Liquify on PSCS4 / Mac

G5 2x2GHz, 5Gb, OSX 10.4.11. Radeon 9600. PSCS4.

When I have an external USB HDD attached, Liquify is glacial: beach ball after every mouseclick.
While using liquify, I cannot remove the HDD ("drive is in use"). If I quit liquify, I can eject the HDD.
If I have removed the USB HDD, Liquify works in real time (after initial loading).
However: The same then happens to my FW800 external HDD: Cannot eject while using liquify. About 10Gb of the HDD gets used while liquifying. (immediately released once I go back to PS.) External drive shows no sign of activity. (indicator light is *not* flashing)

If I disconnect all external HDD's, PS will eat up about 10Gb on the internal HDD. (all that's there at the moment I'm afraid). With a FW drive attached, liquify is real time, and about 3Gb is used on the internal (about the same all the while with PS open)

PS is set to only use the internal HDD for scratch in the prefs.
PS uses around 1,5Gb memory at max during liquify, and about 2 Gb virtual memory max.

These are Leaf Aptus 75 files, 16bpc. About 190Mb each.

Tried repair permissions.

Thoughts?

I would cleaning out cache and temp files also if you are working on that big of files I would look into adding an eSATA card and start moving my external drives to eSATA also what format are your externals?

Cache and temp were cleaned a few hours ago. (OnyX).
External is a 500Gb, two partition, one of 160Gb (16Gb available), one of 305Gb (167Gb available).

The USB drive is off line, and stays that way (have a job to finish), but IIRC it's also 500 Gb, 1/2 to 2/3 filled.

On a side note (maybe totally unrelated): Why is PS using 3Gb of virtual memory, when there's still 3Gb available? (PS starts using VM when there's still *a lot* of free memory. (I know the difference between "free" and "inactive")
(This is for testing: with approx. 10 files open, 190Mb each )

I'll try and reproduce for you in a bit.

Rene,
I have spoken to Adobe about this in the past. They strongly recommend that the memory allocation be no more than 75% or 80%. Also, when you go into preferences, check all available "internal" disks as SCRATCH. If you have more than one it will allocate properly.

I had previouslt selected only a raptor 10,000 rpm drive as SCRATCH and was advised to check all internal drive (four of them) asnd this helped. Do not use external for scratch as it slows things wwaaayyyy down. In addition the partitions will work slow when there is 10% or less available - which may be the problem with you 160GB partition.

I was having similar problems and these corrections seem to take care of my problems.

steve

Instructing Photoshop to use 100% of RAM is the only setting specified in your post that I've ever seen cause problems. Have you tried reducing it to the recommended maximum setting?

I have to say that in general, CS4 is the buggiest photoshop I've seen in quite a while despite having some good features.

Well, since 100% is 3072Mb in PS, and the Mac contains 5.5Gb, I'd think it should be okay, but I'll give it a try...
On the scratch disks: The only internal disk is scratch. The externals are not set as scratch. (But somehow, 10Gb is allocated. Not used. (no disk activity light, no waiting (writing 10Gb takes a while, even over FW800; I'm quite sure I'd notice ))

Finder tells me I loose 10Gb on the FW drive after a bit of liquifying.
When I "okay" the liquify, I get it back once the image is in PS again.

Gave it a try.
Set Photoshops Memory Usage to "maximum ideal range": 2211Mb.
Restarted PS.

Uses even less memory before starting to use VM.
No improvement in liquify

Give Adobe Customer service a call. They helped me through the problems. WRT the RAM. PS can only utilize 3GB of RAM, so having more does not help - that is what they told me (I have CS3). THe next solution was to get a faster video card. I have 2 512 MB cards (I run 4 monitors). Was told to get a 756 or 1Gig video card and this would help as well. THe next was to get a RAID 0 set up - all cost money.....

Keep us posted if you find a better solution

Steve

Hmmm
Weird. Tried today on a different G5 2x2 at work (1 generation newer), running PSCS3, and it had the exact same issue (liquify unusably slow with an USB drive attached).

Guess I'm gonna give Adobe a call after the weekend...

Okay.
Over at Adobe Forums someone confirmed the issue.
So I filed a bug report.