CalArti

After a bit of dawdling, I finally got around to downloading Photoshop CS4. Part of my reason for procrastinating with this upgrade is that I had heard about problems and limitations of running CS4 on 64 bit Windows XP Pro (the x64 edition.)

In my case, the rumors turned out to be completely wrong. I downloaded a trial version this morning and applied the registry tweak described on Adobes’s site (here). I then checked the “Enable OpenGL Drawing” box, found within Photoshop under the Preferences -> Performance tab. And voila – the zoom and rotate tools work like a charm. I can’t say that these tools are going to change my life, but the bird’s eye zoom looks like it will be very handy when doing detailed adjustments.

I was particularly happy to see that the GPU features worked on my x64 machine. It’s just my subjective impression, but CS4 actually seems to be a bit faster than CS3 – which is nice. FWIW – my rather aging PC is an Athlon 64 x2 4200 with 4 gigs of ram and a GeForce 7600gt video card. Definitely not a powerhouse.

I went back to a couple of RAW files I had passed over last summer, and ran them through the CS4 camera raw. It would be easy to not even notice the adjustment brush and the gradient filter tucked into Camera Raw – but they are worthwhile enhancements.

The interface is somewhat different – I can’t say that it strikes me as particularly better or worse. All morning I have been accidentally closing the whole application when I want to just close out a file… “Oh – the little ‘x’ is over there now, not up here…” But heck, it’s only been a few hours and by tomorrow the new interface will be old already.

Overall this was a worthwile upgrade and after a couple of hours of playing around I bought a serial number from Adobe. Here’s one of the shots from last summer, processed in CS4:

Update, March 12, 2009: After a few days of running it through its paces, I’m happy to say that 64 bit Photoshop is still working fine on Win Xp x64. The opengl effects are a lot of fun, and they’ve been working flawlessly – in the 64 bit version of the program. More important – the 64 bit version of Photoshop really sails through tasks. Even with large files, it is very quick and responsive – and I’m only giving it 2.75 gigs to work with.

The same I not true with the 32 bit version of Photoshop CS4. Here images break up, go blank in spaces, and even come together all akimbo after successive zooms and rotations. The situation is made much worse when a lot of images are loaded. As an experiment I loaded 6 different images, all in the 200 – 250 megabyte size - and ran them through a series of simple zooms, flips, and rotations. Everything worked flawlessly in the 64 bit version of PS, but in the 32 bit version the images quickly looked like a mess, with mis-rotated parts and blank areas. I should emphasize “looked like” a mess because the images themselves proved to be fine – only the display was garbled. I assume this must be a bug in the 32 bit video drivers for my video card.

Since I plan to work in the 64 bit version most of the time, this isn’t a major issue. I stumbled into it while scanning some prints today – the scanner drivers only work in the 32 bit version of the program.

At last – finally – I’ve upgraded my computer’s memory to a full 4 gigabytes of RAM.

Over a year ago I posted about migrating to Windows XP x64 – the 64 bit version of Windows XP. While this operating system is lacking in driver support, it allows the user to smash past the 4 gigabyte limit imposed by the 32 bit version of Windows XP. In addition, the 64 bit OS will manage memory so that even if you only have 4 gigabytes of RAM installed, the system memory (video ram, etc) can be mapped outside of the first 4 gigabytes, effectively freeing up a significant amount of memory.

I didn’t expect to see much of a performance improvement between 3 gigs of RAM and 4, but I was wrong. I configured Photoshop CS3 to use a full 3 gigabytes of memory, which leaves 1 full gigabyte of RAM free for other apps and the OS. This is a big advantage over 32 bit WinXP, which would only have something between 512 to 768 megs free to work with after setting aside 3 gigs for an application.

I ran some test using Pentax K10D raw files, some scans of medium format images, and other demanding image files. The bottom line is that the extra gigabyte of memory cuts way back on virtual memory paging in both the OS and Photoshop – and that is what really sends processing speeds down the drain. So while my Athlon 64 x2 4200 is a pretty pokey processor by today’s standards, I’m seeing significant increase in speed while image processing.

So if you have a 64 bit PC and 64 bit OS – go for that extra memory. Even though an individual application might not be able to use it all, you should see a performance increase!

A decade ago, had you sat down beside me and asked “So, what do you think about spammers who bombard blogs with loads of fake refferrals?” I would of assumed that one or both of us were too deep in our cups. But unfortunately, that once arcane issue was on my mind this holiday past.

The Christmas holiday was more or less peaceful here, and on Christmas Eve day and Christmas itself I didn’t spend much time watching over the website. So it was big surprise when on late Christmas day I logged into the stats program to find that page views had jumped from approximately 2,500 per day to over 65,000! Checking the statistic page on this blog I immediately knew why – spammers were slamming this humble blog with thousands of fake referrals, apparently hoping to get their name listed on the top reffer page.

The regular strategy was to simulate 1,000 to 3,000 requests, coming one or two per second, from a URL linking back to their drug, porn, get rich quick sites, all in hopes of getting a link back in the public stats page.

If you look at this blog now you might ask – “What public stats page?” Well, there aint one namore.

A first I decided to let them just come one. Overall, the website seemed to hold up under the assault. Bandwidth skyrocketed, but my webhost, Apollohosting, has been so generous with bandwidth that even if the assault continued unabated the site would still be comfortably within the bandwidth limits.

However, after of few days of the onslaught the MySQL database that keeps track of visitors to this blog was overrun and corrupted, and I became worried that the main database (which holds all the posts) would ultimately collapse as well.

As a result I upgraded the blog software (B2Evolution) to a later version, one that does not have public stats. I also deleted the linksblog, since this was the target of most of the spam. And perhaps most importantly, I implemented several changes to the blog’s .htaccess file, which have gone a long way towards banning spammers.

As a result of these changes, comments are now open to all, and both referrer spam and comment spam are nil. The page views stats for this site are back in line with what they where (hey – it was nice to fantasize about tens of thousands of visitors, but it’s better to know the truth.) The stats program now shows tens of thousands of 403 and 404 errors, as the various spam controls block and tackle the pathetic spammers.

I wish I could say that I figured this stuff out on my own – but delving into the details of .htaccess is far beyond my ken. Fortunately, whoo from www.village-idiot.org helped me out. Don’t let the domain name deceive you – there’s no idiot there, and if you are having problems with spammers on your blog, check out the suggestions there.

I’m sure that there will be more spam onslaughts in the future, and the spammers will get more adept in their approaches. But for now this little blog is clicking along without incident – which is a big improvement from two weeks ago!

A while back I talked about my trials and tribulations with a computer crash and getting the new PC up and running. Things are running smoothly now, and I’ve learned a bit about Windows XP x64. Since this operating system is probably most appealing to folks who do heavy duty graphics or video work, it seems appropriate to talk a little about the transition from 32 bit Windows to 64 bit Windows. So here’s a brief summary or my experiences switching over to Windows x64.

The advantages of x64

If you look around on the Microsoft website you can find several advantages to using 64 bit Windows, though they are clear that it's not for everyone. (For the collected works on x64 by Microsoft, take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/default.mspx From my perspective, two advantages of using 64 bit Windows stand out – additional memory and improved performance from 64 bit applications.

I regards to memory, 32 bit Windows is limited to addressing only 4 gigabytes of memory. 64 bit windows can address tons more – 128 gigabytes. Since heavy duty Photoshop users can easily approach the 4 gig limit, the ability to break this barrier is significant.

The other advantage is that 64 bit code running on a 64 bit processor with a 64 bit operating system is said to be significantly faster than a 32 bit setup. I’ve read about this, but have to say I can’t assess whether or not this is the case. The only 64 bit apps I use are pretty un-demanding, so it’s hard see if there is any performance boost with them.

The disadvantages of x64

In a word – compatibility.

64 bit Windows will run 32 bit applications generally without a problem. The 32 bit code is run in an emulation mode called Windows On Windows or WOW64. My core programs – Photoshop, Thumbs Plus, Bridge, MS Office, etc - run without a hitch on Windows XP x64. They run a lot faster than on my old computer - but I htink the dual core Athlon64 processor has something to do with that...

However, there are still some compatibility issues.

Because 32 bit Windows is running in an emulation mode, 32 bit programs cannot directly access the operating system. This can affect hardware drivers, security software, backup software, and other utilities. In addition, a 64 bit program cannot use a 32 bit plug in or add on.

So with my installation, the lack of 64 bit device drivers left my USB wireless internet device dead, as well as both of my scanners (a flat-bed / film scanner and a dedicated 35mm film scanner.) Thankfully, Epson had 64 bit drivers for the Photo 2200 printer, so it runs without a hitch.

To get wireless network support I had to purchase a new wireless adapter, one that had x64 drivers. And for the scanners I had no choice but to put them onto a second computer, this one running 32 bit windows.

The fact that the scanners won’t run on the x64 machine is really just a technical note for me. I’ve had the scanners on a separate machine for some time, and they will just stay there running on 32 bit Windows XP.

On a positive note, x64 does support the USB drive specification. So my X’s Drive II works and another USB 2.0 external drive both work fine without any additional drivers.

After getting the wireless internet up and running, I restored my data files from my old computer using Norton Ghost 9.0. Fortunately for me, this program installed onto x64 and had no problems restoring data from my backups. However, Ghost 9 is not x64 compatable, and crashes when you try to do a new backup. I wound up buying Acronis True Image Home Edition v 9, which works fine for doing data backups. However, I really should of gotten Acronis v 10, which will actually make disk images under Windows x64. (Update: I bought Acronis V10 and it does seem to make disk images of the x64 partition. Haven't done a system restore yet, but it seems to work fine.)

But at least I was able to get my data restored without a hitch. And during the few days when I was trying to figure out what backup software to buy, I just used Windows Backup to make daily backups.

Now, onto anti-virus software. From what I could tell the major manufacturers of anti-virus software have been slow to release 64 bit versions for home or individual users. As a result, I wound up installing Avast!, which has a native 64 bit mode. Since I’m still running a 32 bit Windows machine (to support the scanners) my old anti-virus software just went to it. So no harm done.

Then there was that little issue about a 64 bit program not being able to use a 32 bit plugin. Windows XP x64 edition ships with Outlook Express, and since that is all I usually use for email I figured it would be fine. But then I discovered that Outlook Express uses the spell checker from either MS Office or MS Works. And since the spell checker is a 32 bit program, 64 bit Outlook Express cannot access it.

As a result, there’s no spell checker available for 64 bit Outlook Express. And, per Microsoft documentation, the 32 bit version of Outlook Express won’t run on x64.

The solution to this problem was to switch over to Thunderbird, the open source mail client from mozilla.org. It actually seems to be a better e-mail client, so I’m glad I made the change.

Finally – I’ve run into a couple of minor problems with utilities that won’t run on x64. For example, Image Recall v 3, a great utility that recovers deleted files from compact flash cards and other media, won’t run on x64 at all. (I wound up installing it on the 32 bit machine.)

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I had to make fairly minor changes to adopt to the 64 bit windows environment. However, I planned all along to continue to have a separate computer dedicated to scanning, so I was able to bypass most of the driver issues by simply using that machine with 32 bit Windows on it. If I was using just one computer, x64 simply would not be an option, since it would not be viable to purchase new scanners that have compatible drivers. I also incurred extra expense buying a new wireless adapter.

On the upside, I learned about some great new software, including Avast! and Thunderbird.

Even with the fairly modest work arounds that I had to employ, I do wind up wondering if the benefits of x64 are worth it. At 3 gigabytes of memory, I am hard pressed to max out Photoshop’s memory allocation (even when processing 16 bit scans of 6x7 cm medium format negatives.)

So far, the only 64 bit software I’ve run into includes Internet Explorer, Avast!, a few FTP clients that I’ve been trying, and other light weight utilities. These are hardly things that require a high power platform.

Perhaps the day will come when one of the applications I use the most comes out in a 64 bit version, or when I finally need and purchase the extra RAM needed to get the benefit of x64’s memory capabilities. In fact – going above 3 gigs just to 4 would be enough to see a benefit.

But until that day comes, x64 is, for me, a pretty fancy 32 bit emulator.

Well, you gotta appreciate the irony...

One day I’m waxing poetic about the crap cycle and ‘just give me some good used tires’ and a few days later I’m caught up in modern problems that just highlight how deeply my life depends on the very crap I denounce.

Must be Karma…

Anyhow, I’ve not been posting much lately. In part that is due to the bad weather and my limited time, and the resulting lack of new photos to put up. In part that’s also due to a computer crash and other problems that have had me in rebuilding mode, instead of creating mode.

Just for the record – my main computer crashed a week ago. I can’t blame the computer – I crashed it. Trying to tweak and prod the machine into ever more marginal improvements in performance, I pushed it too far and it locked up. No problem – all that was needed is a BIOS reset Done it many times before...

But this time I screwed up and left the power on when I reset – with the result that the system board bios was not re-set, but was wiped out. Which left me with a PC deader than a door nail.

For the last several years I’ve bought custom built machines from a local outfit, The World Of CDROM. Once I realized that my machine was toast, I yanked the hard drives out and rushed over there to see if they could repair it.

I pulled the hard drives because I have a backup computer here, and always figured that the worse case scenario was that I would pull the drives from one machine, drop them into the other, and get on with business. I learned that reality was a worser case scenario yet…

Anyhow – at the World of CDROM my dead PC was checked in for repair. You can’t complain about a two day turn around on PC repairs, but then, two days is a long time. I figured this was the time to upgrade – heck, I always chose my upgrades when panicked and dealing with catastrophe – so I started to look at the options for building a new PC.

As it turned out, I wound up leaving the shop with their demo ultimate-gamer machine, which is sitting here purring along under the desk. It’s an Athlon Dual-Core 64 bit system, running Windows X64. The basic system has a high sped Raptor 10,000 rpm drive, that seems to make a substantial improvement to performance. Since buying it I’ve added drives and RAM, and am extremely happy with Photoshop CS II performance.

A few years ago, after a really disastrous PC crash, one of the folks at the World of CDROM set me up with a Vantec swappable IDE drive system for backups. Since then I’ve been a disciplined backer-uper, and that paid off this time. One I had the new system up an drunnign the first program I installed was Norton’s Ghost, and the next thing I did was to restore all my email, documents, and image files. Within a few hours of frying my old system, I had a new system that had all my old data on it, up and running.

That’s not to say that everything went perfectly. The system as I purchased it had Windows x64 installed. I liked the idea of using a 64 bit OS on a 64 bit platform (and I still like it) but in reality the practical utility of that is nil. For one thing, all my old scanner and USB wireless network drivers don’t work, so I had to upgrade / replace my wireless network adapter. With regard to the scanners – I arranged to have my old machine repaired, and it now runs the scanners and other dedicated 32 bit windows hardware. But I also had to hunt down whatever 64 bit drivers I could find (thankfully Epons has 64 bit drivers for the Stylus 2200.)

One nice thing about dealing with a local store is that the techs there not only found an x64 compliant Wireless network adapter for the new system, but also installed it and updated drivers, all as part of the routine setup. that alone probably save me a day of frustration.

After a few days my old (once fried) system is back up an running, and so I now have it as the ultimate backup to the new system.

For now, however, I’m happy. The new dual-core Athlon system waltzes through the most demanding PhotoShop tasks. My old AthlonXP system is still up to PhotoShop work, but is now devoted more to office work, burning archive DVD’s, and the occasional session with CivIII. And lastly, the very old Athlon Slot-A machine is dedicated to just one thing – generating scan files from the Canoscan, which it can do relatively quickly given it has an SCSI connector for the scanner.

I went on the web an added up what the components I bought in the new system would cost, purchased from web vendors. I probably paid 10 to 15% more than I would have had I gone the bargain basement internet route, and that works out to a few hundred dollars. But I really don’t care – because for that extra money I bought into a relationship that has been in place for a long time (all three of the PC’s here in my office were bought from that same shop, going back over 6 or 7 years) and I also am buying the prerogative to take a 10 minute drive down the road with a dead PC in the back seat, and talk to someone who can make it work and get it back to me faster than it would take to get an RMA from an Internet vendor.

That’s worth something, as is the advice that set me up with the backup system that made this crash a minor problem vs a major disaster.

So this is a blog about photography – and how does computer problems relate to that?

Well, I toasted my PC on Thursday night, last week, and had to hang a show of Snow Crystals the next morning. The show when up without a problem, but I could not print out an artist statement or bio to include with it (those are up now.) And I’m also editing photos to be used as background images for a musical recital at Western Michigan University, and work on that project stopped for a few days till things were straightened out.

The more photography goes digital – either in terms of pure digital work or film scans – the more we depend on our computers. And ultimately, that can be a scary thought without rigorous backup, redundant hardware, and a local support system.