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Various Other Photoshop CS5 Issues
This page captures general issues that I’ve found, or that have been reported by readers. If you have a reproducible issue that you think is worthwhile to note here, let us know.
You can and should report bugs to Adobe.
Issues Permalink

Miserly memory in 32-bit mode
Memory in 32-bit CS5 is limited to 2100MB, nearly 1GB less than with Photoshop CS4 (3072MB vs 2100MB).
Problem is, many 32-bit plugins require 32-bit mode until new version arrive.
See the Plugins page for details.
Workaround: run both CS4 and CS5 simultaneously.
Unacceptable scrolling speed with center button FIXED in bug fix 12.0.1 update
I use the scroll wheel in the center of the Apple mouse constantly. In CS5, this functionality is now broken, because CS5 scrolls only a small amount, very different from CS4. There is no apparent work-around.
Reader Joe N agrees:
I saw your posting about CS5 issues, and I want to add another STRONG vote for the Photoshop mouse wheel scrolling speed issue. I use a Magic Mouse, and the scrolling speed is so poor in PS CS5 that it is totally blocking my creative flow. I have scoured the web for a solution and have not found anything yet...
Photo merge functionality
User Bill Thomson reports:
I do very big merged files- up to 7 and 8 gigs. Sometimes Photomerge works (PT Gui is more accurate but takes longer). I have a Mac Pro dual core Intel. I had hoped that CS5 with more memory (16 gigs now) would speed up everything and in fact it has 50%. However although it is much faster there is not longer the Interactive Layout feature with CS5 although they say they will add it but only in 32 bit for Mac. This is crazy. More often than not there are lining up or merging problems in Photomerge (especially with darker files). With CS4 and IL I could correct them before the final merge. Now it is faster but there are problems I cannot fix before.
Bugs Permalink
Plain old bugs.
Scratch disk full

On machines with 4GB or 8GB memory, executing a javascript such as the diglloydWarmup scripts immediately fills the entire scratch volume and results in a “scratch disk full” error.
Show at right, Photoshop CS5 scarfed up 373GB of free space on the scratch volume (the drive had only ~26GB used to being with).
This is 100% repeatable on the MacBook Pro with 4GB, simply by running the diglloydWarmup-2GB script. The script has been triple-checked and verified to be correct.
I worked around this bug with a script modification.
Repeated “write permissions” errors


Apparently fixed. I’ve had no further issues.
CS5 has developed a frequent error in which it reports write permissions errors. This is a serious impediment to getting any work done, with constant interrupt.
The alert fails to say where or with what file (which makes it incredibly frustrating).
As evidence that it is an outright bug, retrying 2 or 3 times usually makes it succeed.
The bug is bad enough, but the fact that no hint of where it might be having a problem makes it much worse.
This problem is now chronic.
Complete hang / dead CS5

I have personally experienced this problem once or twice a day, the only solution being to force quit Photoshop CS5. It seems to occur when there are no images open.
Your only recourse is to force-quite CS5.
Here is the stack dump (for engineers at Adobe).
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Startup script
Adding a javascript startup script executes it every time any javascript is run.
The documentation says that a startup script can be added here, but nowhere does it say that the script will run every time any javascript executes. Maybe its just poor documentation, or maybe it’s a bug.
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Startup Scripts CS5/Adobe Photoshop/photoshop
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