Ways of making Photoshop run faster

[Les McLean]

There are a number of ways to make PS run more efficiently, i.e. process images faster, in this post I'll describe those that work for me. I'll keep the explanation as clear as possible, and the methods used are applicable to all recent versions of PS and Elements (I think).

It is not a definitive or comprehensive list, and some may not work for you, alternatively you may have different but just as valid methods of achieving the same outcome.

This is not a narrative about what processor/memory/graphics card etc are best, and I hope it doesn't degenerate into a discussion (argument) regarding the merits of different systems/memory/processors/suppliers et al.

What I do hope, is that folks will contribute their methods of improving PS efficiency, and build up a body of knowledge that could be of benefit to both novice and experienced photographers.

Firstly Scratch Disk

PS Uses a portion of your hard drive as virtual memory whenever it has insufficient ram , by default this scratch disk is installed on the hard drive in which the operating system resides.

I've installed the scratch disk onto a separate internal drive to the system hard drive, and the scratch disk has exclusive use of this drive.

I achieved this by creating a partition of around 8 Gb on one of the internal drives, if you don't have a more than one drive, you could create a separate partition on the primary drive (if you have sufficient space).

It is not advised to create a scratch disk on an external USB drive.

Then in the edit-preferences menu of PS, I enabled this (partitioned) hard drive as my primary scratch disk.

I regularly defragment this partitioned hard drive.

Diagram showing the Scratch disk:

http://www.lesmclean.co.uk/PS%20speed/PS3.JPG

Memory Usage

By default PS allocates around 55% of RAM to PS processes. I've found that by increasing the RAM allocation to 75 %, efficiency is increased, but this is heavily dependant on the kind of system (RAM, CPU etc), how I achieved this was to increase the memory by 5 % increments and timed how long it took to open a large tiff file, run a series of filter actions. I found 75% was optimal for my set-up.

You can access memory allocation in edit-preferences.

http://www.lesmclean.co.uk/PS%20speed/PS1.JPG

I always have the 'Efficiency indicator' switched on, which is one of the menu options on the info palette pop-up menu (bottom left corner)

http://www.lesmclean.co.uk/PS%20speed/PS2.JPG

If the efficiency drops below 95% it means the scratch disk is brought into play. If it drops below 75% (or consistently below 90%) then you need to either allocate more RAM, or increase the RAM in your system.

Purge

If I find I'm carrying out a lot pf processes on an image or a series of images, the system can slow down. If I know I won't need any of the 'history' (prior adjustments) I'll purge the memory, this is activated edit...purge.
I'll only use this if I'm certain I won't need any of my previous adjustments of an image.

Bigger Tiles Plug-in (PS3 only)

The Bigger Tiles plug-in, which is located in the Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Plug-Ins\\Extensions\Bigger Tiles folder, is disabled by default. This can be enabled it by removing the tilde (~) from the file name, increasing the image tile size in Photoshop. This should only be enabled if you have more than 1 GB of RAM installed.

History states

The default history in PS is 20, that is each edit on an image is recorded (up to 20) so you can revert to that edit if needed.

I'm comfortable with the history states at the default of 20, but if you find that editing slows the system you can reduce the history states (edit...preferences) to a lower number, but you will sacrifice some opportunity to reverse editing changes.

Plug-ins

I have a number of third party plug-ins that I use, and also some I don't or rarely use, the plug-ins I rarely use I disable by putting a tilde (~) in front of the plug-in file located in the plug-ins folder.

http://www.lesmclean.co.uk/PS%20speed/PS4.JPG

Bridge

Generally Bridge is opened when you open PS, if you don't use bridge often, then you can prevent it opening by deselecting the 'Automatically Launch Bridge' option in the general preferences.



I don't pretend for one minute to understand all the technical detail behind PS, and how these processes work, all I've been able to do is to explain what works for me, in hopefully a clear enough language so folk can understand, also I'm aware that I could be teaching grandmother to suck eggs, and all the examples shown are being used by most, and that's fine.

[Jimmy_Lemon]

Helpfull stuff Les :) Just had a look through mine and seems I have come to pretty much the same conclusions as you for settings, I have the memory usage set upto 87% and my scratch is 100gb but apart from that.

Hope this helps a good few people :thumbs:

[krazy_horse]

Superb, very informative, didn't even think of increasing the efficiency of PS

Many thanks,

JB

[RobbieW]

I achieved this by creating a partition of around 8 Gb on one of the internal drives, if you don't have a more than one drive, you could create a separate partition on the primary drive (if you have sufficient space).


Les - this is puzzling me, I work in a side of IT that involves designing systems for high performance, and what you have described here doesn't make sense. If you partition a disk into several different partitions then you are still using the same spindles and heads therefore you arenot gaining any performance advantage. You may as well tell photoshop to use c:\photoshop-temp, it would give you the same performance benefits.

Rob

[dod]

Good stuff Les, I'll let you debate what Robbie's raising :p There's more tips on this on the adobe site here (http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb401088&sliceId=1)

[Les McLean]

Les - this is puzzling me, I work in a side of IT that involves designing systems for high performance, and what you have described here doesn't make sense. If you partition a disk into several different partitions then you are still using the same spindles and heads therefore you arenot gaining any performance advantage. You may as well tell photoshop to use c:\photoshop-temp, it would give you the same performance benefits.

Rob


As I mentioned, I don't begin to understand the technical details behind the above, however from Adobe's web-site :
Adobe recommends that you set the primary scratch disk to a different hard disk than the one Windows uses for its virtual memory or paging file.

As windows tends to use the primary drive for it's paging file, therefore supports the notion of a separate drive for the scratch disk, as for creating a partition on your primary drive, I remember reading somewhere that it's more efficient separating the paging file partition from the scratch disk even if they are partitions on the same drive...I'll see if I can find it.

As I've not used the method of creating a partition on the primary drive, I can't vouch for the increase in efficiency, but at least you would have a distinct partition, making it easier (and quicker) to format/delete files and defragment.

[dod]

sorry about this folks, I'm trying to delete dupes :(

That's better :)