Optimizing Photoshop CS4 Mac Performance For Digital Photography
How to optimize the new Photoshop CS4 and the way it differs from CS3 relating to performance
With the newly launched
CS4, a lot of people are experiencing new problems and error messages. This is
ironic because the main focus of CS4, according to Adobe is to optimize
performance and workflow.
However, a lot of the
errors and problems that can occur can be fixed by using the right setting.
Many of the problems are not based on CS4 Adobe programming but rather
customary user habits that worked well with CS3, but not so well with CS4.
This article is about
what you can do to optimize and tweak Photoshop CS4 to get the best settings to
maximize performance for the high-resolution digital photographer (full-frame
or under).
Photoshop CS4 is
different from CS3 and I have been getting too many “Out of RAM” errors to
ignore this problem. In my department, we work with lots of very big files (39
MP+). This requires serious computer power and even with tons of Mac power and
lots of memory (RAM), sometimes things just do not move as fast as we hope for.
I just spent a weekend
with my team trying to figure out Photoshop CS4 in terms of optimizing for the
best possible performance for stock photography and below are the results. When
we did these changes to all our computers, the result was mind-blowing. Spread
this post around, because of it really, really…will help a lot of people!
Setting scratch disks
In Photoshop >
Preferences > Performance > Set your scratch disk location
The main issue we had
with this setting was that sometimes a computer would have less than 2 GB of
free storage space available and no one noticed. Photoshop needs at least 2 GB
of free hard disk space as a scratch disk so make sure you always empty your trash
bin and free space regularly. More often than you think you will have too
little free space for Photoshop to perform well. We try to have about 10 GB of
free space on all our computers at all times.
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Adjusting your Cache Levels to
8
In Photoshop > Preferences
> Performance > Set Cache Level to 8
Low levels are for users
with low-res images with lots for layers, high numbers for users with high-res
and not too many layers (below 50). For the high-resolution digital
photographer, a higher setting is better. For full-frame shooters or
photographers shooting at 16 MP+, a setting of “8” is best. Go to Photoshop
> Preferences > Performance > Enter the value 8 in the Cache Levels
text box. Click OK.
Set the History States to no more than 15 states
In Photoshop >
Preferences > Performance > the Set History States to 15
When you reduce the
number of history states available, you potentially reduce the number of copies
of your image filling up your memory (RAM). If you are a high-resolution
photographer and not a digital artist that “paints” and uses a lot of brushes
in Photoshop, there really is no reason for you to have more than 15 history
states. Every state is potentially a full resolution copy of your entire image
that has to be stored in the cache, so even at 15 history states, this is
potentially equal to having 15 images open at once. If you like to move around
layers, merge layers, copy layers, liquefy, free transform, paint on masks,
copy adjustment layers from one image to another, you are in the danger of filling
up your cache very fast. Photoshop default is 10 history states, so if you have
less then 4 GB of memory, then you should stay in this setting.
Set the Photoshop memory usage between 85-90 and not 100%
In Photoshop >
Preferences > Performance > Select Photoshop Memory Usage to 85%
Counterintuitive,
Photoshop needs outside memory (non-Photoshop allocated RAM) to perform some
Photoshop tasks such as Free Transform, Liquefy and Content-Aware Scaling. If
Photoshop is set to the memory usage of 100%, you risk getting the famous new
CS4 error message “could not perform action… out of memory.” My workstation has
32 GB memory and I still get this message if I set the Photoshop allocation of
memory to 100%. When I got CS4 I found this issue so irritating that I at one
point moved back to using CS3.
Deselecting Export Clipboard
In Photoshop >
Preferences > General > Deselect Export Clipboard
Unless you export a lot
of copied files or clips from Photoshop to other applications, there is no
reason to have this function turned on. Every time you switch away from
Photoshop, it stores the clipboard elements as a PICT file, ready to use for
other applications. When switching between applications with Exposé, this the function creates the lag that sometimes is experienced in going from Photoshop
to other applications.
Do not have any files on your desktop
According to some Mac
experts, having files and folders on your Mac desktop is equivalent to telling
the Mac OS to keep these files active in memory at all times. Most people will
have stacks of things on their desktop background because of comfort, but they
should, according to most experienced Mac users, greatly reduce the performance
of your system overall. This is a waste of cache resources unless you really
use the files on the desktop a lot.
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