I have PS 5.5 and 6. Don't use 6 much cuz for some reason it responds noticably slower on my machine, especially with the text tool. So I find that 5.5 is what I keep using. Does anyone know of PS 7 is faster or slower? Ie, did it fix the slowdowns or is it even more cumbersome and slower than 6?

My experience on a PC is that 6 is noticably faster than 5.5 for such tasks as rotating and resizing images. 7 is somewhat faster than 6. Given that the text tool was completely revamped in going from 5.5 to 6 it wouldn't be surprising if that had slowed down. Also the new paint engine on 7 will run slower if you're having it do something really complex. What are the specs on your machine? Adobe is recommending a pretty hefty system for 7, although it will run on slower machines. - Ken Heronheart -

the new Painter "runs" on my machine, thought with sometimes a 3 second delay in brush strokes...

As Ken asked, the specs of your system plays A LARGE part in Photoshop's behaviour, Processor speed, RAM, Hard Drive (scratch disk) all play a part. Even Adobe's "minimum" spec are set too low. The ratio that PS uses for RAM requirement is "times 5". So if your average files size is 40mg you should have 200mg on your system. Since the "text" layer no longer calls up a dialog box to enter your type, it places a higher demand on the RAM. There are some things you can do to squeeze out more from PS, but the best thing is to make sure your system can handle the demand.

I've found i've needed to make system upgrades to accomidate the "ever-growing" demands PS is making. (I make my living with PS so there's not much else i can do about it, except learn the phrase "You want fries with that sir?")

:)
retrocity

Make sure you have updated to 6.0.1 at adobe. Photoshop 6.0.1 As for Version 7, I did not find much difference between 6 and 7 in speed. Other things (besides items mentioned in previous post) that slow down photoshop are too many fonts, filters, actions, etc.

thanks for the comments. I have an amd 1.4g with 512 ddr ram. I guess its fair to expect slower speed with more stuff. I thought I got the patch, but I'll check that out.