September 4th, 2008 by Stephanie Chan
Optimizing Photoshop – Photoshop World 2008
In order of upgrade:
1. Computer: # of cores
- The most Photoshop can fully use is 4 cores. It can still take advantage of the other cores but then more than 4 can have dimishing returns. The additional cores are good in running other programs.
2. Operating system
3. Disk: 2 drives; one for operating system, one for Photoshop’s scratch disk
Ideally 3 or more; faster drives are better than bigger drives
Western Digital RAPTOR Drives are a good choice
4. Memory: at least 6 GB
5. Disk: Raid 0 (don’t use this drive as storage drive)
6. Memory: the more the merrier
- Virus scanner is known to slow Photoshop considerably – use firewall instead
Limit for Photoshop:
- OSX for Macs – current limit is 3 GB
- You can check the efficiency % of RAM for Photoshop can be seen on the bottom of the document window.
Memory:
- Mac OSX & Win XP needs at least 40-50 MB Free RAM
- Vista is very good at memory management so it does not need that much free RAM, it can get down to nothing and still work fine.
- 64 bit version = no limit for RAM
CS3 – has 6 cache levels by default
- Small files (under 50MB) with lots of layers (50+ layers) will take a very long time to open with cache levels set as 6. If the files are small, set the cache level to 1 so it will open much faster.
- Only keep at higher level (6) if you want to zoom in & out a lot.
Preferences > Performance > Set Photoshop to use 70% – 80%
- Bigger Titles + High Cache Levels = Lots of Scratch Space
- Bigger Tiles + High Cache Levels + Lots of Layers = Lost of Scratch Space + Wasted RAM
Resources:
To download the PPT:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/04/nnotes_on_tuning.html
3rd Party Test:
retouchartists.com/pages/speedtest.html
Hardware performance guide – specific for Mac but works for Win too:
See PPT for URL