Is PSE6 faster and more stable then v4 - WinXP

[Codebreaker]

Apart from the new GUI, which I like, I haven't seen much to tempt me to update to PSE6 from v4. However, over the recent weeks I've started running into problems with v4. It's been getting slower, has a few colour management issues in the Organiser and occassionally crashes. All this despite completely reformating my hard drive and reloading everything.

I don't have many images in the Organiser - ~6500 - but they average about 50Mbytes each and many of them are 16 bit, Prophoto images.

So, do you notice PSE6 to be faster than v4 in the Organiser and are you having any crashes with it. If you could quantify your usage e.g number of images and size that would help.

I have tried the free download but that was too short a period to be absolutely sure.

Thxs
Colin

[Ted D.]

I prefer PSE 6. I do find it relatively faster. Interface is good with one exception. Some menus (Brush Types for example) are hard to read. Black lettering on dark gray in small type - what were they thinking. In all other aspects I prefer it.
Ted D.

[shrinkie1964]

I have a trial copy on my windows laptop and in the windows VM on my macs, and PSE6 looks and responds really well. Not much experience with the Organizer as I use other tools for that.

This doesn't help you, but the mac version just knocks my pants off. I have occasional access to CS3, and settle of PSE6 any day at this stage since it is simpler, more fun, and for what I like to do almost as powerful. Even though I am eligible for a generous academic discount I still have no drive to move to the full CS3 just yet. This is very exciting for a Mac user--I came across a copy of PSE4 of dubious provenance and disliked it immensely on my Intel Mac, for all of the processor and OS compatibility issues I am sure have been discussed to death here. But the overdue release of PSE6 for Mac is a thing of joy indeed.

Formatting your hard drive, eh? Yeah, that brings back memories ;)

Les

[johnrellis]

Colin,

I have about 12K files in the PSE 6 Organizer, almost all JPEGs of size 1 – 5 MB, averaging 1.6 MB. I’ve used all versions of Album and PSE since the pre-Adobe Album alpha in 2001. In general, PSE 6 has been very stable for me, with very few crashes (all of which have been in the editor).

As you’ve seen from my other postings, I’ve encountered more bugs in the PSE 6 Organizer than any other version. But on balance, I’ve found PSE 6 barely worth the upgrade from PSE 5 (it’s been too long since I used PSE 4, so I can’t compare). I like the enhanced search capabilities of the Organizer, and I like some of the new features in the Editor: the new panorama merge and the magic extractor in particular. Also, most image-wide manipulations in the Editor now support 16-bit files (but not pixel-specific tools like the clone stamp). Some operations in the Organizer seem faster, such as scrolling and most searches, but some operations are annoyingly slower, such as deleting an individual file. Overall, I can’t say that the PSE 6 Organizer is significantly faster or slower than PSE 5.

Given that most of your files are large (50 MB), there’s one issue I recommend you explore thoroughly with the free trial of PSE 6: updating thumbnails in the Organizer. There have been many people posting about problems with the Organizer being able to update the thumbnails properly, and it appears that many or all of these problems related to having many large files and/or raw files imported. Recreating the thumbnail cache seems to fix the problem, at least temporarily, but some have reported having to do that fairly often (which can take hours each time). If you haven’t already, you might try importing, say, 50 new large files and see if the problem strikes you.

[Codebreaker]

John.....

Thanks for the detailed reply.

It's problems with the thumbnails that I'm seeing in v4. The colour management doesn't always kick in and the Properties report an untagged colour space. Updating the thumbnails can fix the colour issues but also crashes from time to time. Plus its slow scrolling through the catalog.

I already tried my 6500 images in PSE6 and found it better - but as I say 30 days isn't a long enough evaluation for me.

Elements is not my prime tool but I would like it to work better when I do use it.

So far the only push for me to upgrade is that I support a local Photoshop group and more and more people are coming in with PSE6.

Colin