I bought myself a MAC OS X recently with a student edition of Photoshop CS4, i am currently studying photography and have been told many times that a mac would be the best option to edit images- this coupled with Photoshop CS4. However since loading the program onto my MAC i have had nothing but stress it is being extremely slow.
For example when i start to add layers to my work it immediately slows down, esp when i start adding effects to any of the layers such as 'surface blur', the 'elliptical tool' is also slow as when i create a shape i see nothing come up on the actual image... For me to actually be able to see what i am doing i usually have to toggle between the icons on the tool bar on the side. Another slow feature is the cropping tool, when i want to move the crop the slightest bit by using the arrows on my keyboard the shape doesnt follow where its meant to go. What i have also noticed is that the 'preview' image doesn't apply on the image im working on, usually when an effect such as a blur is applied it shows what it would look like on the image before you click ok. At least this is my experience with Photoshop CS2 and a PC. This is all happening with just one image open, so you can imagine what it is like when i open multiple images... I will admit my images are large in size, but surely photoshop should be able to handle this? The macs in my university are able to handle this AND more (adding multiple layers and images on-top of each other) and they also use CS4.
I have troubleshooted it to death, even rung the store where i bought the program and MAC from and they have updated all the features on the mac and photoshop and this has not helped. Ive even checked if it could be the video card, my mac currently has the- ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro. I believe this to be the most recent and up to date card however i haven't ruled it out as the source of the problem.?The ram has also been doubled and is now 4GB.
One thing i do notice is that at FIRST everything seems fine, and then when i really start to get into editing an image it slows down hugely and starts to show the problems mentioned before. I have just rung the MAC support line and they advised me to open a new account on the mac and load photoshop onto there to see if its any of the settings on my particular account, again everything seemed fine at first- but then it fell back into its bad habits of being slow.?
Any help or suggestions would be great as this is really getting me down, im a university student studying photography for my degree and i really want this resolved before i go back and start taking more photos.
Liz
Photoshop CS4 running slow on MAC OS XAlthough it's one of my annoyances with this forum that the following is offered as the solution to every problem from system crashes to male pattern baldness, I have to wonder if you are working with large images and the system drive set as your scratch drive. That would explain how the performance drops only after a few operations are performed and thereafter.
If you don't have a second disk to work with, you might try reducing the number of ''Undo'' levels to something small like 5 or 2. This will reduce Photoshop's reliance on the scratch disk with the obvious trade-off that you won't be able to back out so easily.
Another thing to do to rule out memory issues is to run the Activity Monitor (in your Applications/Utilities folder) to track the usage of system resources such as memory but also disk, network, and CPU usage.
Photoshop CS4 running slow on MAC OS XEasy way to test is when you see the slow down choose Edit %26gt; Purge %26gt; All
This will remove all undos, history states, etc and clear some scratch space. If that does indeed speed operations again, you should probably look into your scratch disk configuration.
Liz,
Before you doubled the RAM, you were running with inadequate RAM.?With 4GB you have adequate, though not necessarily abundant RAM.?Put some more RAM in your machine if you can.
A second drive for scratch will help.
Finally, turn off OpenGL and relaunch Photoshop, just so you can rule out a defective graphics card.
Sorry, but I have to take exception to this statement. It depends entirely on the nature of the images she is working with. Blindly throwing RAM at a problem might help, but looking at the resource usage should be done before trying to apply any solution.
I have PS CS4 installed on two machines: my Mac Pro ( 2x2.8GHz QC Xeon, 10GB RAM, dedicated scratch disk made from RAID0 of 15K RPM SAS drives) and my PowerBook (single 1.67GHz G4, 2GB RAM, scratch disk the same as my system disk, a 5400RPM ATA drive). Clearly the PowerBook is inadequate, right? Well, if all I'm doing is opening 20-30MB photographs with a few layers and rotating, cropping, a little color or contrast adjustment and some touchup, I can do that all day with a half-dozen photos open. The performance is not distinguishable from the same actions on the Mac Pro.
Let me repeat that to be clear: unless I start mucking with bigger, more complicated files the performance is not distinguishable from that of the Mac Pro.
Obviously, if you start applying complex filters or start working with 200+MB files the performance difference becomes very clear. The configuration is definitely inadequate for those tasks. But Photoshop itself should run just fine on 2GB of RAM (with room to spare) for many common usage profiles.
In this case since there is a performance problem, memory is an obvious place to look, but it's just one place to look. And looking should be done before leaping. Or spending as the case may be.
4GB on MacPro running Leopard (obviously, it has to), would not make me feel comfortable.?Whatever floats your boat.
Merging a 30+-shot pano from a 14.6 megapixel must be fun with just 4GB on such a machine.
Laptops I don't touch with the proverbial ten-foot pole, so I won't comment on your MacBook.
Steven Scotten wrote:
And looking should be done before leaping. Or spending as the case may be.
Just a note that almost every G3 or better Macintosh is going to handle 20-30MB files fine. Those are exceptionally small files and do not eat RAM or scratch space at the same rate print production images do, which can often result in file sizes well over 1GB. Even 200MB file sizes are relatively small in the grand scheme of things.
That takes away nothing from the ridiculously low prices of RAM and hard drive space these days.
20-30MB extremely small? I'm looking at a 16.7MB (uncompressed RGB) file here. That should yield up to a 9'' x 13'' image at 175 linescreen. That's larger than a full page at a higher than usual linescreen. Printing at 133 lpi that's enough image data for a tabloid spread with bleed.
In order to get 200MB files you're talking about 30'' x 45'' images (to keep roughly the same aspect ratio) at 175lpi. Maybe print production has changed radically in the last few years, but 200MB files are absurdly large for any print production workflow. That much oversampling will muddy your colors might fierce.
There are some specialized cases, sure. I make photographic prints at four or five prints on a side, and I'm the only one I know who uses files over a gigabyte in size.
I chose 20-30MB because that's the ballpark range of files created by digital cameras in the 6MP-12MP range. Someone will do the math and point out that accurately we're talking about 18-36MB, not 20-30. Like I said, ballpark.
It may be a no-brainer, but if neither are the issue, that's just time wasted. I don't understand. What's so wrong about checking system resource usage before buying upgrades?
Unless you value your time at minimum-wage levels or less, watching?the Activity Monitor instead of getting all the RAM and drive space you can in order to be prepared for the future (the rest of the life expectancy of your machine) is a useless waste of time.
Now you're just being silly. Spending an extra ten seconds to launch Activity Monitor beats taking a couple hours to run down to the store and buy hardware or putting production on hold for a day while FedEx gets your order to you. I'm totally agreed that maxing RAM is a good idea for other reasons (although I have not done so for monetary reasons. Times are tough and $5,000 for RAM isn't just floating around the studio. Anyway, 10GB seems to be enough for me for now)
Bottom line: if you're having a problem look for information that will point to the source of the problem. Don't just randomly buy crap hoping the problem goes away. If you think buying stuff is fun or cool, don't let me stop you. The economy needs more people buying crap.
Yes 20-30MB is dinky, 99% of my files are above 200mb if not more. Only web files are less than 100MB and, as I posted, any Mac will handle those relatively fine.
If you're spending $5000 on RAM you're obviously shopping in the wrong place. I loaded 16GB in my Mac Pro 2 years ago for not even 1/3 that cost. And Prices have dropped drastically since then. You can now get 16GB for less than $450.
Steven Scotten wrote:
$5,000 for RAM isn't just floating around the studio.
Scott, Ram璐竛 you're right. I grabbed the prices from Apple and I wouldn't get my RAM there. The $700 it will cost from OWC is still getting in the way right now. Times are a bit tough.
Scott, do you mind if I ask what you're doing that requires files that large? I use files that large all the time, but again, I'm making prints that are four or five feet on a side.
Only web files are less than 100MB? When I do web stuff I try really hard to make sure that my files aren't bigger than 100KB (kilobytes! not even thinking in megabytes yet), but even on my portfolio site I don't use files as big as 1MB (and that's only ONE megabyte). Do you simply never work with digital photographs, or do you have access to photographic technology I don't know about? I'm confused.
The web psd files may be 100mb... not the actual files on a web site. 100mb files on the web would be silly All the actual final web images are almost always under 200k at the very most, more often ~50k max.
I do several different types of projects -- web development, print production, direct mail, advertising, illustration (mostly vector in AI though), and photography retouching. My working files always hit 100MB easy.. in print production or illustration is very easy to hit 700MB - 1GB with a file if not more. Final production files are rarely that large... But I retain all working files as well for easy editing in the future. Photography retouching doesn't often create such large files. That's not to say they can't... but it's just more rare with retouching since most of the work is spot retouching or overall tonal shifts.
File size is also greatly effected by how you work. The more non-destructive methods you use, the greater the file size can get. If you flatten layers file sizes are reduced. I don't ever flatten any layer if it can be avoided.
Forget OWC.. they're great but not the best for RAM.. 18004memory.com has the same ram.. the same warranty.. at better prices. 4x4GB sticks = $396 for 667mhz RAM and $463 for 800mhz both with free shipping. I've got 16GB of RAM in my MacPro from 18004memory and have been wonderfully happy for over a year with it. When I loaded my machine prices were easily triple those. But then.. the economy was much better then too.
OK, that makes sense. I just took a look at an illustration I re-edited recently. 5'' x 7'' simple line art came out at 104MB, and I think I am a lot faster to combine layers than you are. (If I can't see all my layers in the palette I get uneasy). I was thinking photographs, not production documents.
Thanks for the tip. When it comes time to upgrade I'll check them out.
Hello, thank you for your reply... My images that i edit are very large but i thought photoshop would be able to handle it!
Anyway i have tried out your solutions however i really would like to try and fix it without setting the ''undo'' levels to something smaller, i can see that being a big hassle after a while... I have looked at the Activity Monitor but i have to be honest im not sure what im looking for :S how would i know that something is wrong as to me it all looks like numbers! I wish i was some sort of technical wizz i really do lol!
Sorry to sound so silly, if you could help me out once again i would appreciate it so much!
Liz
How would i be able to change my scratch disk configuration or be able to tell whether it is set to something it shouldnt be??
If you could get back to me that would be great, thanks!
Liz.
Sorry to sound like such a fool im very much a novice at these things but i did recently put more ram in and the guys at the shop said it would be enough????I know i could put more ram in there but i would like to see if there is anything else i can do, i also notice it slow down significantly when im using something else like the internet or Itunes... Could that be some indication to the problem??
Liz
16GB really!? Where, i went back to the MAC store to ask about this problem and the best they could offer was 4GB! Now i just feel like ive been had!
Baring in mind i live in the UK how could i get a hold of more RAM and how could i put it on here again baring in mind i am no where near techinically skilled to do so lol
Liz
I bet this is in a FAQ somewhere, but here's what you need for your scratch disk configuration:
First, a hard drive other than your system drive. The faster the better, but something is better than nothing. This should not be a second partition on the same drive, but a whole 'nother hard drive.
In Photoshop, go to the Photoshop menu, Preferences submenu, and click on Performance. You can use the ''Scratch Disks'' panel to configure your disks. Your system drive should have the highest number of all your disks, or even simply be unchecked. The secondary hard drive should be first in the list.
If you're working with large images, this second drive will be more important than memory. More memory always helps, but if you're using significantly more hard disk space as fake memory than you have available, the scratch drive will be the biggest performance boost you can give yourself.
I just boosted my system from 10GB RAM to 32GB RAM閳ユ摠 improved the time on a timed operation from 18 minutes 30 seconds to 17 minutes 50 seconds. Only a faster hard drive as a scratch disk could really help me. The extra 22GB is basically for my own vanity, and for editing medium-sized files.
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