Posted by Lance Warley on January 25, 2012 at 12:17 PM
I wish the article had stated "Saves a tif is much, much faster than save as psd" in big, bold letters.
I entered this as a comment to the article.
Posted by Dennis Plank on January 25, 2012 at 12:17 PM
Thanks, Preston. Much appreciated.
Posted by Nancy de Flon on January 25, 2012 at 3:01 PM
Thanks, Preston, very helpful!
Posted by Joe Rogers on January 28, 2012 at 5:49 PM
Thanks, Preston....stuff like this helps everyone.Thanks for sharing.
Joe Rogers
Posted by Ed Cordes on January 28, 2012 at 11:17 PM
Thanks for posting this. The article is not only interesting it is extremely helpful.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on February 13, 2012 at 1:19 AM
There's a few trouble spots in Adobe's effort. They seem to still think we all use 160GB drives and 256mb ram. Notice the "Data Drive" section, which says "RAID 5: RAID level 5 combines the two for faster performance and redundant data storage. This makes RAID 5 a good option for data storage." That was true 5 years ago, but the problem is that us consumers all have access to 1TB and larger drives now. Most 1TB+ plus drives sold today have a URE rating of 10^14 or 10^15 which is NOT stellar. That means "Unrecoverable Read Error" and those values such as "10^14" are the only way I can write 10 to the 14th or 15th power. What that means to us: if a disk in your RAID5 array fails, you can pretty much guarantee to have some file or files lost/damaged in the restoration process. That leaves us scratching our heads saying "gee, I have a RAID5 setup, what happened"? What happened is that drives are getting too big for RAID5, unless you spend the $$$ for a set of 1TB drives with a 10^16 URE rating. But three of those drives will cost the same as a Canon 500mm f/4, is that worth it? I'm sorry Adobe, you need to get up to today's world and update your documentation. At least let us all know that this RAID5 suggestion applies for 500GB drives and smaller. A better way to go IMO is to just get fast drives or do a RAID0 for speed, and have a local and online backup. THEN you have fast speed and redundancy.
Scratch Disks was a bit overkill also. Ram is the lowest price it's ever been, a 16GB dual channel kit is 89 bucks for pete's sake, and 24 months ago it was HUNDREDS. I run 24GB triple channel (on a motherboard that was rated at 12GB max in 2009 before we HAD kits with six 4GB sticks, lol), and when I'm editing an image and applying all kinds of filters including running a Blur tool across the screen with a 1700-sized brush (yes, as a test!), I see my 12 threads on my CPU start dancing but the memory utilization in the bottom left popup section NEVER goes below 100%. That means Photoshop hasn't found a need to hit a Scratch Disk. If you're running 64-bit, get some ram and make ONE non-OS disk your Scratch Disk, and you'll be fine. You'll want one Scratch Disk if you work on a big stitched pano, etc. Don't think, even for a moment, that 4gb or 6gb of ram is enough for Photoshop and Windows 7. NOW is the time to pursue ugrading your ram, I doubt it will get much lower based on market trends lately.
If you're still running at 32-bit which means 3.3GB ram tops, then go ahead and designated as many scratch disks as possible while you shop for a new PC.
Sorry, don't mean to sound negative, but technology is racing ahead and sometimes the companies we trust are a bit behind in certain situations. The bulk of the article was well done, it just needed a few clarifications so our fellow NPN members don't get caught in old thinking and possibly lose images.
You make excellent points about RAID with respect to the huge HD's that are available. Personally, I think for most users here at NPN any RAID array is not required. It can be frought with issues, and, if something goes south, recovery and fixing things is, at best, a grueling experience. Additionally, I no longer recommend RAID 0. Yes, it's faster, but if one of the HD's fails, well...you're toast. (don't ask me how I know this. Fortunately, my data was backed up)
I couldn't agree more regarding upgrading RAM! Coupling a RAM upgrade with the performance tweaks to PS, including a dedicated scratch disk, will help a geat deal. I am using 16GB of RAM with an i5 quad core CPU and routinely work on image files >1GB in size. My Windows Page File and Scratch disk (a separate 500GB HD) are basically idle.
Thanks for your comments, Paul. I believe they certainly clarify those topics in the artcle.
Discussion
7 repliesHow-To-Tune-Photoshop-CS5-for-Peak-Performance
I hope this helps someone,
--P
I entered this as a comment to the article.
Joe Rogers
Scratch Disks was a bit overkill also. Ram is the lowest price it's ever been, a 16GB dual channel kit is 89 bucks for pete's sake, and 24 months ago it was HUNDREDS. I run 24GB triple channel (on a motherboard that was rated at 12GB max in 2009 before we HAD kits with six 4GB sticks, lol), and when I'm editing an image and applying all kinds of filters including running a Blur tool across the screen with a 1700-sized brush (yes, as a test!), I see my 12 threads on my CPU start dancing but the memory utilization in the bottom left popup section NEVER goes below 100%. That means Photoshop hasn't found a need to hit a Scratch Disk. If you're running 64-bit, get some ram and make ONE non-OS disk your Scratch Disk, and you'll be fine. You'll want one Scratch Disk if you work on a big stitched pano, etc. Don't think, even for a moment, that 4gb or 6gb of ram is enough for Photoshop and Windows 7. NOW is the time to pursue ugrading your ram, I doubt it will get much lower based on market trends lately.
If you're still running at 32-bit which means 3.3GB ram tops, then go ahead and designated as many scratch disks as possible while you shop for a new PC.
Sorry, don't mean to sound negative, but technology is racing ahead and sometimes the companies we trust are a bit behind in certain situations. The bulk of the article was well done, it just needed a few clarifications so our fellow NPN members don't get caught in old thinking and possibly lose images.
You make excellent points about RAID with respect to the huge HD's that are available. Personally, I think for most users here at NPN any RAID array is not required. It can be frought with issues, and, if something goes south, recovery and fixing things is, at best, a grueling experience. Additionally, I no longer recommend RAID 0. Yes, it's faster, but if one of the HD's fails, well...you're toast. (don't ask me how I know this. Fortunately, my data was backed up)
I couldn't agree more regarding upgrading RAM! Coupling a RAM upgrade with the performance tweaks to PS, including a dedicated scratch disk, will help a geat deal. I am using 16GB of RAM with an i5 quad core CPU and routinely work on image files >1GB in size. My Windows Page File and Scratch disk (a separate 500GB HD) are basically idle.
Thanks for your comments, Paul. I believe they certainly clarify those topics in the artcle.
--P