Trying to contact sheet or open 2 or 3 files at once in Photoshop CS crashes. I am using a G5 with 2.5 gb RAM 230 gb H/D. OSX Panther 10.3.3. Can anyone help ?
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Trying to contact sheet or open 2 or 3 files at once in Photoshop CS crashes. I am using a G5 with 2.5 gb RAM 230 gb H/D. OSX Panther 10.3.3. Can anyone help ? Thanks Geoff
I have tried reducing the RAM to 90% ( 2.5 in machine), I have unchecked "put drive to sleep when possible", I have disabled background processing, I have set cache levels to 4, I have taken the primary scatch disc off the hard drive and put it on an empty drive. Non of these worked.
I have not tried the new user account, but I will try that next.
Thanks gballard, I have reduced my RAM to 50% and this seems to work ok. This seems very strange. I have been using 1gb+ of RAM for some years now, (before CS) and as I only use photoshop I have left it at 90%. This was with a PC but now with a Mac G5. Do you know why I can’t use all my RAM ? I always though Photoshop liked a lot of RAM, but if this is the answer it’s only using 900mb of the 2.5gb available. A backward step ?
Don’t know, is it possible the ram is bad on the end?
What happens if you swap slots??
PS:
I only have 1.5gb, you need to compare numbers with someone who knows. I would think you could go 100%, with nothing else open, and not have the ram be the problem???
This was discussed recently in other threads. The percentage refers to available memory after the system grabs its initial allocation. If you set it close to 100%, and since any application can use up to 2GB, then the system and other applications could not have enough additional RAM if needed afterwards.
BTW, it’s not a "theory" but one of the facts the programmers work with. Do a search on Cox RAM percent. on this forum
Not quite. There was a recent thread in which Chris Cox cleared this up for us, if I understood him correctly.
If you have 2.5GB of RAM and set Photoshop to 100%, it will take up to 100% of whatever RAM is available, not necessarily 100% of the nominal 2GB limit it can use (Chris explained that limit is really appx 1.9GB or something like that because of some overhead). The system, because it obviously starts up first, takes up its initial chunk of memory; but Chris confirmed that it’s still possible that the system will eventually require more memory, which it needs to grab after other applications have launched. If it doesn’t find enough free RAM, a slowdown will occur as the system makes more intensive use of the swap file.
In other words, the % of RAM you set is a limit, rather than an actual allocation like we had in Mac OS 9.x. The allocation is gone in OS X. The application will be given as much RAM as it needs subject to availability at any given time, and subject to the 2GB limit and the % set for the application. That does not mean that 2GB are being "reserved" exclusively to the application.
So, even with Photoshop set at 100%, it may only be able to use a portion of its 2GB limit if the System and other applications are using more than 512MB in your hypothetical 2.5GB RAM example.
If you have 2.5GB of RAM and set Photoshop to 100%, it will take up to 100% of whatever RAM is available, not necessarily 100% of the nominal 2GB limit it can use (Chris explained that limit is really appx 1.9GB or something like that because of some overhead) it can be less but not more than that appx. 1.9GB limit.
Thanks everyone for the help with this RAM problem. I have been having the problem with RAM allocation with Mac OSX panther and Photoshop CS on a twin processor machine. It didn’t happen with Photoshop 7 and it didn’t happen with OS 9. It didn’t happen with a PC running windows 2000 on Photoshop 7. There must be a conflict with Panther and CS, the RAM allocation suggestions seem to help but it seems bizarre to only allocate 800mb of a possible 2.5gb when only running a single programme (Phsp).
<< It didn’t happen with Photoshop 7 and it didn’t happen with OS 9. >>
Two totally different animals!
I have found NO conflicts between Photoshop CS and Panther 10.3.3 — if you are having trouble, it has to lie elsewhere. Font duplication or corruption perhaps?
The memory thing doesn’t work in quite the way that you think it does in OS X: just give Photoshop CS the nominal 65%, as I suggested previously, and it will have access to all the RAM that it needs.
can’t read where you’ve ruled anything out or done any disk maintenance or any troubleshooting or much else besides lowering the memory pref (which gives you a valuable clue) if it was a conflict between CS/8 and 10.33 there would be more people (than you) here with the problem
it could be as simple a bad font or corrupted user account or even bad usb
As I understand it, the RAM % which you allocate to Photoshop CS reserves that amount for it — but does not limit Photoshop from using more RAM if it is available.
As I understand it, the RAM % which you allocate to Photoshop CS reserves that amount for it — but does not limit Photoshop from using more RAM if it is available.
It’s exactly the opposite.
As confirmed by Chris Cox in a recent thread, the old allocation (reserving RAM) is gone in OS X. What the RAM % does is impose that limit on the percentage of available RAM that Photoshop can use.
Chris Cox "7 to CS, is there something I am missing per speed." 4/22/04 11:18pm </cgi-bin/webx?13/3>
See post # 4 there:
The System 9 RAM allocation IS gone. But we have to limit it somehow or you get out of memory errors, or force other applications to page out, or….
It’s entirely possible for Photoshop to use only a fraction of the RAM % limit at any given time if it doesn’t need all that RAM. You can easily check that on the Activity Monitor. The remaining available memory remains available to the system and any other application(s) that need it.
Just to elaborate a bit on the above, if it were not a limit, it would still be like in 9.x and we wouldn’t be specifying a percentage but an absolute number.
… it seems bizarre to only allocate 800mb of a possible 2.5gb when only running a single programme (Phsp).
As I explained above, that is not what is happening. You are not "allocating" an absolute amount a RAM when you set a percentage, but imposing a limit on the percentage of the dynamically changing available RAM. Even though you have 2.5GB installed, it’s possible that "50%" could mean more than the 800MB figure you cite (and it could be less).
If you’re crashing, I agree with all the other posters that you have some other hardware or software problem. You need to check out everything very meticulously. What you see in regard to Photoshop is surely only a symptom of what the real issue is, and it could (probably will) get worse and manifest itself in other ways in the future.
By reducing the RAM allocation to 60% seems to work and photoshop has speeded up in every other way. When I first installed CS in my old G4 I contacted Adobe tech support as I was getting very slow re-draws and file opening seemed very slow as well. They suggested turning off thumnails in layers, upping the cache level, in fact a 4 page document….never mentioning RAM allocation. I think you know more than they do !
I will check the hardware side too but I think this has solved the problem.
It seems so contradictory to say that reducing the RAM allocation will speed-up Photoshop but with CS it definitely seems to work that way.
That’s why I find it useful to remember that it’s more of a limit than an allocation, and what you are doing is limiting the maximum percentage of dynamically changing available memory Photoshop 8 is allowed to gobble up, thereby avoiding the slowdowns by the system and other applications.
I’ve done the re RAM allocation, moved the primary scratch disc to another drive now, as Buko suggests I’m going to look for that bad RAM, and them I’m on the case of the RAM goblers as well…….I’ll post the results. Watc h out the gobble busters are coming!! Thanks everyone Geoff (UK)
I have typed in" top" as you said and while opening a large photoshop file (200+mb) the disc seems very noisy and seems to be allocating 1.4gb of something to 365 qt imagesetter, there is a little + sign next to this as well. Does this mean anything to you ?
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