Photoshop CS4 is sluggish

[littlekiwi]

Just today I noticed when working on two layouts that photoshop seems to take a long time to do anything - Opening, writing photoshop format etc. I have 4gb of ram and an almost empty hdd. The files are 215MB and 188MB. actually even trying to go through files in windows explorer seems slower. Any suggestions on how to solve this problem

[jacinda]

That's frustrating huh. I'm not sure why it's slow if you have lots of memory space. Have you cleared your recycle bin? Does it work better if you only have one layout open at a time? When was the last time you turned off your computer? Sometimes (and I could be wrong), you need to close down photoshop so that the cache items can be cleared. That improved speed for me a couple of times.

[anneofalamo]

When my CS gets slow, I take out all my extra fonts (sniff sniff) and brushes, and other extras. Also like Jacinda, I am in the habit now of closing it after each layout to clear it.
A good defrag on your puter can help it also.
I hate slow when creating!

[SeattleSheri]

There are lots of potential causes to this, but I've found if you've recently loaded fonts or brushes, etc ... it can slow the program down.

[Darcy Baldwin]

Generally, on Windows 7 and better, fonts don't tend to slow a computer down unless you've got a bad font installed.

The other thing is to also check to make sure you've given enough memory to your scratch disk in
Edit>Preferences>File Handling. Not having enough there for it to can make it sluggish. Then turn off PS after a layout or extended use to clear it out completely.

[pewtertm]

When CS3 starts dragging, I usually defrag. I use Defraggler (made by the CCleaner people)...it works better for me than the windows defrag does.

[littlekiwi]

I wasn't working on 2 layouts at the same time - they were two separate layouts. I did close and restart but I turned it off overnight so I'll see how it goes. I did install new styles, brushes and fonts though this week but have used PS since they were installed with no problems