I've been using Photoshop since 1994. On the Macintosh back then it was perfectly fine. But in the years since I've moved to PCs and Adobe Photoshop is the single most unstable program I've encountered. That's any version on any machine configuration.

It's a resource whoring tyrant that holds my entire work day captive while it runs rough shod over ever kind of memory I have in my machine. The problem is that I can't find a suitable replacement for it. Hell, I can't even email Adobe to tell them how much grief Photoshop has caused me over the years because I hate phones and they've done a great job of burying the email address for non-site feedback. My last resort is to send my complaints via snail mail.

Since I've been doing GU, I've been sent links to alternatives. Unfortunately, none of them are as robust as I need them to be.

Tell us how you really feel...
*offers Woody a chilled mug of his favorite drink*

I can't say I've ever had major difficulties with Photoshop the way you're describing, but then you definitely use it more extensively than I do. Maybe they'll address the resource mongering soon.

Yea, unfortunately Photoshop is the king. I tend to use Adobe Fireworks more than Photoshop, but I don't use nearly the features you use I'm guessing.

No one has really beat down Photoshop. Many have tried. None have suceeded. I wonder if Microsoft or Google will give it a go here in the future.

100% agree Woody. I have to use this acursid program at work to put clips together and edit files. The rendering process crashes, the export function crashes, the program crashes while doing nothing....

I actually have picked up the phone and attempted to use their customer service, which for my elements 3.0 version costs me $40 a call.....


Sometimes I want to take my monitor and do that ball throwing thing from the Olympics and chuck it off the balcony.

When I finally find a Photoshop replacement, I'm going to have a "licensed copy" beat down party a la Office Space.

I'll bring the baseball bats, someone else bring the beer

Originally Posted by Woody:

When I finally find a Photoshop replacement, I'm going to have a "licensed copy" beat down party a la Office Space.

Once you are finished smashing them into mush, i think it would make a lovely gift basket for Adobe =).

The only other thing I've ever tried is GIMP. I don't think it's a viable alternative, but it's a fairly powerful tool.

The only reason I got that, was because it was a quick download on my work PC for some simple image manipulation. I guess you could try it and see what you think.

Yea I don't like adobe photoshop too much. I only use it when I have to do something that my ulead photoimpact can't.

Hey Woody. Been a longtime reader, but never really felt the urge to input my 2¢ until now.

Aaaanyhow..

Yeah, photoshop can be obscenely taxing on system resources, but just out of curiosity, what kind of processor are you currently using? I only ask because I've recently upgraded to an AMD quad-core and I'm wondering if I still get to look forward to the same old crap.

I was told that with these type of processors, they're supposed to alleviate some of the problems with load/render times in programs like photoshop. The reason I was given was that photoshop and similar programs are multi-threaded and can therefore utilize more than one core at a time, if they're available. As I'm no expert in programming, I don't know for certain.

I have used photoshop since upgrading, but only for a couple simple tasks, and while it does seem to run faster, it's hard to tell just how much benefit there really is.

But yeah, just curious, like I said...well, and maybe, just maybe, a hint of hoping to be of some small amount of help if'n you don't have a super special new processor...