photoshop takes a long time to open or make new files

What computer are you using? Sounds like you are on a WIN XP platform...

Is this a new problem? If so, how full is your hard drive? PS uses the disk for swap files and this can become tremendously slow if you don't have much space left on the drive.

good... we got description of your problem, but...

- what is your computer profile? Mac or PC?, what OS? how much RAM? size of scratch disk? what Photoshop version? Photoshop set up?

your question is similar to the one that called a doctor and asked: "hello Doc, I got problem with my health, can you help?"

:-)

for the added detail: winxp SP2 build 2600 2 gigs of ram (did a memtest and memory is stable) 1.8 pentium M 9600 radeon mobility 100gig 7200 rpm hard drive. hard drive is not full (20% full) plenty of swap space. -------------------thinkpad t42----

i also disabled file indexing on all my files. (read somewhere that it speeds things up, i cannot tell the difference) just to make sure, i disabled all the power saving features so the laptop should be operating at full computational power.

thanks,

giampi, could you clarify what aspect of winxp and photoshop is causing the delay in opening files?

also,

my CPU usage is at 0-2% while photoshop idles for a while before deciding to execute my command of opening a file or making a new file.

I suggest that you run a defrag. on all your hard disk...

>>giampi, could you clarify what aspect of winxp and photoshop is causing the delay in opening files?<<

I have seen it happen with different programs on windows machines.

Have installed any new software/drivers/updates/etc...?

Have you tried doing a RESTORE?

harddrive is not fragmented...

giampi, i will see if a past restore point fixes this problem.

run the defrag program. The initial set up will show fragmented files and they will kill speed.

You may also have spyware or malware loaded.

Frederick, this may help: The optional Detect Watermark plug-in scans each image you open for a digital watermark, which increases the time it takes for Photoshop to open the file. When the plug-in detects a watermark, it puts a copyright symbol on the image window's title bar. You can find the source of the image by choosing Filter > Digimarc > Read Watermark.

To disable the Detect Watermark plug-in, locate the Digimarc folder in the Photoshop/Plug-Ins folder, and add a tilde (~) to the beginning of the folder name (for example, ~Digimarc).

Hi, I have the exact same problem on my laptop (Dell Inspiron XPS2 2.0, 1GB Ram, 80GB 5400 rpm), it's a real mystery.

- CPU+RAM are sufficient - Diskspace is sufficient - Defragmentation did not help - Deleted/uninstalled the entire CS2 and installed CS3, still same

All of this did not do anything. The system does not freeze but Photoshop itself does not do anything for like a minute or even longer.

I thought it was the harddrive or the laptop itself, but Fredrick has entirely different specs. I think it's some problem with the OS (XP), but if anybody can give some clue where to look that would be great, cos I've got no clue.

Thinking about installing Vista in the hope that this problem goes away. Reinstalling XP only helps for so long, I remember having problems with Photoshop being one of the reasons I reinstalled XP the last time.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Arthur

Use a local printer as default printer, not a network printer. This solved the problem for me.

Thank you Arthur! That was exactly my problem. You just saved me from severe annoyance.

It was the printer for me too! I changed my default printer to anything local and now it opens files immediately!

Awesome

Changing the default printer solved my problem as well. What a difference!

Yes, as strange as it may seem, it is a network printer problem. Do not reinstal anything...just delete your network printers. This should do the trick!

I fixed my default network printer making Photoshop CS3 slow on opening files. I have an Epson Stylus PHOTO R380 connected to a Windows Server 2003 machine. My Vista Ultimate x64 machine had the R380 as the default printer and it would take a long time for PS-CS3 to load/create images. What I did to fix it was re-install my printer drivers and instead of using the default emulated USB port for the driver I setup a Local Port that connected to "\\servername\printershare" and it works much faster. You can find this configuration in the printer properties on the "Ports" tab. Use the "Add Port" button to add a "Local Port" with a "Port Name" that matches your "\\servername\printershare". I've only tested with this specific printer but I'm sure this should work for most hardware.