Hi Bit techers! Im currently helping an architech business maintaining their computers, and ive just gotten a call about a photoshop cs3 program that is really slow. The files being handled are up to 250mb which is quite alot i guess. Any suggestions on how i might speed up things, or tips on how to work with the program when the files get that big? I mean, i guess its a good idea to merge layers when youre done with them and such, but im not a wizard with CS3 or photoshop in general, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Greets Mr IK!
one of the best things I have found is to set up a "scratch" disk that is separate from the disk where PS resides. Then go into the settings and point PS's temp file to the scratch disk. That and getting more memory. 4+gigs is what you should be working on.
Make sure the program is set to use a the maximum amount of memory it can (2GB) and set the system up with 4GB. CS3 is still 32-bit limited so adding TONS of ram makes zero difference as we found out in our "Is more memory better?" article. Like JJ said - a super fast scratch disk or its own partition on a fast disk makes a world of difference too.
How do I do this Rich? I feel bad for asking tbh Using XP with 2GB btw -- so it might already be maxing?
Ummm, it's gotta be a separate physical disk. I don't think a partition will work as well. The dream setup would be 4 hard disks (ideally SAS); 1] Windows + swap 2] Program files (CS3) 3] Data 4] Scratch PS isn't a huge memory hog that people believe, CPU and disk I/O is where you'll find performance.
Depends what you're doing. And of course, the less it has to hit the scratch disk (which is done by feeding it more RAM), the less the importance of disk speed. That said, hard drives are about two orders of magnitude slower than RAM in bandwidth and probably six or seven orders in terms of seek time, so they'll become a bottleneck VERY quickly. If you frequently do a lot of heavy photoshopping, picking up a Raptor or some other 10k RPM drive and dedicating it to the PS scratch disk wouldn't be a crazy idea.
Wouldn't a RAMdisk be quicker? If you have 8Gb RAM on a 64-bit system, but CS3 is 32-bit limited, surely you could use some of the rest as a RAM-based scratch disk? Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?
Well yes, that is a good idea: you could throw it a bone and have ~5GB of ramdisk for super speed but it's harder to setup than insert hard drive - assign as disk.
