Photoshop CS4 and Architectural Photography

I just installed CS4, a necessity to process the raw files from the 5DMII. Installation was not without some distress with constant crashes and "core" related error messages on start up. I emailed but haven't heard back from Adobe. A post on the Fred Miranda site informed me that I was supposed to update my video driver before installing. Oops my bad. That solved half my problems (100% crashes on resource intensive activities like Photomerge and Distort/Lens Corretion). CS4 really stresses video resources and updating the driver is a must. The other half of my problems were error messages related to MMX Core Routines on opening??? Weird stuff. Half of these were corrected accidentally by installing the Bigger Tiles Plugin (a performance booster from the Goodies folder)!!!!!!

I was at the point where I thought this release was trash (not because of the new tools which are wonderful but because of the problems). Finally, I heard back from Adobe. Actually the first "core" related error messages at start up were caused by some incompatible plug-ins I carried over from CS3. I'm not sure which one. I haven't sorted that out, but by killing the link to additional pulgins folder, I cured the problem. Too bad the error message just couldn't say that???? I am still not thrilled with the performance on my machine, but part of it is the larger raw files from my 5DMII vs. the 5D, which points to the need for more memory but my machine is maxed out!

In any event there are a few new developments that I find are extremely useful for architecture. In particular the clone preview. One of the more frustrating aspects of the clone tool has been cloning a diagonal straight line and getting the clone to match the edge. How much time have I wasted trying to get an edge to line up when I am tired or in a hurry, trying to avoid the problem below. You know what I mean! The clone preview solves that and saves me a ton of time.