Please post your favorite methods for speeding things up.
Lately I’ve been working with lots of 16 bit files for photo restoration work. It gets painfully slow as the layers increase, especially when saving them, which I do often.
Ideas for getting more speed out of Photoshop CS is much appreciated. A new G5 would be the best idea but that’s not in my immediate future.
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I have 1.75 GB of memory. I could swap the 256 MB for another 512 MB chip which I think would max it out. You think the extra 256 MB would make a big difference?
Honestly, once you’ve got your primary color corrections and noise reductions made, I’ve found that there is little advantage to keeping your file in 16bit mode as you continue to add more retouching and adjustment layers. Especially if you have a decent histogram to start with….
So, open those 16-bit files, assess where the curves need work, assess the areas that need selective noise reduction… do those things, convert to 8bit and Save As to a different name. Then take a step back in History to 16-bit, save the original file [so you can start again from that point if you need to].
Working in 8bit mode will be by far the biggest speed enhancement you can make in that situation IMO. Even on a G5 we have found this to be the case — and we do plenty of restoration and photographic retouching (as opposed to more creative / improvisational Photoshop tasks) Especially in heavily layered files or in cases where you want to use tools like Liquify.
Of course not. But why would you NEED to go back to 16-bit if you’ve already made your color corrections (Curves, Hue&Sat, etc.) and removed the noise from the parts of your image that needed it? From that point, all the changes (at least in our shop) that need to be made are related to Cloning, Patching, Healing and Liquification. Assuming you have a good histogram as a starting point in 8-bit, those types of operations don’t really benefit from staying in 16-bit mode based on my observations.
I suppose if you have an image that needs sharpening at the end of the process would benefit from still being in 16-bit mode… perhaps a final Highlight & Shadow to remove areas of flatness, but otherwise not. Just MO / the way our workflow has evolved.
Not saying everyone should do this, just that people restoring photographs or perfecting existing digital images (with no illustrative or painterly techniques required) can benefit from getting out of 16-bit mode sooner rather than later.
Thanks Ramon. I do the first two quite often. I have been under the impression that zapping the pram is not recommended like it once was… but if you think it will speed things up with large files I guess I could try it. I try to keep my fonts to a minimum. I truly think it’s just the large files that slows things down.
Dan, Your ideas are good. I juggle with when to convert to 8-bit. I try to do as many corrections as I can before converting it to 8-bit. One way I keep my files smaller is to keep merging previous adjustments onto a new layer, save as a new document, then trash the previous work layers that I don’t think I will need.
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Where do you all set your memory usage when working on 800MB+ files?
and that’s what confused me. I would never work on the original file under any circumstances, and I’d definitely do a Save As as soon as I converted to 16 bits, so that step is unnecessary.
Linda: we frequently work on 22MP files that when opened as a single layer are about 125 MB, from there they can jump up to the sizes you talk about once we start adding 16-bit layers. Frankly, adding several 16-bit layers to an image is about the only way I can think of to bring nearly every aspect of Photoshop to a screeching halt, even on a well-equipped G5. It’s just agonizingly slow IMO.
That said, our machines have 3GB of RAM, but we rarely assign more than 65% of available RAM to Photoshop, as it would be pointless in the current operating environment (as Ramon helped me discover in an earlier thread).
Ramon: Sorry. I see what you’re saying… that jumping back in the History state won’t undo the 16-bit to 8-bit conversion? I spaced out on that one (got little sleep last night)… you are correct. I was trying to offer a "backup" step but obviously you have to save the 16-bit file before you make the conversion.
our machines have 3GB of RAM, but we rarely assign more than 65% of available RAM to Photoshop, as it would be pointless in the current operating environment (as Ramon helped me discover in an earlier thread).
That’s not exactly accurate. You may still be under a slight misconception there.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, the percentage does not refer to the amount of installed RAM but rather to the percentage of dynamically changing available memory at any given time, after the OS and any other running application(s) have grabbed whatever memory they need.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that in your 3GB machine the OS and other applications (mail program, browser, Illustrator, whatever) have already grabbed 1GB. That means that the available memory at that point would be 2GB. Since you have set Photoshop to 65%, Photoshop will only use up to 1.3 GB (65% of the 2GB available), while the remaining 700MB remain available to other applications and unused by Photoshop even when Photoshop needs more RAM than 1.3GB and therefore has to hit the scratch more.
With 3GB of RAM, I’d tend to set Photoshop to around 85% [EDITED to add: though it will never use more than the maximum 1.8GB or so as dictated by the limitations of the OS and the overhead]. Of course, I don’t know anything about how your machines are used. I just wanted to clarify the issue of the percentage of dynamically changing available memory at any given time.
Yah no miconception as to the dynamic aspects. I have / do understand it’s a dynamic number (the amount of RAM available). But our workflows are so consistent from session to session (no email, iTunes, or other apps that can "drain" the amount available) that 65% is the "default" number I arrived at after trying out a few different settings. Occasionally I will bump it up to 70% or 75% but [not often].
Yah. I’m not communicating my thoughts very well this afternoon it seems. The worst part is, it might just be age catching up to me; I didn’t even drink much last night. 😉
The funny thing is, I remember (more than a decade ago) thinking to myself in college: "Ah, go ahead and have a few extra beers; it won’t kill ya." However, say that enough times, over a short enough period, and it WILL kill your memory cells. That’s almost guaranteed. I can’t believe how fuzzy my mind gets / how bad my memory can be sometimes; particularly when I don’t get enough sleep. It’s like the suviving memory cells and cognitive cells need to recharge like batteries overnight, or they can’t overcome the drain caused by all the dead cells.
I have been under the impression that zapping the pram is not recommended like it once was
The OS continues to use the PRAM, of course, even in Panther.
David Pogue barely mentions it in his book, but more and more users are finding that it can affect performance. There was even a tip to this effect (re-setting the PRAM as one of the cures for sluggish performance) in a recent MacAddict Magazine.
Shep: I just got through reading the Support Document you posted a link to. Thanks for that as it is enlightening.
I found a couple of things I can do to better optimize Photoshop:
1. I am experimenting with the Image Cache. I’ve upped it to 8 for now.
2. I deselected the Export Clipboard.
3. I’ve unchecked some of the preview thumbnail options.
4. I tried disabling the digimark plug-in called "Detect Watermark" but there is no such file that I can see. There are two others by different names. I left them alone for now.
Yesterday I decided to increase Memory Usage to 70%. By that time my file had been reduced to 8-bit so it was hard to tell if it made a difference. We shall see…
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Hi G Ballard! Thanks for the link. That site looks interesting and I will be going there next. 🙂
I just read over the article G linked. It too is quite interesting. RAID is kind of a foreign concept to me. Not sure I totally understand it. The one tip suggested keeping files on your dedicated RAID to speed things up… but at the same time warned about stability.
Try cutting down on the number of Layers that you use while still remaining in 16-bits.
One way to do this is to make one duplicate layer and then make heavy use of the History Palette’s Snapshots.
Then you just use Curves (not an adjustment layer Curves) to adjust the shadows (for example), make a Snapshot and undo.
Then make a new Curve to adjust flesh-color (for example), make Snapshot and undo.
Just repeat this for all the parts of the picture that need changes and paint in the changes on different ares on the one duplicated layer using the History brush from the appropriate Snapshot.
(You still have the original layer if you need to get back to it for any reason.)
This will be SO much easier once Chris provides two sliders for the History palette! ;~)
That’s a whole different way of working for me Ann. Everything is so final once you close the file. I often like to go back to a past work file to make adjustments. I might give it a try the next time I struggle with speed though.
My main complaint with 16-bit files is how much time it takes to save. Other functions such as curves and levels go pretty fast.
It’s rather a LivePicture way of working — although in LP you can go back and paint-in (Reveal) your previous image at any time (which you can also do in Photoshop by History-painting back from your original layer). And you can always make intermediate layers as you go too — although the file will get bigger.
Are you saving to an internal or to an external drive?
And that G5 (which you have surely earned by now?!) will help enormously too.
I don’t think that you will find that a different partition on the same drive offers much, if any, improvement.
[And if you were on the Ann Diet you could enjoy the OCCASIONAL perfectly-made Napoleon (from the French patisserie here) and still be a sub-eight driving a G5!] ;~)
Chris Cox warned us not to set it above 4 (I’m afraid that I don’t remember why) and mine is currently at 4 although I have also used it at 8 and didn’t run into any problems.
Somehow I had that same recollection, but I did a search and only came across one Chris Cox message advising someone who had it set at 1 to set it at 4:
Chris Cox "Photoshop "Could not complete the Auto Levels …"" 10/13/03 4:18pm </cgi-bin/webx?13/0>
and one in the scripting forum where he mentions "keeping it at 4:
Chris Cox "Photoshop CS and 6 compatibility" 1/28/04 1:19pm </cgi-bin/webx?13/15>
Apparently some images saved in Photoshop 8 when the Cache level is set to a level higher than 4 don’t open properly in other versions of Photoshop. In other words, in that thread Chris seems to be addressing a potential bug rather than a performance issue. That whole thread in the Scripting Forum makes for very interesting reading.
As for the diet, follow Ann’s diet during regular meals and mine at other times (I diet three times a day, between meals), and you’ll be able to get a G5, a Sony Artisan and a dozen lenses in no time.
Thanks Ramon… I’m sorry I didn’t read the whole thread. Seems like time is always an issue lately. By the time I read the knowledgbase and the other link from G,I had to leave again. Now I have some backing up to do and a Web site to go back to… I’m finished with the two recent restorations so I guess I should return the preferences to defaults until I start my next one. 🙂
Cut back on the exercising then, so that you don’t get so hungry and eat less. But let what you do eat be the very best and ONLY at mealtimes NO SNACKS!
Think about it: being stuck on that old G4 is driving you to distraction !
