Ways of making Photoshop run faster

[Les McLean]

There are a number of ways to make PS run more efficiently, i.e. process images faster, in this post I'll describe those that work for me. I'll keep the explanation as clear as possible, and the methods used are applicable to all recent versions of PS and Elements (I think).

It is not a definitive or comprehensive list, and some may not work for you, alternatively you may have different but just as valid methods of achieving the same outcome.

This is not a narrative about what processor/memory/graphics card etc are best, and I hope it doesn't degenerate into a discussion (argument) regarding the merits of different systems/memory/processors/suppliers et al.

What I do hope, is that folks will contribute their methods of improving PS efficiency, and build up a body of knowledge that could be of benefit to both novice and experienced photographers.

Firstly Scratch Disk

PS Uses a portion of your hard drive as virtual memory whenever it has insufficient ram , by default this scratch disk is installed on the hard drive in which the operating system resides.

I've installed the scratch disk onto a separate internal drive to the system hard drive, and the scratch disk has exclusive use of this drive.

I achieved this by creating a partition of around 8 Gb on one of the internal drives, if you don't have a more than one drive, you could create a separate partition on the primary drive (if you have sufficient space).

It is not advised to create a scratch disk on an external USB drive.

Then in the edit-preferences menu of PS, I enabled this (partitioned) hard drive as my primary scratch disk.

I regularly defragment this partitioned hard drive.

Diagram showing the Scratch disk:

Memory Usage

By default PS allocates around 55% of RAM to PS processes. I've found that by increasing the RAM allocation to 75 %, efficiency is increased, but this is heavily dependant on the kind of system (RAM, CPU etc), how I achieved this was to increase the memory by 5 % increments and timed how long it took to open a large tiff file, run a series of filter actions. I found 75% was optimal for my set-up.

You can access memory allocation in edit-preferences.

I always have the 'Efficiency indicator' switched on, which is one of the menu options on the info palette pop-up menu (bottom left corner)

If the efficiency drops below 95% it means the scratch disk is brought into play. If it drops below 75% (or consistently below 90%) then you need to either allocate more RAM, or increase the RAM in your system.

Purge

If I find I'm carrying out a lot pf processes on an image or a series of images, the system can slow down. If I know I won't need any of the 'history' (prior adjustments) I'll purge the memory, this is activated edit...purge.
I'll only use this if I'm certain I won't need any of my previous adjustments of an image.

Bigger Tiles Plug-in (PS3 only)

The Bigger Tiles plug-in, which is located in the Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Plug-Ins\\Extensions\Bigger Tiles folder, is disabled by default. This can be enabled it by removing the tilde (~) from the file name, increasing the image tile size in Photoshop. This should only be enabled if you have more than 1 GB of RAM installed.

History states

The default history in PS is 20, that is each edit on an image is recorded (up to 20) so you can revert to that edit if needed.

I'm comfortable with the history states at the default of 20, but if you find that editing slows the system you can reduce the history states (edit...preferences) to a lower number, but you will sacrifice some opportunity to reverse editing changes.

Plug-ins

I have a number of third party plug-ins that I use, and also some I don't or rarely use, the plug-ins I rarely use I disable by putting a tilde (~) in front of the plug-in file located in the plug-ins folder.

Bridge

Generally Bridge is opened when you open PS, if you don't use bridge often, then you can prevent it opening by deselecting the 'Automatically Launch Bridge' option in the general preferences.



I don't pretend for one minute to understand all the technical detail behind PS, and how these processes work, all I've been able to do is to explain what works for me, in hopefully a clear enough language so folk can understand, also I'm aware that I could be teaching grandmother to suck eggs, and all the examples shown are being used by most, and that's fine.

 

[Jimmy_Lemon]

Helpfull stuff Les Just had a look through mine and seems I have come to pretty much the same conclusions as you for settings, I have the memory usage set upto 87% and my scratch is 100gb but apart from that.

Hope this helps a good few people

 

[krazy_horse]

Superb, very informative, didn't even think of increasing the efficiency of PS

Many thanks,

JB

 

[RobbieW]

I achieved this by creating a partition of around 8 Gb on one of the internal drives, if you don't have a more than one drive, you could create a separate partition on the primary drive (if you have sufficient space).

Les - this is puzzling me, I work in a side of IT that involves designing systems for high performance, and what you have described here doesn't make sense. If you partition a disk into several different partitions then you are still using the same spindles and heads therefore you arenot gaining any performance advantage. You may as well tell photoshop to use c:\photoshop-temp, it would give you the same performance benefits.

Rob

 

[dod]

Good stuff Les, I'll let you debate what Robbie's raising There's more tips on this on the adobe site here

 

[Les McLean]

Les - this is puzzling me, I work in a side of IT that involves designing systems for high performance, and what you have described here doesn't make sense. If you partition a disk into several different partitions then you are still using the same spindles and heads therefore you arenot gaining any performance advantage. You may as well tell photoshop to use c:\photoshop-temp, it would give you the same performance benefits.

Rob

As I mentioned, I don't begin to understand the technical details behind the above, however from Adobe's web-site :
Adobe recommends that you set the primary scratch disk to a different hard disk than the one Windows uses for its virtual memory or paging file.

As windows tends to use the primary drive for it's paging file, therefore supports the notion of a separate drive for the scratch disk, as for creating a partition on your primary drive, I remember reading somewhere that it's more efficient separating the paging file partition from the scratch disk even if they are partitions on the same drive...I'll see if I can find it.

As I've not used the method of creating a partition on the primary drive, I can't vouch for the increase in efficiency, but at least you would have a distinct partition, making it easier (and quicker) to format/delete files and defragment.

 

[dod]

sorry about this folks, I'm trying to delete dupes

That's better

 

[clicktor]

First of all, nice idea for a thread this. About time we had a thread dedicated to optimizing photoshop. Personally at the moment I can hardly critique people's methods as I am running Photoshop and the scratch on the same physical drive. However, when I next reformat my system (long overdue) I am looking to try to optimize Photoshop. I hope you don't mind me adding some questions to the mix that I would like to try to understand? I hope you don't feel they clutter the thread, it would just be good to discuss them.

1: How do you know how big a sratch disk to make?

2: What would be the difference in performance between using:

a) Photoshop AND the scratch disk both residing on the OS drive which would be a solid state drive.
b) Photoshop installed on the OS drive on a normal Sata 7200rpm drive with scratch disk on a seperate dedicated physical sata disk 7200rpm.

Or in other words, how would you best utilize an SSD (solid state drive) to boost Photoshop performance.

3:
a) Why does Adobe Photoshop use a scratch disk at all?
b) Do other Adobe produts or software generally use a "scratch disk"?
c) How do you specifically define a "scratch disk" rather than just the hard disk being written to and from?
d) Does the scratch disk comprise of a single file like a page file only for Photoshop?
e) Does say Adobe Premier use this? Why can the OS page file not be used instead like with other programs?

I think I know the answer to some of the above in question 3, but I'd like to hear others thoughts.

 

[Bobtographer]

if you're working with larger images, set your Image Cache to 8

History state uses RAM and Scratch, work smart and you shouldn't need more than say 10 history states..

1. Scratch must equal or be greater than amount of RAM allocated to it. ie 8GB RAM with 100% allocated, scratch must be 8GB or more (i've yet to use over 14GB when dealing with 4GB PS files)

2 a+b. you shouldn't put scratch on the same disk/partition as your pagefile (it gets thrashed around so will fragment), i have a load of partitions, i made my PS partition directly after my OS partition, so its on the 2nd fastest place on my drive, but with solid state, you don't need to worry about that..

i know a photoshop artist who uses 4 solid state drives in RAID 0 configuration and he says he never sees the task bar when opening a file any more (800MB-1GB files)

3 a. back in the day (1990) Mac's only had around 4-8MB of RAM later you could get more powerful machines that could handle more, so a scratch was needed to help work with those large files - when you open a file in PS you need to take the file size, say a 24bit A4 @ 300ppi = approx 17MB of RAM, multiply this by 5 and thats how much available RAM you need to work with that file at 100% efficiency.. now how are you going to work on that 17MB file when you actually need 85MB of RAM? Scratch!

3b. Nope, Bridge does build a Cache of thumbnails ***'

3c. in the performance preferences, click on the drive you want to be your scratch, then uncheck the OS drive..

3d. yes each time you fire up PS, a new scratch file is made (the old one is usually removed when you quit PS).

3e. Premiere does not use a scratch, most of the stuff you do in video editing is live, the main use of CPU and RAM is when you render the final movie. The OS pagefile is for the OS, not for anything else. And Mac OS 1-9 never used a pagefile

 

[Les McLean]

Thanks Bob

To add a bit of information.

1) I've got a scratch disk set to 10GB, and only once has it reached the full amount (PS will tell you if you run out of scratch disk), I had around 8 100mb+ tiffs open and was running various actions on each.

2) Before I got a SSD drive, my most efficient performance was as your 2(b) with the scratch disk on a separate dedicated physical sata disk.
Since I now have a SSD I have my OS (inc PS) on the main SSD partition with my scratch disk on a separate SSD partition, and things are noticeably quicker, but a lot of that is down to the increased efficiency of an SSD drive (I think)

 

[clicktor]

Since I now have a SSD I have my OS (inc PS) on the main SSD partition with my scratch disk on a separate SSD partition, and things are noticeably quicker, but a lot of that is down to the increased efficiency of an SSD drive (I think)

I would say it's ALL down to using an SSD. Using a different partition for the scratch on the same physical disk I can't really see as a benefit to performance, let alone on an SSD.

 

[noneforit]

Good guide, will help people who have issues with Photoshop

My memory is set at 60% (default) and my photoshop runs very smoothly

Dual Core 2.2Ghz and 3gb RAM

 

[Les McLean]

My memory is set at 60% (default) and my photoshop runs very smoothly

Dual Core 2.2Ghz and 3gb RAM

That's a fair comment, as it's horses for courses, I found 75% seems optimal for my system (quad core +8GB), I think it's important to adjust your own settings to get what works for your own set-up.