reduce lag time between drawing line and seeing it onscreen

[Vince Waldron]

I just loaded Photoshop Elements 2.0 on my iBook and am surprised to notice a fairly unnacceptable lag time between when I make a mark on my intuos2 graphics tablet and when the line actually shows up on my screen. Depending on how thick the line is, it can take about a half second to a second. (I know it doesn't sound like a long time, but imagine what it would be like to draw with a pencil if the lead wouldn't actually put a line on paper until you said "one, one thousand.")

Anyone have any idea what might be a likely fix to get my graphics board humming?

For what it's worth, I don't notice any lag when I use the same tablet in Painter Classic.

Thanks!

[Peter Duniho]

"Vince Waldron" <ag644@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:2ccd703f.-1@webx.la2eafNXanI...

> I just loaded Photoshop Elements 2.0 on my iBook and am
> surprised to notice a fairly unnacceptable lag time between
> when I make a mark on my intuos2 graphics tablet and when
> the line actually shows up on my screen. [...] For what it's
> worth, I don't notice any lag when I use the same tablet in
> Painter Classic.

Are you comparing apples to apples? That is, when you try the same
experiment in Painter, are you drawing on an image that has the same
resolution and same number of pixels?

The most likely source of the lag is the time it takes for Elements to take
your user input (i.e. "click here, drag to there"), go change all of the
pixels in your image to match that, and then redisplay the results on your
monitor. If your image is higher resolution in Elements than in Painter,
Elements would take longer. Worst case scenario, the portion of the image
being changed can't all fit in RAM at once, and disk swapping will happen,
slowing things even more.

You might ask "why can't Elements just draw the line on the screen and then
put the results into the image later?" Well, it could, but then there would
inaccuracies between the feedback you get while drawing the line and what
actually winds up in the picture, due to the resolution differences.

In fact, it's possible that Painter is faster because, due to the nature of
that program, such inaccuracies are considered more tolerable, and so it
does draw directly to the screen-resolution image during the click-and-drag.
If that's the case, then even an apples-to-apples comparison would show a
difference in speed.

So, things to try: reduce the image size you're editing and make sure you
have enough RAM. If doing those things improves the situation, then you'll
have some idea as to why it was happening in the first place.

Pete