Hello everyone,
this is a follow up on the previous articles that try to explain how to make sure Photoshop runs smoothly on your computer, how to speed it up.
Today, we’ll move on to Part 3 of the process of improving the performance of Photoshop – Best Practices for working in Photoshop.
Let’s start:
File sizes and their limitations:
The larger the files you’re working with, the weaker the performance of Photoshop may get. You probably don’t have to worry about the pixel dimensions of your files as Photoshop supports files up to 300,000 x 300,000 px (PDF files are limited to 30,000 x 30,000 px). In terms of files sizes, Photoshop can work with PSD files of up to 2GB and TIFF files of up to 4GB. And if you use PSB files, they can be up to 4 exabytes(!) – that’s a 4 million terrabytes!
Efficiency Indicator
When I work in Photoshop, I keep an eye on the Efficiency Indicator that can be found at the bottom of the image window:
The screenshot also shows how to access it. This Indicator determines whether Photoshop started using the scratch disk or not yet. If the Efficiency Indicator shows less than 100%, Photoshop started using the Scratch Disk and it starts slowing down. If the Indicator goes below 90%, allocate more RAM to Photoshop in Preferences (more in the post here – Optimizing Performance in Photoshop – Part 2). Alternatively, purchase more RAM.
Close the Documents you don’t use
Photoshop uses a lot of RAM for all the images you have open so if you don’t use an image, close it. If you have too many images open, you may see the error message saying “Out of RAM”. Photoshop may also slow down.
Minimize or turn off panel preview thumbnails
Photoshop uses memory to display preview thumbnails in Channels, Layers and Paths Panels.
The more thumbnails Photoshop needs to render and the bigger the thumbnails, the more memory Photoshop uses. If you want to minimize or disable thumbnails, navigate to the panels options menu and choose Panel Options.
In the Panel Options dialog box, you can select smaller thumbnails or select None.
And that’s all for today. More information tomorrow in the last part of the Series. Enjoy! 🙂
