Slowness...

[Janx]

After a few weeks of use, I'm sorry, but Paint Shop Pro is slow, slow, slow and still slow.
I bought Paint Shop Pro X3 time ago, and now Paint Shop Pro x4. Despite myself I have to go back to using other software for 90% of operations, even the simple blur is very slow ...
The brushes seem to go to slow motion.
Some features of PSP are very interesting, and I'll use yet, but the slowness is a big point against.
Tested on a AMD Phenom X3 processors with 4 GB of RAM and a Core i5 with 8 GB of RAM.
Too bad.

[Ken Berry]

That's curious since I find X4 quite fast, both in start-up and in its execution of all commands I have used to date. Mind you, the only version I have used before is X3... But I am a regular user of Photoshop CS4, and I find X4 just as fast as that.

[arkitekt878]

I have to agree, using brushes in X4 is not instantaneous. You drag the brush from left to right for instance and when you reach the right hand side the brush action will still be in the middle trying to catch up

[df]

I just tried the air brush on an adjustment layer of an 8 bit jpeg image and oh wow, that's not only slow but it's not even close to being accurate.

[df]

OK, I think I figured it out. Turn off the use of Scratch Disk in the preferences, Display and Caching tab, and things are much speedier. I tried all sorts of other fixes that had no effect.

[Ken Berry]

I don't use the scratch disk option, so maybe that explains why things run fast for me...?

[df]

I'm just glad that I saved my workspace before screwing around.

[WilsonC]

OK, I think I figured it out. Turn off the use of Scratch Disk in the preferences, Display and Caching tab, and things are much speedier. I tried all sorts of other fixes that had no effect.

Interesting! Changing the Scratch Disk option doesn't seem to affect the speed on my system.

I agree the the brushing is not as quick as Photoshop's. Most of the time I'm ok with it, but when using larger brushes it seems to slow down a bit.

[df]

OK, I think I figured it out. Turn off the use of Scratch Disk in the preferences, Display and Caching tab, and things are much speedier. I tried all sorts of other fixes that had no effect.

Interesting! Changing the Scratch Disk option doesn't seem to affect the speed on my system.

I agree the the brushing is not as quick as Photoshop's. Most of the time I'm ok with it, but when using larger brushes it seems to slow down a bit.

I'm using a trackball. With a size of 27 you'd click and drag, it would take about a minute to get from one side of an image to another to catch up on a 10mp image, release the button and it would snap too. If you clicked and dragged a circle fast enough and let go you'd get a triangle.

Once again one system shows a problem while another doesn't.

[brucet]

I have a 64 bit i3 with 4meg of ram. I edit files with as many as 10 layers and up to 400meg. x4 is much much faster than x3. However after the installation of SP1 the system has slowed down. Not a lot but it is slower.

As for tools. Say the eraser. I find that there is a balance with the size of the tool. Too big and it take about 2 seconds to cross a picture at a size of 300 on the eraser. Reduce the eraser to 150 or less and it's almost instant. However what you loose on the eraser size/slowness you make up with smaller size/speed. Opacity can also affect my work. 100% and all is fine. But none of the speed issues worry me to the point of being annoying.

I use a Wacom tablet.

[Janx]

That's curious since I find X4 quite fast, both in start-up and in its execution of all commands I have used to date. Mind you, the only version I have used before is X3... But I am a regular user of Photoshop CS4, and I find X4 just as fast as that.

Take as an example Gaussian Blur filter.
I work exclusively on images of at least 10 megapixels.
At each change in value in the selector, it takes several seconds for generating the preview.
With Photoshop Elements generating the preview, and the application of the effect is immediate and instantaneous, working on 16-bit depth images.
I would not talk about selective focus ... terrible.
It could be a problem of my PC?

[WilsonC]

I'm using a trackball. With a size of 27 you'd click and drag, it would take about a minute to get from one side of an image to another to catch up on a 10mp image, release the button and it would snap too. If you clicked and dragged a circle fast enough and let go you'd get a triangle.

Once again one system shows a problem while another doesn't.

Sounds like our systems are similar, although your processor is faster. 90% of the time I'm editing pictures greater than 10 MP as well, the other 10% is from my scanned family images. I'm using a trackball, and a graphics tablet. Mine seems to really slow down when the brush hardness is turned down, and is seems to be a combination of the hardness, size, and step. The tablet is quite a bit slower when using the pressure options. Honestly, the slowness of PSP is what kept me from using it. I've had x2 for quite some time but I've been happy using Elements 6 because of speed! Corel has seemed to increase the speed since X4 and I love the updates to the program, which prompted me to update it.

It does seem that some systems are affected more than others. For me, most of the time the slowness is livable. But there is no doubt in my mind that it is way slower than Elements in just about every way; brushing, filters...etc. In my opinion, the greatest improvement that can be made to PSP would be to make it as fast as other editors out there. Right now it seems way behind in that area!

[dwalby2]

I've noticed if I increase the step value to 40-50 the brushes work much faster than at the default value of 10. If I go over 50 though, the strokes are not smooth, they look kinda like a series of circles in a line. Its still a solid line, but scalloped at the edges, so I don't set it much over 40-45.

Regarding the Gaussian blur filter, I see the same thing when using unsharp mask and things like that, it takes a couple seconds to redraw if you change the parameters much. Its a little annoying, but not a deal breaker for me. This is one area where Photoshop is clearly superior to PSP in terms of speed, at least in my experience.