turn off the tabs, what you get is Mac-style floating windows rather than the MDI child windows that us PC users like. The difference is in what happens when you maximize such a window. In CS3 it would fill the client area, but in CS4 it will also cover all the menus, toolbars, and pallets when maximized.

jeffkohn added 0 Minutes and 50 Seconds later...Double Post Merged Below

Originally Posted by andyz

I was thinking 3 was my max.

It is faster with CS4 on and Bridge off, but its a pain going back to my 5 star shots to edit. I have to keep restarting Bridge.

If performance suffers with both apps open, more ram would almost certainly help.

[andyz]

Well, I now have a 3GHz XP machine (SP3) with 3GB of RAM. But my issues seem to be with CS4. If I have the crop tool selected, I can't use the keyboard to type in a number for the size of the crop. I can use the sliders. If I want to type in the size of a feathering effect, I can't do that by selecting the number with my mouse and keying in a change. I can type "3" and get "30" but I can't type it in directly. NIK Color Efex works if I use the floating pallet, but not if I use the drop down Filter menu. And to close CS4 I have to click the "X" in the right hand corner twice, once to select it and once to close. And if you're supposed to be able to click the "X" on a tab for an open photo to close it, that doesn't work either. I have to right click and select close. And it still seems slow to me. I can do something to a photo and click a new tool 5 times, hearing a beep that I had an error, before it allows it to work.

NIK has no clue why it doesn't work. Adobe said to uninstall and reinstall in "simplified mode" (which is with all the start up programs off) which I did, still the problems persist. The reinstall was with a fresh download of the program. I didn't get it in disk. And I asked if the CS2 EDU version had anything to do with it. They didn't indicate so.

On the outside chance that anyone has any ideas, I'm open.

andyz added 2835 Minutes and 27 Seconds later...Double Post Merged Below

Well, I think some of the multiple clicks were the program not being ready, not the fact that it took multiple clicks to execute a task. Working with Adobe I have reset the Preferences. But when I went back into the program, I had the same issues. I removed all third party plug-ins. Checked, still had the same problems. I started putting them back one at a time which would have been logical had my problems been resolved, but I found my problems have all vanished. I still have a couple plug-ins to add back and some testing, but it seems to be working fine at this point.

Life is good again.

[andyz]

Just to complete my experience, I had a set of free plug-in filters from David Blend. They were my problem. Out, it works, in the plug-in folder, major problems.