Posted by Lance Warley on January 3, 2012 at 10:05 AM
Happy NY, everyone :)
I have a new Puget Systems Genesis tower, and it takes me 30 seconds to save a 500 MB file. I have a friend with a computer that is at least two years old, with no SSD's (I don't have his specs), and he can save a 670 MB file instantaneously.
I have a feeling there is one setting somewhere that I have wrong. I should be able to save a file as fast as a 2-year-old system can. Can anyone help with tips to speed up my saves, please?
Here are the specs and CS5 settings for my setup:
Puget Genesis: Intel i7 3.2GHz 6 core 12 MB cache, 16 GB Memory, nVidia GeForce GT 430 1GB video memory, 160GB Sata II SSD primary drive, 80GB Sata II SSD second drive with 40 GB available as scratch drive for Photoshop; 1TB USB 3.0 drive as third scratch disk with 500GB available. Win 7 64 bit. All drivers updated.
Win 7 Virtual Memory changed from 16MB to 24540MB min, 50000MB max.
In CS5:
- Purge-History before Saving. All applications closed except Photoshop. Photoshop opened solely to process the one psd file.
Changes made to Genesis:
- Export-Clipboard deselected
- Image Previews: Never save
- Maximize PSD and PSB file compatibility: Never
- Memory Usage: 90% (13.2 GB)
- History States: 3
- Cache Levels: 6
- Cache Tile Size: 1024K
- Open GL enabled in Normal mode
I can't find anything else to tune. The same performance results occurred with a file from a 7D and from a 5DII. After opening the file in ACR, I don't do anything to it in ACR except open it in CS5. Then I just duplicate the bg layer several times to increase the file size.
Reduce your history states to '2'. Reduce cache levels to 1
Maximize PSD and PSB file compatibility: Always
Also, using a USB drive as a scratch disk may slow things down; USB will never be as fast as eSATA, especially with SSD. I suggest you not use the USB drive for a scratch disk.
Memory Usage: 90% (13.2 GB): You may need to reduce this value. You also have a huge page file size which will result in heavy hits to your main drive. You should allow Windows to set this for you.
Your Puget machine has some great specs! I've had mine for eight months, and its been perfect. BTW: my Puget machine will save a 1GB PSD file in less than 30 seconds.
Let us know if your performance improves.
--P
Posted by Lance Warley on January 3, 2012 at 3:01 PM
Thanks, Preston. I made your suggested changes, and the difference was unfortunately very small.
Now the file saves in 28 seconds instead of 30. Still very slow.
I just don't understand it. I think I should be able to save 500 MB in under 10 seconds, or faster.
btw, doesn't "Maximize PSD and PSB file compatibility: Always" force PS to create another layer, so shouldn't setting this to Always (rather than Never) make it slower?
Posted by Jim DeWitt on January 3, 2012 at 8:29 PM
Lance -
It sounds like you have a USB drive or an extremely fragmented drive - unlikely in a newer system. Or your drive is nearly full.
Layers are usually quite small; most are simply arithmetic formulas applied to all or portions of a photo. They shouldn't add to overhead, something you can easily verify by creating a test photo with a couple of dozen layers.
Do you notice slow write speeds in other applications?
I'm not much for Windows, but is there a drive-chasing switch in the Windows system, that turns off/on buffering and/or caching?
Finally, I've got an SSD drive on my MacBook Air laptop, and it is unbelievably fast at read/writes. Don't compare hard drives with SSDs; there's no comparison.
Posted by Lance Warley on January 3, 2012 at 9:09 PM
Thanks Jim. I have 2 ssd's in the computer. The reason I got them was purely for speed. Sigh.
I dont know about a Windows buffering/caching switch, but I'll look into it. Other apps are fine.
Posted by David Bostedo on January 4, 2012 at 11:18 AM
Lance... did you try just completely disconnecting the USB drive? That would at least help to narrow down the issue and make sure you're not trying to transfer data over USB, and that there's no drive checking or spin up or overhead going on that could be slowing you down. (Although, a bit contrary to what Preston said, USB 3.0 can be as fast or faster than eSATA, depending on how much transfer overhead you encounter. So scratch is probably a bad idea, but with large block transfers, it will be very fast.)
And if someone is saving a 670MB file instantaneously to a regular hard drive, they aren't actually doing any writing to the drive. In that case, it's probably already on the drive, and the software is just validating that the data is already written. If the data is in memory and changed significantly, and has to be written back to the drive it will definitely take some time. Is it possible that you're trying to write back a lot more data to the drive?
Posted by Lance Warley on January 4, 2012 at 11:20 AM
Thanks, Dave. Yes, I completely disconnected the USB drive.
And yes, I am trying to write more data to the drive.
I ran a quick test yesterday with a 528MB PSD file using CS5-64 bit. CS5 was the only application running.
Time to open the file = 7s
Time to save the file after adding an adjustment layer = 18s
Win 7 Pro-SP 1-64 bit
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K QUAD CORE 3.3GHz 95W
Ram: Kingston 16GB DDR3-1333 (4x4GB)
Video Card: GeForce GT 430 1GB Silent
Primary Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6 Gb/s (47% Free Space)
Secondary Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6 Gb/s (90% Free Space) Set as PS Scratch Disk
While my test was not very rigorous, the times I recorded seem pretty reasonable for my machine. Given your machine's specs, your 'save' time does appear to be on the long side. Honestly, I haven't a clue why this is so. Just a thought, but you might want to place a call to Puget and ask them.
Keep us posted on this. I am really curious as to what's happening.
--P
Posted by Paul DeCesare on January 4, 2012 at 1:19 PM
Yikes Lance, you need to retweak that system! We now have 6-core processors and GIGS of ram, all the things we knew about Windows and Photoshop settings are changed now. I built a similar system, i7 980 6-core, 24GB ram, 10K OS drive and 6 other hard drives with 2 on a RAID card, although no SD.
First: I can save a 750MB file in a blink if it's single layer (such as a flatten stitched pano). As soon as I add layers even to a straight-out-of-camera image file, I get the progress bar and it takes many annoying seconds to save. Check and see if your friend is saving a flat file or a layered file, that may be the difference right there. I think that's just Photoshop thinking too hard, lol!
Windows settings: I remember well the "make your page file double your ram" idea. That worked with 256mb ram. Now we have HUGE ram amounts so you're barely even hitting the page file. Set it to 8GB Min and Max and forget it exists. However, save it to a different drive than your OS drive if possible. If you DO hit your swap file, having it on a separate drive always speeds things up.
Same with Photoshop: put your scratch disk on a different internal drive if possible. Also, I set Photoshop ram usage to 75% which is a nice and safe but still big number. If you're stable at 90% that's great, but it may start a fight with Windows for resources. Maybe drop it to 80% and see what happens. BTW, when working on a large pano, Photoshop easily eats 19 of my 24GB or ram within 15 minutes, so I keep it at 75% to leave some breathing room for Windows. I tell ya, when I set the performance usage monitor in the bottom of the Photoshop window and watch it during the application of a big memory-intensive task (like a big Content-Aware Fill), it NEVER goes below 100%. That means Photoshop is using all ram and no scratch disk which is nice. Once again, our big rigs don't rely on hard-drive-based ram (page file or scratch disks) like they used to which is a huge blessing.
PS history states are of non-effect with these big machines especially with 64-bit allowing access to greater than 3.3GB of ram. The new standard is a cache of 6 and 40 History states. Your machine won't even feel that. Here's where Preston fires back and calls me a kook, lol! But seriously, our mega-rigs laugh at that part now, thankfully. I'd go looney with only 3 History states, you can't even make good snapshots with that!
Check the file your buddy is saving and see if it's flattened or not. I would say it HAS to be. My big flattened images save in a blink, and my layered files are so slow in CS5 I sometimes avoid hitting save if I'm on a roll with edits because I don;t want to wait. Nature of the digital beast probably!
Paul--You're a kook! But, you're a kook with a brilliant observation! PS is crunching a lot of stuff when it is saving a large, layered file. My experience is identical: Saving a flattened file is seriously fast on my box, and layered PSD files take time to save. This could certainly be the bottleneck.
Happy New Year!
--P
Posted by Lance Warley on January 4, 2012 at 1:55 PM
Thanks, Paul and Preston. Paul, I made the changes you suggested and it's still slow: 34 seconds to save a 500 MB file.
I spoke to Chris at Puget Tech Support. He said the system is running properly and referred me to an article on Photoshop performance tips, all of which I've implemented and mentioned in my post to start this thread.
Preston, my friend was saving multiple layers on his old machine.
I usually don't want to save one flattened layer, unless it's a file sharpened for a particular output. I usually save a file with several layers (adjustment layers and regular layers), so I can go back and easily make small changes later. Saving a single flattened layer would of course be faster but has no appeal to me for workflow editing.
So I have this big, supposedly hot new machine all dressed up and it's slow. I'm very disappointed.
Can you exclude PSD files from being scanned by your anti-virus and/or anti-malware software. I have MS Security Essentails and have excluded PSD, TIF, and JPG. I don't know if it's a factor, but it's worth looking into, I think.
I am just as perplexed as you. Something is causing the bottleneck, but I'll be darned if I know what it may be.
--P
Posted by Lance Warley on January 4, 2012 at 5:48 PM
Thanks for hanging in there with me, Preston.
I did what you suggested (in Microsoft Security Essentials, which Puget provided), and did a full shutdown. Then I booted, tried it again, and it's still taking 34 seconds to save 500 MB.
If you and Paul (or anyone else) happen to know of other people with expertise in this area, I would really appreciate it if you could ask their opinion.
This is ridiculous. I'm dyin' here in the slow lane with a Ferrari.
Posted by Guy Manning on January 4, 2012 at 10:37 PM
I get saves of 17 sec for a 1.2 GB file with layers on I-7, 3.4 Ghz with 8 Gb ram to an e-sata drive. CS5.
As stated above, make sure you don't use your C: drive (assuming that is where PS is installed) for scratch disk for either the o/s or the program. It needs to be on a separate physical disk, not on a partition. And, don't use a USB disk for swap files.
Go to START, RUN, type in MSCONFIG and check for unnecessary items in the startup tab.
Make sure multi-threading is active in the BIOS. The simple way to check is CNTL, ALT, DEL, Open Task Manager and click on performance tab and see how many little cpu windows there are. 4 windows and multi-threading is off. 8 windows it is on.
Go to START, RUN, type in CHKDSK /F It will ask to reboot. Let it. The scan will take a while depending on storage (unplug any external drives before doing this). This should find problems on the drives while fixing and remapping bad sectors which can cause slowdowns during drive access.
If no joy them put the o/s cd in the drive and START, RUN, type in SFC /SCANNOW this will check the state of the system files and repair them if needed.
Also try uninstall then reinstall PS.
Good luck.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on January 5, 2012 at 12:37 AM
OK class, I just ran a test that proves it has NOTHING to do with our machines but is definitely a Photoshop CS5 thing, and I'm gonna find out what that "thing" is.
The test I ran was simple: I opened a 645mb PSD that has several layers, and is sitting on a 750GB WD Caviar Black drive (FYI, all of my drives are 3.0GB/sec SATA, I built my rig a year too early, lol). I did one edit: hit control+J on a non-visible layer to dupe it. Then hit save at the same time I hit Start on my iPhone stopwatch: it took 50.3 seconds to save. Yikes.
I had already copied the original file to two other drives before doing my test, and thus I had identical files in three places waiting to be tested. I ran the exact same test on that same file on these two drives:
-Two WD 1TB RE3's (RAID Edition) that are on a LSI PCI RAID card. They are configured for RAID0 so I get maximum speed, no redundancy. I do not know the write speed, but when I read a huge file off of that RAID set (to copy elsewhere), I get about 400mb/sec transfer rate. 1+GB files copy from that drive so fast that the progress bar in Windows doesn't even appear. I edit full 1080p 5D Mark II video in Premiere WITHOUT RENDERING. Surely I'd get a faster PSD save for my test, right? NOPE! I duped the same layer as in the first test, and the save time was 50.6 seconds, only .3 seconds difference. Uncanny.
Last test: I opened the same PSD straight off of my C drive, a WD 10K 300GB raptor. That drive has Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate and my Adobe Production Premium CS5 suite on that drive plus Office 2010 and Security Essentials running in RealTime. Wanna guess my Save time for the test? 50.2 seconds. It's quite clear that Photoshop is doing some resource-independent crunching with these saves.
Time to find out WHY. With 16 Microsoft certs and the PS CS5 ACE cert under my belt, I should be able to figure this out (you would THINK, lol). I'll be back...
Posted by Paul DeCesare on January 5, 2012 at 12:54 AM
FIGURED IT OUT.
PS CS5 uses a newer highly-complex lossless compression algorithm when saving PSDs in an effort to maximize image quality. You have no option to save the file as an uncompressed PSD. If you save the file as TIFF and use compression, you'll get the same long save times. However, I saved my 645mb PSD as an uncompressed TIFF, and that TIFF weighed in at 1.25GB! I closed it then reopened it to start with no remaining hidden Photoshop hints or preferences, then I ran the same test on that TIFF on my normal 750GB WD Caviar Black (duped the layer and hit save). The uncompressed TIFF took under 9 seconds to save, and that's 1.25GB file!
I appreciate Adobe trying to preserve our image quality, but they need to revisit the math and speed this up. Search it on Google, the web is FULL of frustrated PS CS5 users. Who knows, maybe CS4 does the same thing?
Lance, as far as your friend's set-up goes, is he using an earlier PS version, or is saving the image at 8-bit instead of 16 or SOMETHING?? At any rate, until we know the real specs of his PC and the file he's using in the test environment, I wouldn't use his test as a gold standard benchmark... if we do we won;t sleep at night,lol! Clearly the Adobe PSD compression is one of the big factors here. HUZZAH.
I may just save everything as uncompressed layered TIFFS from here on in, so I'm glad you posted your issue so we could investigate! Oh, that means your Puget rocket is A-OK too...
That's very interesting, indeed! Thanks for your persistence in figuring this out. Hopefully, Adoobie will rework the algorithm for CS6.
I was saving all my master files as uncompressed tiffs, but some of the files (from 4x5 scans @1800ppi) were rediculously huge (some approaching 3GB!). So, I decided to start saving my master files as PSD's. The longer save times don't bother me all that much.
At this juncture it appears that Lance, and others, will have to decide between larger files (TIFF) and longer save times (PSD).
Thanks again for your research on this!
--P
Posted by Lance Warley on January 5, 2012 at 9:12 AM
Guy - thanks. It's multi-threading.
Paul - You rock, dude!!!! I saved as an uncompressed tif in less than 2 seconds. Happy Dance. The file size is 890 MB instead of 500 MB for the psd, and who cares? Hello external TB drives.
Whew. Thanks for sticking with me on this and finding the research that I couldn't find.
Oh, my friend? He forgot to tell me he saves as uncompressed tif's. I told him exactly how delighted I was to hear about that now, and I told him in words I learned in every dialect when I grew up in the Bronx.
I posted a topic over at the Puget Systems forum regarding this discussion to see what others had to say. William, at Puget, had a couple of interesting remarks---Here.
If you want to add any comments, there--please do.
--P
Posted by Lance Warley on January 6, 2012 at 9:56 AM
Thanks, Preston. I replied to William's post. It looks to me like CS5 is single threaded on saving psd's.
I think the news about saving as Tif will help thousands of people, because the thousands who already save as Tif probably think that's what everyone else does.
How do we know what we don't know?
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 29, 2012 at 5:40 PM
YEEEEEHAWWWWWWW!
Hey Lance, have a look at the Prefs screen in Photoshop CS6 above! Awesome...
Posted by Lance Warley on March 29, 2012 at 6:02 PM
NOW they tell us, Paul! Thanks for getting this to the light of day.
I don't see any reason to change back from tif's, though. Do you?
"I don't see any reason to change back from tif's, though. Do you? "
Lance, the only reason I could see going back to PSD's is if disk space is a consideration, both for normal storage and for backup. One nice thing about TIFF's is they are a standard file type that can be opened by many different programs, whereas PSD's are proprietary to Adobe products.
Discussion
22 repliesI have a new Puget Systems Genesis tower, and it takes me 30 seconds to save a 500 MB file. I have a friend with a computer that is at least two years old, with no SSD's (I don't have his specs), and he can save a 670 MB file instantaneously.
I have a feeling there is one setting somewhere that I have wrong. I should be able to save a file as fast as a 2-year-old system can. Can anyone help with tips to speed up my saves, please?
Here are the specs and CS5 settings for my setup:
Puget Genesis: Intel i7 3.2GHz 6 core 12 MB cache, 16 GB Memory, nVidia GeForce GT 430 1GB video memory, 160GB Sata II SSD primary drive, 80GB Sata II SSD second drive with 40 GB available as scratch drive for Photoshop; 1TB USB 3.0 drive as third scratch disk with 500GB available. Win 7 64 bit. All drivers updated.
Win 7 Virtual Memory changed from 16MB to 24540MB min, 50000MB max.
In CS5:
- Purge-History before Saving. All applications closed except Photoshop. Photoshop opened solely to process the one psd file.
Changes made to Genesis:
- Export-Clipboard deselected
- Image Previews: Never save
- Maximize PSD and PSB file compatibility: Never
- Memory Usage: 90% (13.2 GB)
- History States: 3
- Cache Levels: 6
- Cache Tile Size: 1024K
- Open GL enabled in Normal mode
I can't find anything else to tune. The same performance results occurred with a file from a 7D and from a 5DII. After opening the file in ACR, I don't do anything to it in ACR except open it in CS5. Then I just duplicate the bg layer several times to increase the file size.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
The suggestions below may help--no guarantees...
Reduce your history states to '2'. Reduce cache levels to 1
Maximize PSD and PSB file compatibility: Always
Also, using a USB drive as a scratch disk may slow things down; USB will never be as fast as eSATA, especially with SSD. I suggest you not use the USB drive for a scratch disk.
Memory Usage: 90% (13.2 GB): You may need to reduce this value. You also have a huge page file size which will result in heavy hits to your main drive. You should allow Windows to set this for you.
Your Puget machine has some great specs! I've had mine for eight months, and its been perfect. BTW: my Puget machine will save a 1GB PSD file in less than 30 seconds.
Let us know if your performance improves.
--P
Now the file saves in 28 seconds instead of 30. Still very slow.
I just don't understand it. I think I should be able to save 500 MB in under 10 seconds, or faster.
btw, doesn't "Maximize PSD and PSB file compatibility: Always" force PS to create another layer, so shouldn't setting this to Always (rather than Never) make it slower?
It sounds like you have a USB drive or an extremely fragmented drive - unlikely in a newer system. Or your drive is nearly full.
Layers are usually quite small; most are simply arithmetic formulas applied to all or portions of a photo. They shouldn't add to overhead, something you can easily verify by creating a test photo with a couple of dozen layers.
Do you notice slow write speeds in other applications?
I'm not much for Windows, but is there a drive-chasing switch in the Windows system, that turns off/on buffering and/or caching?
Finally, I've got an SSD drive on my MacBook Air laptop, and it is unbelievably fast at read/writes. Don't compare hard drives with SSDs; there's no comparison.
I dont know about a Windows buffering/caching switch, but I'll look into it. Other apps are fine.
And if someone is saving a 670MB file instantaneously to a regular hard drive, they aren't actually doing any writing to the drive. In that case, it's probably already on the drive, and the software is just validating that the data is already written. If the data is in memory and changed significantly, and has to be written back to the drive it will definitely take some time. Is it possible that you're trying to write back a lot more data to the drive?
And yes, I am trying to write more data to the drive.
I ran a quick test yesterday with a 528MB PSD file using CS5-64 bit. CS5 was the only application running.
Time to open the file = 7s
Time to save the file after adding an adjustment layer = 18s
Win 7 Pro-SP 1-64 bit
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K QUAD CORE 3.3GHz 95W
Ram: Kingston 16GB DDR3-1333 (4x4GB)
Video Card: GeForce GT 430 1GB Silent
Primary Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6 Gb/s (47% Free Space)
Secondary Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6 Gb/s (90% Free Space) Set as PS Scratch Disk
While my test was not very rigorous, the times I recorded seem pretty reasonable for my machine. Given your machine's specs, your 'save' time does appear to be on the long side. Honestly, I haven't a clue why this is so. Just a thought, but you might want to place a call to Puget and ask them.
Keep us posted on this. I am really curious as to what's happening.
--P
First: I can save a 750MB file in a blink if it's single layer (such as a flatten stitched pano). As soon as I add layers even to a straight-out-of-camera image file, I get the progress bar and it takes many annoying seconds to save. Check and see if your friend is saving a flat file or a layered file, that may be the difference right there. I think that's just Photoshop thinking too hard, lol!
Windows settings: I remember well the "make your page file double your ram" idea. That worked with 256mb ram. Now we have HUGE ram amounts so you're barely even hitting the page file. Set it to 8GB Min and Max and forget it exists. However, save it to a different drive than your OS drive if possible. If you DO hit your swap file, having it on a separate drive always speeds things up.
Same with Photoshop: put your scratch disk on a different internal drive if possible. Also, I set Photoshop ram usage to 75% which is a nice and safe but still big number. If you're stable at 90% that's great, but it may start a fight with Windows for resources. Maybe drop it to 80% and see what happens. BTW, when working on a large pano, Photoshop easily eats 19 of my 24GB or ram within 15 minutes, so I keep it at 75% to leave some breathing room for Windows. I tell ya, when I set the performance usage monitor in the bottom of the Photoshop window and watch it during the application of a big memory-intensive task (like a big Content-Aware Fill), it NEVER goes below 100%. That means Photoshop is using all ram and no scratch disk which is nice. Once again, our big rigs don't rely on hard-drive-based ram (page file or scratch disks) like they used to which is a huge blessing.
PS history states are of non-effect with these big machines especially with 64-bit allowing access to greater than 3.3GB of ram. The new standard is a cache of 6 and 40 History states. Your machine won't even feel that. Here's where Preston fires back and calls me a kook, lol! But seriously, our mega-rigs laugh at that part now, thankfully. I'd go looney with only 3 History states, you can't even make good snapshots with that!
Check the file your buddy is saving and see if it's flattened or not. I would say it HAS to be. My big flattened images save in a blink, and my layered files are so slow in CS5 I sometimes avoid hitting save if I'm on a roll with edits because I don;t want to wait. Nature of the digital beast probably!
Happy New Year!
--P
I spoke to Chris at Puget Tech Support. He said the system is running properly and referred me to an article on Photoshop performance tips, all of which I've implemented and mentioned in my post to start this thread.
Preston, my friend was saving multiple layers on his old machine.
I usually don't want to save one flattened layer, unless it's a file sharpened for a particular output. I usually save a file with several layers (adjustment layers and regular layers), so I can go back and easily make small changes later. Saving a single flattened layer would of course be faster but has no appeal to me for workflow editing.
So I have this big, supposedly hot new machine all dressed up and it's slow. I'm very disappointed.
Can you exclude PSD files from being scanned by your anti-virus and/or anti-malware software. I have MS Security Essentails and have excluded PSD, TIF, and JPG. I don't know if it's a factor, but it's worth looking into, I think.
I am just as perplexed as you. Something is causing the bottleneck, but I'll be darned if I know what it may be.
--P
I did what you suggested (in Microsoft Security Essentials, which Puget provided), and did a full shutdown. Then I booted, tried it again, and it's still taking 34 seconds to save 500 MB.
If you and Paul (or anyone else) happen to know of other people with expertise in this area, I would really appreciate it if you could ask their opinion.
This is ridiculous. I'm dyin' here in the slow lane with a Ferrari.
As stated above, make sure you don't use your C: drive (assuming that is where PS is installed) for scratch disk for either the o/s or the program. It needs to be on a separate physical disk, not on a partition. And, don't use a USB disk for swap files.
Go to START, RUN, type in MSCONFIG and check for unnecessary items in the startup tab.
Make sure multi-threading is active in the BIOS. The simple way to check is CNTL, ALT, DEL, Open Task Manager and click on performance tab and see how many little cpu windows there are. 4 windows and multi-threading is off. 8 windows it is on.
Go to START, RUN, type in CHKDSK /F It will ask to reboot. Let it. The scan will take a while depending on storage (unplug any external drives before doing this). This should find problems on the drives while fixing and remapping bad sectors which can cause slowdowns during drive access.
If no joy them put the o/s cd in the drive and START, RUN, type in SFC /SCANNOW this will check the state of the system files and repair them if needed.
Also try uninstall then reinstall PS.
Good luck.
The test I ran was simple: I opened a 645mb PSD that has several layers, and is sitting on a 750GB WD Caviar Black drive (FYI, all of my drives are 3.0GB/sec SATA, I built my rig a year too early, lol). I did one edit: hit control+J on a non-visible layer to dupe it. Then hit save at the same time I hit Start on my iPhone stopwatch: it took 50.3 seconds to save. Yikes.
I had already copied the original file to two other drives before doing my test, and thus I had identical files in three places waiting to be tested. I ran the exact same test on that same file on these two drives:
-Two WD 1TB RE3's (RAID Edition) that are on a LSI PCI RAID card. They are configured for RAID0 so I get maximum speed, no redundancy. I do not know the write speed, but when I read a huge file off of that RAID set (to copy elsewhere), I get about 400mb/sec transfer rate. 1+GB files copy from that drive so fast that the progress bar in Windows doesn't even appear. I edit full 1080p 5D Mark II video in Premiere WITHOUT RENDERING. Surely I'd get a faster PSD save for my test, right? NOPE! I duped the same layer as in the first test, and the save time was 50.6 seconds, only .3 seconds difference. Uncanny.
Last test: I opened the same PSD straight off of my C drive, a WD 10K 300GB raptor. That drive has Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate and my Adobe Production Premium CS5 suite on that drive plus Office 2010 and Security Essentials running in RealTime. Wanna guess my Save time for the test? 50.2 seconds. It's quite clear that Photoshop is doing some resource-independent crunching with these saves.
Time to find out WHY. With 16 Microsoft certs and the PS CS5 ACE cert under my belt, I should be able to figure this out (you would THINK, lol). I'll be back...
PS CS5 uses a newer highly-complex lossless compression algorithm when saving PSDs in an effort to maximize image quality. You have no option to save the file as an uncompressed PSD. If you save the file as TIFF and use compression, you'll get the same long save times. However, I saved my 645mb PSD as an uncompressed TIFF, and that TIFF weighed in at 1.25GB! I closed it then reopened it to start with no remaining hidden Photoshop hints or preferences, then I ran the same test on that TIFF on my normal 750GB WD Caviar Black (duped the layer and hit save). The uncompressed TIFF took under 9 seconds to save, and that's 1.25GB file!
I appreciate Adobe trying to preserve our image quality, but they need to revisit the math and speed this up. Search it on Google, the web is FULL of frustrated PS CS5 users. Who knows, maybe CS4 does the same thing?
Lance, as far as your friend's set-up goes, is he using an earlier PS version, or is saving the image at 8-bit instead of 16 or SOMETHING?? At any rate, until we know the real specs of his PC and the file he's using in the test environment, I wouldn't use his test as a gold standard benchmark... if we do we won;t sleep at night,lol! Clearly the Adobe PSD compression is one of the big factors here. HUZZAH.
I may just save everything as uncompressed layered TIFFS from here on in, so I'm glad you posted your issue so we could investigate! Oh, that means your Puget rocket is A-OK too...
That's very interesting, indeed! Thanks for your persistence in figuring this out. Hopefully, Adoobie will rework the algorithm for CS6.
I was saving all my master files as uncompressed tiffs, but some of the files (from 4x5 scans @1800ppi) were rediculously huge (some approaching 3GB!). So, I decided to start saving my master files as PSD's. The longer save times don't bother me all that much.
At this juncture it appears that Lance, and others, will have to decide between larger files (TIFF) and longer save times (PSD).
Thanks again for your research on this!
--P
Paul - You rock, dude!!!! I saved as an uncompressed tif in less than 2 seconds. Happy Dance. The file size is 890 MB instead of 500 MB for the psd, and who cares? Hello external TB drives.
Whew. Thanks for sticking with me on this and finding the research that I couldn't find.
Oh, my friend? He forgot to tell me he saves as uncompressed tif's. I told him exactly how delighted I was to hear about that now, and I told him in words I learned in every dialect when I grew up in the Bronx.
I posted a topic over at the Puget Systems forum regarding this discussion to see what others had to say. William, at Puget, had a couple of interesting remarks---Here.
If you want to add any comments, there--please do.
--P
I think the news about saving as Tif will help thousands of people, because the thousands who already save as Tif probably think that's what everyone else does.
How do we know what we don't know?
Hey Lance, have a look at the Prefs screen in Photoshop CS6 above! Awesome...
I don't see any reason to change back from tif's, though. Do you?
Lance, the only reason I could see going back to PSD's is if disk space is a consideration, both for normal storage and for backup. One nice thing about TIFF's is they are a standard file type that can be opened by many different programs, whereas PSD's are proprietary to Adobe products.
--P