sPECtre said:
On a page with independent photoshop benchmarks (
http://www.driverheaven.net/photoshop/ ) , they found out that many filters are faster in each new version of Photoshop: optimizations are being added for new instructions in newer processors.
Global changes in the complete package for specific hardware features beef up the numbers and not because of individual changes in the filters. What most people don?t know is that for some of these old filters Adobe doesn't even have the source anymore (long story).
I also don?t think most Photoshop users who complain about speed or resources, complain about the speed of the filters.
sPECtre said:
Of course, if you stay with the same processor for many versions, you won't profit of the new optimizations that might be limited to SSE2 or 3, multi-threading, and in the future, 64bits coding.
Optimization should not be just a matter of making software more compatible with latest hardware. Compare for example Windows XP?s boot time with the one of Windows 2000; no hardware optimization involved, yet several times faster. People can be negative about Microsoft all they want, but in my opinion it?s one of the few who actually care about application optimization. Take for example their Office Suite. Access for example takes 1 sec to start and the interface is super fast and doesn?t have these slow windows or palettes that Photoshop CS2 has. But even larger programs like Studio .NET don?t have that bloat that we see in Photoshop.
Part of why Photoshop has become such a resource hog is because it was never intended from the start to become part of a suite. So over time Adobe added more stuff to make Photoshop fit the complete suite. Macromedia, Microsoft, Maxon, they all offer complete packages that had this ?suite? idea in mind from the beginning, Adobe however just started to ?connect? all products not long ago. This wasn?t possible with a complete rewrite, so instead more code was added?and added?and added.
Other things that make Photoshop more bloated is the addition of features that are always loaded even when the user has no plan to use them. A good example is the added animation features in CS2 that were transferred from ImageReady. But even when a user has no plans to use animation during a Photoshop session, Adobe still decided to load that complete feature and the result is bloat, not because this feature was added in a menu, no because code was loaded that should only be loaded on request.
Adobe Bridge is a good example of how bloated their products have become. 60MB for a file browser is simply ridiculous, especially when you consider that an advanced 3D program like Cinema 4D is only slightly bigger.
But also something totally different like Photoshop CS?s filter gallery has had many user complaints, most of it related to performance. However when I read about people complaining about this in Adobe?s Forums, you?ll notice again how Adobe employees are trying to brainwash people thinking that it?s all normal and acceptable behavior. The ?I admit? is not in Adobe?s dictionary if you ask me.
sPECtre said:
In one of the NAPP vidcasts, one saw for a few seconds an engineer that works specifically on startup time.
With such bloated code you automatically run into slow start time, so it?s no surprise that they need a special engineer for that. Personally I don?t complain about startup times, I think they?re reasonable considering the amount of code. However Photoshop has become a resource hog in other areas. The interface for example is pretty slow. I admit that I?m not running the latest hardware, but I don?t have any of these slow interface problems with Cinema 4D, Dreamweaver, Office, Fruity Loops, etc. I?m serious when I say that these programs even feel faster than Photoshop CS2 in an emulated environment like Vmware workstation. For me that doesn?t speak well for Photoshop?s performance.
sPECtre said:
I know that I may sound like an evangelist, but a lot of visits to the official Adobe Forums, and many other resources taught me those tidbits.
I don?t need Adobe?s Forums to understand that Bridge is the most bloated resource hog I?ve used in long time. Not only takes it a long time to load, it?s also 60MB and has a slow interface. The speed at which thumbnails are created for example remind me of a product of 1997, not one of 2006. Even my old ACDSee from the year 2000 does it much faster and that one only uses 9MB.
You tell me why I Adobe Bridge needs 60MB, because I simply have NO explanation. Sure, it has extras like camera raw, but I don?t expect Bridge to load support for this, when it is not determined whether the user who starts bridge will actually use it during that session.
If you hang out long enough at Adobe?s Forums, you actually start to believe what some of the Adobe people are trying to tell you.
Also the 20% (just guessing here) that do run the latest hardware will have no real idea what 80% is actually dealing with.
I?m not trying to be negative Pierre, I try to be a realist. I base this on personal observations of Photoshop CS2 and Bridge, comparisons in speed and memory use with other huge programs and my background as an application programmer.
It?s also not all bad when it comes to speed and in some areas Photoshop scores actually pretty well, but that doesn?t mean we should ignore all those other cases in which improvements are really needed.
Mind you, I still love Photoshop, but I'm not a fanboy to such an extend that I start to ignore the negative issues.
I can also fully understand why there are still people use Photoshop 7 even when they can afford CS/CS2.
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