On 30/10/03, [EMAIL PROTECTED] disgorged: >I have been using PictureIt for my photoediting so far. >Now I am thinking of moving to Photoshop 7. >What is the memory requirement for it ? My current machine has Windows ME >with 256 MB of ram. >I am planning to have it upgraded to 512 - that is the maximum that old >machine can accommodate. >Do I have to move to other machine for memory or 512 MB would be enough ? >Other point is I am not professional photographer, however, like to play >with these tools. >Would PhotoShop Elements be suffiient ?
Photoshop is memory hungry. It will take everything you can throw at it and still want more. If you have insufficient RAM, it will simply slow down, sometimes to a crawl... A professional Photoshop station will typically comprise a fast dual- proccessor rig running Mac OS X or Windows XP with *at least* 1 GB of RAM, usually at least 2 GB. It will have at least 2 internal hard drives, at least one of which will be designated as Photoshop Scratch Disks (these are areas of memory dedicated just to Photoshop and nothing else), and probably an external portable hard drive as backup. Two top-of-the- range CRT monitors, (one for palettes one for work space), a nice big pen-based drawing tablet and any other goodies. Note that this computer setup will have few other apps on it - maybe Illustrator or Freehand, maybe web apps. No clutter. Oh I wish. I run OS X on a PowerMac G3 400Mhz with 1 GB and 2 internal drives: a 27 GB and a 6GB. The latter is solely a Scratch Disk. The only apps on it are photo or web-related. It's nowhere near a speed freak G5 super hog but it works well and applying (say) a Gaussian Blur filter to a 50 MB file takes 7 seconds. Only a few years ago that could well have been 7 minutes! It holds up well in this day and age. As a *very* rough guide, a home user can get away with 256MB and forget all the rest. With 512MB you will be better off - but make sure you have lots of free space on your hard drive - ideally partition it and give Photoshop a couple of gigs as a Scratch Disk. If you have one pic open - say an 18MB *ist D file or whatever, optimising and prepping for printing, you will have no problems. Try opening a few 50MB monsters though, swapping between them and there's only one word that springs to mind: treacle. Consider 'Elements', as the cost saving is considerable and the loss of features compared to PS7 will perhaps not become obvious until you are an experienced user. Better to spend money on a good book - or even better, a Photoshop workshop with hands-on tuition. HTH and good luck Anand. Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=====| www.macads.co.uk/snaps _____________________________ Free UK Mac Ads www.macads.co.uk
