Photoshop 7, CS and 4 GB RAM

HM
Posted By
Henrik_Meier
Oct 29, 2003
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448
Replies
4
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Closed
Hello. Now i upgraded to 4 GB RAM (with Win XP Pro SP 1). Task Manager and several softwares tell me there are 4 GB RAM inside the machine. But Photoshop 7 and Photoshop CS only see 2 GB, as i can see from the "scratch sizes" display in the status bar. When i use "Help/System info", i get this information:

Built-in memory: 2048 MB
Free memory: 2048 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 1778 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 80 %

Also, now when i open just one small file of 1 MB and do nothing, Photoshop’s scratch size line says "590 M/1,34 G". So Photoshop says it needs 590 MB RAM right from the start. Why?

Do you know how i can bring Photoshop to use all 4 GB RAM? Is a Ramdisk helpful?

A propos: With my new 4 GB RAM i set the virtual files of Windows XP to 4 GB on drive C (4 GB min, 4 GB max). Is that a good setting, from a photoshopper’s viewpoint? Photoshop gets enough scratch discs on other partitions.

Thank you for all hints!
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Peace_Pipe
Oct 29, 2003
I have a 2 gig partition just for the page file in XP, 1 gig for the smallest, 1.99 gig the largest. 1 gig 400ddr ram, scratch dics for photoshop are set two D and E, I wouldn’t use the same disc as your OS for the scratch discs if given the choice. % is set to 75% use of memory. I never run into any memory problems, and I work with large format.
L
LenHewitt
Oct 29, 2003
Henrik,

So Photoshop says it needs 590 MB RAM right from the start. Why?<<

No, it says it needs a 590 Mbyte Scratch file right from the start.

Photoshop’s PRIME memory is the Scratch file. It uses the installed RAM as a cache for that scratch file.

Do you know how i can bring Photoshop to use all 4 GB RAM? <<

You can’t. For any application to use more than 2 gigs of RAM you have to be running XP Professional, start it with the 4-gig switch and have an application written to use mopre than 2gig.

Photoshop 7 isn’t.
RW
Russell_Williams
Oct 29, 2003

1. Photoshop (like most other programs) can’t use more than 2G of RAM no matter what you do.

2. The 590M number includes all the memory Photoshop is using for all things related to all open images and presets. In particular it includes all the basic overhead Photoshop needs for any images, plus the patterns and other aspects of loaded presets. Some of the patterns are pretty big. What you’ll find is that that number doesn’t go up hardly at all when you open a new blank document. You’d also see that number go down by several meg if you deleted the patterns.

3. If you’ve got 4G of RAM on the machine, move the "percentage memory" slider in the preferences all the way to the right. Photoshop still can’t use more than 2G, but that will make it use as much as it can.
HM
Henrik_Meier
Oct 29, 2003
Hi, thanks for your interesting comments so far.

Now after this information, 4 GB of RAM is only half the fun it could have been.

Photoshop CS doesn’t behave any different from Photoshop 7 on the 4 GB RAM machine, so it obviously does not use more than 2 GB RAM. Surprising.

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