BetterPhoto Q&A
Category: New Answers

Photoshop Hell

PS cannot need more RAM, I know this because every time I talk to anyone about this problem they tell me that they run PS with less than a gig and everything runs great. I’m really in agony here and don’t know what to do! Can someone –anyone – give me some advice or insight? Thanks, folks!

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July 27, 2006

After installing CS2 for a client and having the exact same woes with just as beefy a machine, I have written off CS2 as an option until this is figured out.

Beefy machines are being brought to their knees by CS2 when opening even a meger 5 meg file. Scratch disks have been moved around with no effect.

My client's PC is one I built for them and it is a P4 dual core CPU (forgot which one) with 2G RAM (corsair low latency - cas2) and DUAL SATA drives running in RAID 0 (striping). If you run benchmarks on this PC it simply makes you smile with RAM and HD speeds.

Yet, CS2 is painfully slow.

My client has spend many hours with Adobe support and suggestions focused around scratch disks and shutting off some extra features in CS2 (don't know what they were, didn't ask) and while a small improvement was seen, nothing NEAR what it should feel like to drive a Porche on a new set of tires... which is how PS7 feels on this same PC.

If ANYONE has had similar problems and gotten past it, lots of people would appreciate any input you have.

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July 27, 2006

In CS Prefs (under edit) run no more than 20 history states.

Make sure you have a second hard drive connected and set it up as the second scratch disk with your C drive set up as the third.

Also, if you keep PS running all of the time, when you finish working on a photo, select purge all.

I hope that this will help.

Bret

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July 27, 2006

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July 27, 2006

I am surprised, Bret, that you manage to zip along with your laptop. I am not sure that I understand the bit about setting up my external drive as a scratch disk and why this might speed things up? I currently have my C drive as primary scratch disk - is this a mistake?

Also, does anyone know if it matters that I operate off an external hard drive instead of C - that is my images are stored on the external?

Thanks again, folks!

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July 28, 2006

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July 28, 2006

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July 28, 2006

I wish that I could be of more help. I am not really a super techno wiz when it comes to hardware. I run CS2 on a Dell laptop with Windows XP Media Edition and the intel Core processor. The only time that I have any slow running problems with PS2 is when A) I am working on a 200 MB 16 bit file with several layers or B) when I have been processing a large number of files it starts to get slow. In the case of "A" the speed increases greatly as soon as I convert to 8 bit, so I convert all of ny files from 16 to 8 as soon as I have made the last of my exposure & color corrections and in the case of "B" I just do a Purge - All and that works to speed things up.

Craig:
To purge all - Edit>Purge>All (or even clipboard).

Sipho:
PS creates a copy of the photo that you are working on for each history state and saves it somewhere. The "scracth disk" is where the photo is saved. It will go on to the next disk when the first one becomes to full. So, if you are working on a 50MB file, there are as many of those 50MB files being saved on your system as the history states that exist. The more history states, the more files saved. When you purge all or close the application those file copies are eliminated from the drive(s). You can set up your number of history states in preferences.

Irene:
One other thing that you might try (I have no idea if this has any effect on the speed of CS2) is to go into the Bridge preferences and make sure you select distrubuted cache instead of centralized.

I hope that this makes some sense to everyone. Like I said I am not by any means a PS techno-guru.

Bret

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July 28, 2006

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July 28, 2006

One more thing that I forget to address. I have all of my current "working" photos on my C drive. When I finish my work I move them to the external drive and delete them from the C drive. If you are processing the images from an external I guess that could slow things down depending on the speed of information transfer from your C drive (where PS resides) to the external (where the image resides). You may want to try working on one from the C drive just for a test.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

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July 28, 2006

Yes, it is for the history brush but you can also go back to certain points in your changes through the history palette which is in PSE as well.

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July 28, 2006

Irene

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July 28, 2006

I need to try the purge trick too.. Hey, anyone have any clue why PSCS2 would slow down over time..even if its not being used? I hate to wait for it to open so alot of times ill leave it up in the background while im doing other things..then when I go back a few hours later, its running so slow I have to re-boot it (PS not the PC) and do what I need to do with it. It can get annoying at times!

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July 28, 2006

I'm convinced that it's just poor programming from the ground up with CS2.

I mean, we can sit here and make adjustments and babysit CS2 all day and get it work finally at a slow but I guess OK speed... but it shouldn't be that way. You should be able to just open and go.

Like I said earlier, I'm personlly not going to use CS2. It doesn't offer anything of value over PS7 to me. Some of things they added would be 'nice', but certainly don't effect my workflow to any significant degree.

I've got a dual core desktop and a single core desktop. Both of which absolutely FLY when using PS7 even with upwards of 100 meg files and multiple images open (5 or more) with loads of history. Even my 1.6Ghz laptop is quite snappy when dealing with 2 or 3 standard 4 meg images.

The moment CS2 goes to work on a single image it feels like I'm back on 386. That's just not acceptable for an 'upgrade' to a program.

For comparison, I also use 3D Studio Max, a 3D modeling/animation program. By nature it is orders of magnitude more complex of a program than Photoshop and yet, with every new version of the program, even using it on my laptop feels faster. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's light years ahead of whatever Adobe has done with CS2.

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July 28, 2006

One thing that I have found that has helped to speed it up some, is after saving your picture files to an external HD or CD, to delete them from your computer, even the originals take up a lot of space. and then once you send them to the recycle bin you have to make sure that you empty the recycle bin. I'm not sure why this helped but it did!
So now once PS starts to get really slow on me, I have to go in and make sure all of my files are saved, then I just delete them from my computer and empty my recycle bin, and it seams to bring it back up to a better speed. It seams to help me out, but who knows, maybe its all in my head!!!!! =)

Anyways, hope this helps someone out!!

~Collette~

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July 28, 2006

If you have too little hard drive space free, then windows itself (and any running programs) begin to have slowdowns and problems. The definiton of 'too little' space though, is around a gig, maybe two, though it varies based on the size of your drive and how much RAM, swap file, and scratch disk space you have.

If you have at least a gig or two of hard drive space left, then files simply stored on your hard drive have no effect on your operating speed.

Now, if you have those files OPEN, then it is taking up RAM (also called memory) and scratch disk space, and those things can effect your speed to a large degree.

A lot of people ask me that question though, if files on your computer will slow it down. The short answer is no.

As long as you have enough free space left for Windows to function, then it doesn't matter if your drive has 1 gig used or 20. (as long as your drive is bigger than 20 of course)

Fragmentation however, that's another story. While it doesn't exactly have to do with how much space is used, it can get worse with more space being used. But if you defrag your hard drive on occasion, you eliminate that problem. Windows has a defrag program built in, while it's not the best one out there, it does get the job done well enough for most. I use a program called Perfect Disk on our data center storage array and so far am pleased with it's performance.

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July 28, 2006

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July 29, 2006

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July 29, 2006

Irene, I'm not sure what Adobe's deal is. They have always said to make your install drive and scratch disk drive seperate drives. I have done my own benchmarks and have yet to see any change at all by doing so. I've always have blazing fast hard drives though (SATA Segate Baracuda - 10k RPM) and on my main desktop computer I've got two of them RAID 0 stripped. There is no faster hard drive setup on the planet.

Why do you want to keep your images on the internal drive? While working with them, that makes sense, but for long term storage the external drive makes sense.

Here is the setup that I would use to satisfy Adobe and see if helps your performance:

Primary internal hard drive of medium size (100G maybe) for installing windows and programs like photoshop. Secondary small size hard drive (40G or less) for scratch disk. You can pick one of those up for less than $50 these days. Then your third drive for long term storage, in this case your external drive. That one can be as big as you want and need.

In practice, you copy images to your primary drive to work with, then once you're done you move them off to the external for storage.

My take home point though is that without making a SINGLE change to your setup, you could install PS7 and ABSOLUTELY FLY. That's my point and has been all along. You may be able to tweak and spend money and put together this whole computer setup that is blessed by Adobe to make CS2 function in a barely snappy way... or you can leave everything alone and simply use an older version that is still more than capable and all your speed woes go right out the door.

And don't mis-read me to say that CS2 has nothing good. I'm just saying that there isn't anything it can do that you can't live EASILY without given the overhead that you have to put up with by using it. Some people are stuck on it's RAW ability, and I do recognize that, but your camera's RAW software is probably twice as fast as CS2 and it's free. Or if you simply want the best RAW software, then look for that instead of settling for CS2. There are plenty of RAW only programs out there that the industry swears by.

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July 30, 2006

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July 31, 2006

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July 31, 2006

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July 31, 2006

I'll stay at PS7 until I can't do something and another product or version fixes that. Besides, all I've used the gallery here for is to show problem examples and comparison shots. I certainly haven't showcased any work, nor would I think I'm ready to.

My only point is that there isn't anything Photoshop CS2 can do that Photoshop 7 (or even 6 for that matter) can't do outside of things that don't need to be done for me (and many others I suspect, judging from the community forums out there).

The resolution preservation is a great idea, but I personally don't do anything that would require it. The RAW functions aren't needed, I use another program to do my RAW tasks and it wouldn't save even a second of work to use Photoshop instead.

The best work a photographer can do is when a post production program isn't used at all outside the most basic of utilities like croping or desaturating. The only exception to that would be abstract art type images or something otherwise great in minimal numbers. One wouldn't use 10 filters or several hours in Photoshop on every one of 200 wedding photos. 5 or 10 maybe sure, selective color and some creative motion blur maybe. I don't know all the tricks, but whatever they are you wouldn't do them on all 200 pictures.

I'm not saying that CS2 doesn't have anything good to it, it's got plenty of great features, I'm just saying that it certainly doesn't do anything that older versions of Photoshop don't do or can't be made to do and at 4 or 5 times the speed.

If I'm missing something, then please feel free to mention specific examples. I don't know everything and don't mean to come off that way. I'm just going by what fans of CS2 have told me and what problems support forums are filled with. I'm glad to learn.

I've spent plenty of times reading fan articles looking for a reason to use it exclusivly and have yet to find anything worth the evident pain that comes with it.

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July 31, 2006

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

Your comment makes it sound like you acomplish the same task with the same output yet charge $2000 more for it simply because you're proud of your software. That seems rather sad to me and I'm quite glad I'm not in the market for your services.

If you're saying that you cannot acomplish your good results except on the back of this version of photoshop, then I'm equally sad. Sounds like a web design shop that only hires front page users...

An acomplished artist can pick up a limestone rock and create a fair acomplishment on a cave wall given the desire. A skilled web designer/graphic artist can create a fully-functional and impressive web site given only notepad and paint. And a skilled photographer need only their eye and a shutter to make a photo that pops. The last thing has been proven even on this site plenty of times and we all are striving to be that good I would think.

A truly skilled graphic artist could acomplish their goal with the most basic of drawing tools, and have in fact been doing so since the beginning of the art. If you think that only with the latest tools is it possible to create anything of value, then I would challenge you to pick up any magazine from the 70s, or science book from the 1800's and try to write off the graphic talent showcased there while you try to understand how it was done without photoshop.

The biggest software, the fastest computer, the most toys... are no match for true skill. If one's skill only exists in some tool, then there truly is no skill at all.

And again, I don't think CS2 is worthless, it's just as good as any other version of Photoshop... but that's all it is. Problem is, it also comes with some prerequisite pain that previous versions don't.

Irene:

Sorry this has become more of a general rant against CS2. I think I pushed it that way and I should have chosen my words more carefully to stay on topic.

A couple things may be the cause behind the laptop performance. Exactly how much RAM is needed depends on how big the files you are opening are and if you are keeping lots of history states or using a lot of complex filters. Have you checked to see just how much RAM you are actually using during a normal Photoshop session? That will tell you if you are in need of more RAM.

I would suspect it's not a RAM amount issue though. It might however have to do with what else is running at the time.

Even if you don't think you have anything else running, check your system tray and your task manager and you'll find a great many things running that you may not realize. Case in point, if you are a norton antivirus user, then that right there causes a pretty hard hit on a system's performance. Overall Norton's products aren't bad, but having their antivirus running while moving large files around will result in a great many delays.

Shutting off one's antivirus is never a good suggestion, but it's the only way to find out if that's part of the problem.

If you are running a security suite by any company, and are also behind a linksys, dlink, or other firewall at home, then you are adding extra overhead to your computer that is redundant and serving little purpose.

The range of things that could be running on your computer unknown to you or known but causing more harm than good is to great to go into here.

If you'd like, I'd be happy to help you explore a little via email or maybe just in a new thread.

My suggestion though, would be to grab the closest computer person you know and spend some time cleaning out your computer so that as few things are running in the background as absolutely needed. You don't have to get rid of them forever, just see if removing them helps Photoshop run better.

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

Can we all just get along and stay on topic please?

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

*Doorbell rings*
Unsuspecting HomeOwner: Yes?
Shady: Do you know PSCS2 as you Lord and Savior?"
*Shady hands unsuspecting homeowner tract pamphlet about why PSCS2 will deliver Unsuspecting HomeOwner from Hell, Fire, and Damnation.*
*Unsuspecting Homeowner rolls eyes and slams door.*

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

I'm not saying NO post production should ever be used, nor am I saying that photos that are edited and then POP don't sell. I'm only saying that the most basic of needed editing has been around forever and CS2 brings nothing to that table. And by basic I mean color correcting, cropping, sharpening(or bluring), etc...

I'm restating here, but my bottom line is that other programs do the same work faster and there should be no excuse for CS2 being the hog that it is.

And your example could have been acomplished two other ways...

The first way would be to take the picture properly in the first place. Funny you should mention Ansel because every photo he took was as sharp as your 'after' photo and without the benefit of CS2.

The second way... Use Photoshop, 7, 6, 5... an unsharp mask with some subtle level adjustments and contrast enhancement.

As a footnote though, I'm skeptical of your example. It appears quite more likely that the 'after' photo was the original in this case and you simply blurred it to make a 'before' image. Reason I say that is because there is quite a lot of detail missing in the 'before' shot that seems to be added in the 'after' shot. No matter how good the edit, you cannot ADD detail, you can only enhance what is there already.

The size of the photo may be to blame though, but if it truly is what you say it is, then I'd put money on any photoshop user doing the same thing and getting the same results regardless of version.

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

My only issue has been that one can use Photoshop 7, or 6, or 5 even and do what was done there.

It's a nice edit, but I could replicate it very easily in any previous version of Photoshop and even several third party free editors as well.

CS2 wasn't needed to make that happen. Simple color adjustments that have been around since the dawn photography.

I don't have a problem with post production. I only have a problem with how badly CS2 pulls it off in terms of user frustration related to performance and overall drag on any system compared to previous versions.

You know the saying "No pain, no gain", I'm sure. Well CS2 is all pain and not nearly enough gain to speak of making it a prime example for diminishing returns.

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August 01, 2006

I don't need to convince Out of order that CS2 has issues. A google search will prove that without a shadow of a doubt.

Besides, the truth is the truth whether people believe it or not.

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

Sorry I took so long to respond. The purge function only eliminates clipboard files. These are copies of your working files. The purge will not erase the actual file.

Shawn:

I am in complete agreement with you that CS is more than enough for most post processing work. The value that I find in CS2 is in managing & batch processing large numbers of files. CS2 in combination with Bridge saves my portrait business many hours of work in post shooting file management and package creation. Most people do not do the type of photography that would make CS2 necessary.

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August 01, 2006

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August 01, 2006

Thanks for the input. It's always refreshing to get actual use examples.

I wonder though just how different CS2 does batch processing than previous versions. That's one of the things that I couldn't really get a feel for unless I commited to buying CS2 and just used it for a while.

I use action scripts a lot myself to add watermarks, resize, and so forth. Is it much different?

Adobe changed the default save method from version 6 to 7 and I had to remake all my scripts. That was almost enough to stick with 6. I still don't have all my actions working in 7. I've just been taking them one at a time as I need them instead of doing them all at once.

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August 01, 2006

The biggest batch processing change comes through the Bridge. You can batch process selected files from the same folder using the Bridge (file browser) without moving them into their own folder or opening each one in Photoshop or ctrl clicking on each to select.

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August 01, 2006

The funniest part of the whole deal was his first photo example of the beagle stolen from an online tutorial. Then when he got caught replacing it with 'oops, wrong pictures'.

If nothing else, I guess he's here for comic relief...

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August 02, 2006

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August 02, 2006

He's here for his own comic relief, not anyone else's.

Chris A. Vedros
www.cavphotos.com

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August 02, 2006