Photoshop Hints & Tips

Posted : 13 Aug 2001

Just some helpful tips for Adobe Photoshop to reduce crashing and improve performance. I have had a few people recently ask me for on help with their Photoshop problems. Here is what I came up with and being such a great guy I thought I would share it with everyone. Thanks to all those who helped me directly or indirectly with all this information (you know who you are !)

I'm assuming here that you have a recent model Power Mac (G3, G4, iMac, Cube, iBook). These settings may not apply to older systems, especially to 68K (non Power PC) Macs. Some of the information does apply to PC's also but you need to be a bit selective.

To give you an idea of how much faster the latest G4's are - I have a client who was opening 600-800Mb files on an 8500/180. These would take around 20 minutes just to open, let alone work on. On his G4/500 with lots of RAM they opened in less than 30 seconds ! Just a slight productivity improvement.

And RAM is so cheap at the moment that if you don't have at least 512Mb on a serious G4 Photoshop Mac then you are really short changing yourself.

If you are having any problems with Adobe Photoshop you may wish to try the following.

Versions :
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Most recent versions are as follows :
7.0
6.01
5.5
5.02
4.01

If you are running a machine with a G4 processor, then you really need to be using version 5.5, 6.0x or 7.0x These latest versions provide direct support for the Altivec portion of the G4 processor which can give up to 500% performance improvement. Worth having I think !

Whatever major version you are running you should ensure that you have the latest for that version. Updates can be found at :

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/psmac.htm

Make sure that you only get the international or English version ! Gets a bit hard to work the menus when they are all in Korean ...

Before you start you must have a good copy of Photoshop. Trash your old one, reinstall a new one and update it as required. Be careful with colorsynch if you are running a calibrated monitor. Reloading Photoshop may change or update your version of colorsynch, which may change your calibration settings. Run Norton Disk Doctor, Norton Speed Disk (to defragment), anti virus program and Apple Disk First Aid. You want heaps of free, unfragmented space on your drive when using Photoshop - at least 2Gb if working with big files (greater than 100Mb). If you are having lots of problems in general and not just with Photoshop you may wish to reinstall your system too. But that is another topic.

How Much RAM?
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Work out total RAM (from the Apple menu when in the Finder), take away the amount used by the system software (anywhere from 20-60Mb), take away also say 20-50Mb of spare space for everything to work and what you have left is the maximum available for programs to use. You can allocate Photoshop up to this amount of RAM.

Example.
RAM on Mac is 400Mb
System software uses 50Mb
Leave 30Mb free for the system to do hidden behind the scenes tasks
This gives 320Mb available for programs (ie. Photoshop)

Pls note that if you are using other programs in addition to Photoshop in any given session you cannot allocate all the available RAM to Photoshop.

General Trouble Shooting Checklist
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1) Turn off file sharing

2) Turn off AppleTalk (not just file sharing but all networking completely). You wont be able to access your network while this is off)

3) Start with extensions off. Only run Photoshop. This will give you no network, no printing, no nothing. But if Photoshop runs reliably then at least it establishes the problem isn't with the program.

4) Goto extensions manager and run only Mac OS extensions. Try both the base and all options. This establishes whether it is a non apple extension(s) causing the problem.

5) Lots of times it can be fonts. Disable your font manager. Temporarily anyway.

6) Check that any non adobe (and even adobe) plug-ins are recent versions and will work correctly with your version of Photoshop

7) Photoshop 6 or 7 may be better. Try these latest releases ...

The (In)Famous Invisible "Photoshop Temp" Files
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Various versions of Photoshop can leave lots of undeleted and invisible files on your hard disk. Do a search with Sherlock for "photoshop temp". Put all these files in the trash directly from sherlock. If you have never done this it is quite important as these files might be taking up a LOT of space on your hard disk. I have seen cases where over 10Gb of files were sitting there taking up valuable disk space. Make sure that you check all drives on your Mac. Supposedly version 6 finally fixes this problem by storing these temp files in the trash.

Photoshop gives best performance when :
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a) RAM allocated is 3-5 times the size of file being opened. JPEG files being compressed may need more. Check on the size of the file in photoshop AFTER it is opened. If you are always working on large file (greater than 100Mb then you need lots of RAM)
b) Virtual memory is turned off
c) The allocated scratch disk is large, fast, has lots of free space and is unfragmented
d) Only 1 file at a time is open
e) Raise and lower the disk cache setting in control panels/memory. This should have little effect but you never know. Try between the minimum (1024K) and up to around 8000K
f) Lots of free space on your hard disk (apart from your scratch disk)

A Mac's performance is primarily determined by :
----------------------------------
a) The processor (and the newer and faster the better)
b) A big, fast, unfragmented hard disk
c) A fast, new graphics card (current top of the heap is the GeForce 3 from NVidia)
d) Lots of RAM (at least for Photoshop)
e) You (the more you know the better)
There are lots of other factors - cache, motherboard design, extensions loaded, computer configuration, etc but the above ones a) to e) are the most important.

Scratch Disk
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Best way is to have a large enough disk to have a separate partition for it. Around 5Gb is good. This makes it easier to defragment and delete any unwanted files. If you don't have a separate partition then try to keep your hard disk as empty and as unfragmented as possible.

Isolating Problems
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Basically the aim of the above is to try and isolate the problem (if you are having a problem that is). Is the problem caused by :
Photoshop
The system software
Font manager
Corrupt fonts
Conflict with Photoshop and some other program
File sharing
Networking
etc