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On Aug 30, 2005, at 1:51 AM, Toralf Lund wrote:
... I haven't used PS much, but when people here and other places
talk about how you need gigabytes of memory to work with images as
*small* as the ones a digital camera generates...
I've had no problem working with large files (up to a couple hundred
Mbytes) using Photoshop on a Mac OS X system fitted with 512M of RAM.
it's simply a lot faster/more productive used with more RAM and a
fast hard drive.
I've not seen as much of a benefit from going greater than 1G vs
buying a faster hard drive. Or using a system with a faster
processor, for that matter.
Godfrey
Unless you frequently work with big files like me. More RAM is ALWAYS
better. And you can greatly speed up PS by doing the following:
1) Have your OS and PS on two separate drives, or at least two separate
partitions.
2) Have your scratch disks on a third drive/partition; try a Firewire
hdd - very fast.
3) Maximize RAM use in PS
4) For big stuff, I also use 'RAM DISK CREATOR' available here:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/
ramdiskcreator.html
(sorry, widoze sufferers, Mac only) which allows you to create a
temporary HDD out of RAM, so your filters, etc., work smokin' fast.
Also, saving large files to disk now operates at the speed or RAM (i.e.
nanoseconds; blink!) instead of the speed of your HDD (click
-whirr-whirrr-whirr-click-click - repeat 45 times). I always back up to
hard disk after 20 minutes or so, but this makes huge files whiz around
like they are little teeny jpegs. RAMDISK used to be a part of the MAC
OS back in like OS 7 and so on; I'm sure there are version out there
for peecees, too. But on any platform, you need lots of RAM for that.
Just for fun, one day I loaded Photoshop into a 1 gig Ram disk and ran
some filters from there - holy crap! Unbelievably fast! And my
computer's 5 years old - I'd love to see what a dual 2.7 gig Mac could
do, with dual gHz frontside busses; mine's a dual 450 mHz with 100 mHz
frontside busses.
Thanks,
Cameron
