I've got a fairly new computer (6-8 months old). It's a PC, Pentium D @ 2.8 GHZ; has 2 GB of RAM (4x512). I have 250 GB hard drive in a Raid 1? configuration (mirrored).
It started out blazingly fast even with large PS files, but has progressively gotten slower. I have considered increasing the Ram to 4 GB (4x1024) but have heard PS can only access 2 GB anyway, so I held off. My hard drive is currently filled with 180 GB of data. One more thing, it actually seems to get slower after I'm on there for a couple of hours as well. I can reboot it and it seems to do better. As you can probably tell I know little about the workings of a computer.
As a side note - when I'm working on a RAW file sized to 13x19 it typically is approx 150-250 MB. After sharpening in PK Sharpener this can increase rapidly to 1.5 GB. I then flatten to decrease file size. It's not uncommon to have to flatten several times in post processing as PK generally entails 2-3 separate steps.
Questions:
1. Any ideas what's causing the slow down?
2. Any suggestions?
3. If I increase RAM size, is there a way of running just PS on 2 GB, and running everything else on the other 2 GB?
Sorry for being so ignorant, and thanks for any help/advice.
One reason may be spyware or viruses. Do you have good tools to protect and clean against those.
In the PS configuration you can set the percentage of memory it will be allowed to consume. With 4GB of physical memory you can dedicate up to 3GB to Photoshop, though you will need to tweak the Windows configuration. 2GB should not be a problem.
As far as viruses/spyware, I do use a firewall/anti-virus program which says I'm in good shape. For spyware I use Spybot (I think that's the correct name). I swept the system the other day it found nothing. Can viruses/spyware hide from these protection devices? Also, I usally run several programs at one time (CS2, Adobe Bridge, Capture 1 LE, and sometimes a word processing program. That was why I asking about the possibility of somehow separating CS2 from everything else.
Well...heres my 2 cents... the more programs you run, the more memory u use, so if you really want speed, kill off what your not using...
there are a few viruses and spyware programs that can hide from certain virus ware, and spyware detection tools... however use of a couple programs (say 2 spyware programs, and 2 anti-viruses) you usually will turn it up... theres only a small handfull of things that spybot doesn't pick up however... so it is possible, I forget the name of the other good free spyware tool, but spybot is one of the best...
Now, rebooting proves something that was a point I was going to make... some programs have memory leaks, they will use memory, and keep using memory, even not doing anything, it's a problem, though most GOOD software (like PS) doesn't have this... however it's possible you've installed something that does, say a desktop weather program or ???
A good idea might be to kill off programs in the system tray (down by the clock) though there are some that won't be there and would be needed to be found via the task manager... rebooting helps clear out the memory especially with leaky programs. Another problem, is if you install and remove software a lot (say demo software, decide you don't like it) it can create a lot of a mess in windows... newer XP handles it a bit better, but still it can be a problem, especially with some of the little resident programs, you can do a complete reinstall to help clean things out...
Like was said previously, photoshop can be set in the preferences to only use a certain percentage of the memory... now if Adobe only wrote it to use 2GB (I don't know) then if you have more than 2GB, it won't make PS not work, but PS will only use up to the 2GB, and the remaining 2 or 3 will be used by other stuff....
If you can uprgrade to faster ram it should help too... but perhaps your running the faster stuff already...
make sure you defrag your hard drives, fragmentation can be a speed killer... also raid 1 is not the fastest raid, it's redundant however, which isn't bad... if you want speed out of them however, you want raid 0 (Data Stripping) which would double your usuable hard drive space, basically files are split among the 2 drives, so when you read/write your using both drives to gain speed, in mirrored it reads/writes to both, but the same data to each, and doesn't gain any performance but allows you to lose one hard drive and retain your data...
with your hard drives getting full you might consider adding a smaller single drive for swap only as well, set Photoshops swap file to run on the seperate drive, can help PS, especially if the drive is dedicated to that purpose.
Hope that helps some... just my oppinion.
Posted by Bryce Flory on July 19, 2006 at 12:08 AM
i actually believe that photoshop can handle up to 4GBs of RAM
Posted by Bill Chambers on July 19, 2006 at 10:05 AM
Thanks all for taking the time to help.
William, you mentioned something about buying another drive for swap only. I've never heard that term before - what is swap, and what does it do?
William, you mentioned something about buying another drive for swap only. I've never heard that term before - what is swap, and what does it do?
Thanks.
Swap is like "fake" memory, both windows and Photoshop can use a hard drive to write a temporary file called the "swap" file to, they use this just like RAM only its a file on a hard drive.... Windows tends to use a swap file no matter how much Ram you have, and in fact there are recomended figures to set it to, instead of letting windows manage it, to keep your hard drive usage lower (I forget the numbers, something like 70% of your RAM) Photoshop uses a similar file, and seems to do the same thing, uses it regardless of memory (though I've never had more than 1gig memory, so not for sure) but you can set photoshop to use up to 4 different drives as primary, secondary, third, and forth swap drives (it's in the preferences) If you choose the drive used as your system drive that windows uses for SWAP a popup apears that using a seperate drive is reccomended...
I'm not sure if there is any or a notciable difference in speed, but I always try and set it to use a seperate drive if one is avaialable, and it's seemed to make a little difference....
Not sure I would go spend money on a drive just for this purpose, but if you could find an old drive, or an inexpensive drive (preferablly 7200rpm, and a good bit of cache) it might be worth while... I'd probably look and see if you could find something cheap... not sure what the smallest drive out there is now, but I'm sure theres a 20-40gig available for under $50 (perhaps?) Like I said, if you had a spare drive, I'd give it a go, but I don't know if I'd spend the money unless you really wanted to try it, or to try and get any extra speed you could, in which chase a small 20gig drive would be more than adequate... in fact a 4-5gig drive would work, but theres no way you'd find one of them new
Definitely defragnment your hard drive! When files are modified, and/or programs installed/uninstalled, the bits and pieces of files are scattered around on the disk. So, your drive head has to seek back and forth on the disk to find all the pieces, put them together and send them to the CPU. Defragmentation reorganizes the the pieces into contiguous areas and consolidates the free space on the drive. A seriously fragmented drive will cause a definite performance hit.
A good place to look for programs that run in the background is your "Startup Folder". Click "Start", then "All Programs" look at the list and find "Startup". Delete the shortcuts to any programs listed there that you can start manually, when they are needed.
You cannot delete the programs shown in the Task Bar. You can usually start and stop them. To keep some of these programs from running, you can do the following:
Click Start, then Run. In the resulting box, type "msconfig" (without the quotes). In the resulting box, click on the "Startup" tab. The list shows all of the programs that load at boot time. Uncheck any of those programs that are not critical or needed, then restart your computer. Warning! Be very careful! Some of the programs listed there are essential to Windoze, your firewall/anti-virus protection, and other sevices. If you do not know what a particular program does; leave it checked to load at boot time. Warning #2: Do not tweak any of the items under the other tabs in the MS Config dialog box unless you really know what you're doing! It quite possible to bring your system to screeching halt!
A note on swap files: In PS this file is called the "Scratch Disk". It is distinct from the Windows Paging File. As has been said, you can configure it under 'preferences'.
To configure your Windoze Paging File: Right click on "My Computer" on your desktop. Select 'Properties' from the list. In the resulting box, select the 'Advanced" tab. Under the 'Performance' heading, click the 'Settings' button. Now, select the 'Advanced' tab; then, under the Virtual memory heading, click "Change". Be careful. A Paging File that is too small will make Windoze slow down: The opposite of what we're trying to do!. Most often, the paging file size set by Windows is pretty close to being optimum.
Defraging your drive, cleaning up your 'startup' and doing a spyware/malware/adware scan will really help. AdAware is a nice, free program that looks for Malware/Adware. I use it in conjunction with Spybot. Your system appears to be a nice setup that should cruise right along with even large PS files.
I hope this helps, Bill.
-PB
Posted by Barry Siegel on July 29, 2006 at 10:34 AM
In your Photoshop preferences you can select how many steps back are retained in the history. The more history steps that you allow, the more ram is required.
- - - I have not read everything that was said here so if this repeats some things, sorry
I use Mac, but I guess all computers and programs use memory about the same way.
1st off - try not to use more than 1 or 2 programs at a time.
The more you use the longer it takes each one to operate.
Do everything you need to in one program and then take the images to any other program you still have to use.
2nd - if you don't use it, turn off the history tool. Every step it saves uses memory.
3rd - If you copy and move files around a lot, then your memory for each file is spread out over the entire HD.
Files are not saved all in one spot. One file can be in a hundred different parts all over the HD.
When this happens they are fragmented and you have to run a utility program to clean that up, which basically pulls the files all together again as much as possible. When files are spread out it takes a LOT longer to find all of the parts to open, save, or use it.
4th - Partition your HD. All of the parts of a file will then only be saved in the partition area you save it to, and also when you later defragment that partition, it does not effect any other areas at the same time. It also saves a lot of time since you only have to work on that one partition area and not the entire HD. - - In your case you can have two 100GB areas and one 50GB area for general files. I do this and use the small area to hold all of the programs and misc. files. Of course it has to be large enough to hold all programs you have and may someday buy, but 50GB is plenty for what I have, and I probably have twice as much as the regular user does.
5th - run utility program regularly, including checking for bad blocks and benchmark tests.
Last of all - - if the 200GB is not enough space for your images, then you need to buy another 250GB external HD, and partition that one also.
Partitioning a hard drive will certainly help with organization and will speed the loading of document files. You will also need a utility to accomplish the partitioning tasks. I've gotten good results using Partition Commander, although there are many utilities out there.
While most of the utilities do a good job of partitioning without data loss, partitioning a drive with data, OS, and other programs is a somewhat risky business. Therefore, if you are thinking of partitioning a drive, be sure to make a back up copy of everything on the drive as a first step.
I won't go into detail about logical drives, extended partitions, recommend partition sizes or any of that stuff. There is an excellent article and a procedure here: http://www.theeldergeek.com/ . The article begins at about mid-page and continues on subsequent pages. It is well worth reading in detail. This particular site (The Elder Geek) is one of the best sources I have found for all things related to Win XP! There is an excellent forum there, as well.
When I am using PSCS2, I close all programs except for PS. That way I have the maximum amount of RAM and Paging File space available for my imaging work.
Discussion
10 repliesIt started out blazingly fast even with large PS files, but has progressively gotten slower. I have considered increasing the Ram to 4 GB (4x1024) but have heard PS can only access 2 GB anyway, so I held off. My hard drive is currently filled with 180 GB of data. One more thing, it actually seems to get slower after I'm on there for a couple of hours as well. I can reboot it and it seems to do better. As you can probably tell I know little about the workings of a computer.
As a side note - when I'm working on a RAW file sized to 13x19 it typically is approx 150-250 MB. After sharpening in PK Sharpener this can increase rapidly to 1.5 GB. I then flatten to decrease file size. It's not uncommon to have to flatten several times in post processing as PK generally entails 2-3 separate steps.
Questions:
1. Any ideas what's causing the slow down?
2. Any suggestions?
3. If I increase RAM size, is there a way of running just PS on 2 GB, and running everything else on the other 2 GB?
Sorry for being so ignorant, and thanks for any help/advice.
In the PS configuration you can set the percentage of memory it will be allowed to consume. With 4GB of physical memory you can dedicate up to 3GB to Photoshop, though you will need to tweak the Windows configuration. 2GB should not be a problem.
Guy
there are a few viruses and spyware programs that can hide from certain virus ware, and spyware detection tools... however use of a couple programs (say 2 spyware programs, and 2 anti-viruses) you usually will turn it up... theres only a small handfull of things that spybot doesn't pick up however... so it is possible, I forget the name of the other good free spyware tool, but spybot is one of the best...
Now, rebooting proves something that was a point I was going to make... some programs have memory leaks, they will use memory, and keep using memory, even not doing anything, it's a problem, though most GOOD software (like PS) doesn't have this... however it's possible you've installed something that does, say a desktop weather program or ???
A good idea might be to kill off programs in the system tray (down by the clock) though there are some that won't be there and would be needed to be found via the task manager... rebooting helps clear out the memory especially with leaky programs. Another problem, is if you install and remove software a lot (say demo software, decide you don't like it) it can create a lot of a mess in windows... newer XP handles it a bit better, but still it can be a problem, especially with some of the little resident programs, you can do a complete reinstall to help clean things out...
Like was said previously, photoshop can be set in the preferences to only use a certain percentage of the memory... now if Adobe only wrote it to use 2GB (I don't know) then if you have more than 2GB, it won't make PS not work, but PS will only use up to the 2GB, and the remaining 2 or 3 will be used by other stuff....
If you can uprgrade to faster ram it should help too... but perhaps your running the faster stuff already...
make sure you defrag your hard drives, fragmentation can be a speed killer... also raid 1 is not the fastest raid, it's redundant however, which isn't bad... if you want speed out of them however, you want raid 0 (Data Stripping) which would double your usuable hard drive space, basically files are split among the 2 drives, so when you read/write your using both drives to gain speed, in mirrored it reads/writes to both, but the same data to each, and doesn't gain any performance but allows you to lose one hard drive and retain your data...
with your hard drives getting full you might consider adding a smaller single drive for swap only as well, set Photoshops swap file to run on the seperate drive, can help PS, especially if the drive is dedicated to that purpose.
Hope that helps some... just my oppinion.
William, you mentioned something about buying another drive for swap only. I've never heard that term before - what is swap, and what does it do?
Thanks.
Swap is like "fake" memory, both windows and Photoshop can use a hard drive to write a temporary file called the "swap" file to, they use this just like RAM only its a file on a hard drive.... Windows tends to use a swap file no matter how much Ram you have, and in fact there are recomended figures to set it to, instead of letting windows manage it, to keep your hard drive usage lower (I forget the numbers, something like 70% of your RAM) Photoshop uses a similar file, and seems to do the same thing, uses it regardless of memory (though I've never had more than 1gig memory, so not for sure) but you can set photoshop to use up to 4 different drives as primary, secondary, third, and forth swap drives (it's in the preferences) If you choose the drive used as your system drive that windows uses for SWAP a popup apears that using a seperate drive is reccomended...
I'm not sure if there is any or a notciable difference in speed, but I always try and set it to use a seperate drive if one is avaialable, and it's seemed to make a little difference....
Not sure I would go spend money on a drive just for this purpose, but if you could find an old drive, or an inexpensive drive (preferablly 7200rpm, and a good bit of cache) it might be worth while... I'd probably look and see if you could find something cheap... not sure what the smallest drive out there is now, but I'm sure theres a 20-40gig available for under $50 (perhaps?) Like I said, if you had a spare drive, I'd give it a go, but I don't know if I'd spend the money unless you really wanted to try it, or to try and get any extra speed you could, in which chase a small 20gig drive would be more than adequate... in fact a 4-5gig drive would work, but theres no way you'd find one of them new
Definitely defragnment your hard drive! When files are modified, and/or programs installed/uninstalled, the bits and pieces of files are scattered around on the disk. So, your drive head has to seek back and forth on the disk to find all the pieces, put them together and send them to the CPU. Defragmentation reorganizes the the pieces into contiguous areas and consolidates the free space on the drive. A seriously fragmented drive will cause a definite performance hit.
A good place to look for programs that run in the background is your "Startup Folder". Click "Start", then "All Programs" look at the list and find "Startup". Delete the shortcuts to any programs listed there that you can start manually, when they are needed.
You cannot delete the programs shown in the Task Bar. You can usually start and stop them. To keep some of these programs from running, you can do the following:
Click Start, then Run. In the resulting box, type "msconfig" (without the quotes). In the resulting box, click on the "Startup" tab. The list shows all of the programs that load at boot time. Uncheck any of those programs that are not critical or needed, then restart your computer. Warning! Be very careful! Some of the programs listed there are essential to Windoze, your firewall/anti-virus protection, and other sevices. If you do not know what a particular program does; leave it checked to load at boot time. Warning #2: Do not tweak any of the items under the other tabs in the MS Config dialog box unless you really know what you're doing! It quite possible to bring your system to screeching halt!
A note on swap files: In PS this file is called the "Scratch Disk". It is distinct from the Windows Paging File. As has been said, you can configure it under 'preferences'.
To configure your Windoze Paging File: Right click on "My Computer" on your desktop. Select 'Properties' from the list. In the resulting box, select the 'Advanced" tab. Under the 'Performance' heading, click the 'Settings' button. Now, select the 'Advanced' tab; then, under the Virtual memory heading, click "Change". Be careful. A Paging File that is too small will make Windoze slow down: The opposite of what we're trying to do!. Most often, the paging file size set by Windows is pretty close to being optimum.
Defraging your drive, cleaning up your 'startup' and doing a spyware/malware/adware scan will really help. AdAware is a nice, free program that looks for Malware/Adware. I use it in conjunction with Spybot. Your system appears to be a nice setup that should cruise right along with even large PS files.
I hope this helps, Bill.
-PB
I use Mac, but I guess all computers and programs use memory about the same way.
1st off - try not to use more than 1 or 2 programs at a time.
The more you use the longer it takes each one to operate.
Do everything you need to in one program and then take the images to any other program you still have to use.
2nd - if you don't use it, turn off the history tool. Every step it saves uses memory.
3rd - If you copy and move files around a lot, then your memory for each file is spread out over the entire HD.
Files are not saved all in one spot. One file can be in a hundred different parts all over the HD.
When this happens they are fragmented and you have to run a utility program to clean that up, which basically pulls the files all together again as much as possible. When files are spread out it takes a LOT longer to find all of the parts to open, save, or use it.
4th - Partition your HD. All of the parts of a file will then only be saved in the partition area you save it to, and also when you later defragment that partition, it does not effect any other areas at the same time. It also saves a lot of time since you only have to work on that one partition area and not the entire HD. - - In your case you can have two 100GB areas and one 50GB area for general files. I do this and use the small area to hold all of the programs and misc. files. Of course it has to be large enough to hold all programs you have and may someday buy, but 50GB is plenty for what I have, and I probably have twice as much as the regular user does.
5th - run utility program regularly, including checking for bad blocks and benchmark tests.
Last of all - - if the 200GB is not enough space for your images, then you need to buy another 250GB external HD, and partition that one also.
While most of the utilities do a good job of partitioning without data loss, partitioning a drive with data, OS, and other programs is a somewhat risky business. Therefore, if you are thinking of partitioning a drive, be sure to make a back up copy of everything on the drive as a first step.
I won't go into detail about logical drives, extended partitions, recommend partition sizes or any of that stuff. There is an excellent article and a procedure here: http://www.theeldergeek.com/ . The article begins at about mid-page and continues on subsequent pages. It is well worth reading in detail. This particular site (The Elder Geek) is one of the best sources I have found for all things related to Win XP! There is an excellent forum there, as well.
When I am using PSCS2, I close all programs except for PS. That way I have the maximum amount of RAM and Paging File space available for my imaging work.
-PB