Photoshop. I need more uumph from hardware.

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 6 Jul 2011 at 14:53

I got a situation here that I need to improve on. Its photoshop documents I work on that are between 500mb and 1000mb in size due to the layers involved.
Its taking aprox 1 full minute for photoshop to open and save these documents which when your waiting around is a long time.

I know there is going to be an improvement by using a SSD but I am looking to increase as much as possible.

Anything you are aware of to greatly improve the opening and saving process with large .psd ?

Ginger-Menace · 6 Jul 2011 at 14:55

ssd, more ram. can you overclocke your cpu?

adam_castell · 6 Jul 2011 at 14:56

a list of your kit for a start, need to be able to see what needs improving

ElDude · 6 Jul 2011 at 15:01

Depends on photoshop version too doesn't it? Isn't it the case that CS5 uses the graphics card GPU too? If you're using that, then the card used would be an issue too. I'm only speculating here as I really haven't looked into this too much as I'm only using Lightroom and elements 8.

Memory is a major factor too. I noticed a huge increase in performance with relation to opening files and more complicated editing, time wise. That was just from jumping from 4gb to 8gb of ram.

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 6 Jul 2011 at 15:04

ElDude said:
Depends on photoshop version too doesn't it? Isn't it the case that CS5 uses the graphics card GPU too? If you're using that, then the card used would be an issue too. I'm only speculating here as I really haven't looked into this too much as I'm only using Lightroom and elements 8.

Memory is a major factor too. I noticed a huge increase in performance with relation to opening files and more complicated editing, time wise. That was just from jumping from 4gb to 8gb of ram.

Yeah? You noticed the opening/saving process had improved from the 4gig / 8 Gig solution?

Well at the moment its a Dell laptop but I have tried this on a previous generation iMac 27" and wasn't as much as a jump in that single process as I had hoped.
There will be an iMac this generation here eventually but I am trying to work out if the SSD is going to make all the difference as it will be a 16gig Ram iMac. Like I said once its open its much of a muchness its just this opening the dam things and saving them thats killing my time.

neil_g · 6 Jul 2011 at 15:34

id throw some money at getting an i7 machine. SSD might help but i suspect its your processor causing the slowdown. wouldnt necessarily worry about graphics acceleration in PS, it only helps with the rendering of graphics not the actual processing. and last i checked the supported cards list was fairly limited.

open up task manager while you are opening/saving and see if it maxes out.

what is the full spec of the laptop?

MobyDick · 6 Jul 2011 at 16:43

I went from 2gb ram to 8gb ram and the difference is unreal. Couldn't even have lightroom and photoshop open at the same time before, now I can have lightroom open, 50 megapixel panorama in photoshop, browser open with no slow down. Can even open up a game and alt tab out of it

Memory usage has gotten up to 70% (without game) so even if you've 4gb, and upgrade to 8gb should help

An Exception · 6 Jul 2011 at 16:47

When your opening and saving, photoshop only uses one core from your CPU, this really slows things down when saving PSD files as the files are compressed which is very CPU intensive.
A solution if you have plenty of HDD space and can keep the files under 2gb, it to save in an un-compressed Tiff. This will speed things up dramatically, and the best thing is that PSD and tiff's and completely compatible with each other.
The downside is that the uncompressed Tiff files are allot larger, the solution is when you have finished editing the file you can do a last final save in Tiff, this time with compression enabled, or you can save it as a PSD.

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 6 Jul 2011 at 18:18

Ejizz said:
When your opening and saving, photoshop only uses one core from your CPU, this really slows things down when saving PSD files as the files are compressed which is very CPU intensive.
A solution if you have plenty of HDD space and can keep the files under 2gb, it to save in an un-compressed Tiff. This will speed things up dramatically, and the best thing is that PSD and tiff's and completely compatible with each other.
The downside is that the uncompressed Tiff files are allot larger, the solution is when you have finished editing the file you can do a last final save in Tiff, this time with compression enabled, or you can save it as a PSD.

This is very interesting! thank you.

Adrianr · 7 Jul 2011 at 13:40

Saving a PSD that size shouldn't really be taking that long especially to a local drive. Doesn't take me that long to save a file that size to the server! You shouldn't need to go down the uncompressed TIFF route really, just makes things messy.

As it's a laptop you're likely being held back by the CPU at present, but the speed of a laptop hard drive won't be helping matters either. RAM will make very little difference. As long as the open state of the picture can be held in the available ram (and I doubt you're using PS with only 500mb spare of ram right?) having more will only help during the actual retouching of the photo, not really the opening/saving bit.

Best thing to do if time really is of the essence (is it pack shot work you're retouching or something? It's not often a couple of minutes really make the difference but when you get 10 minutes per picture it obviously does!), is locally save the file to an SSD during work, then upload to your server or other storage drive when you're finished on the file. Whilst it's uploading you can start on the next file. You really need a fast CPU though as well. I've not worked on anything less than a very fast quad core in a long long time, so I'm pretty unfamiliar with how slower systems handle larger file sizes in CS5. I don't mind waiting a minute for something to open though if it is that large. Gives me a chance to day dream, browse ocuk, or whatever else