Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Morse" <willym@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 9:38 AM
Subject: [Digital BW] Photoshop efficiency- was: Re: 4x5 Neg Scan Resolution


> Hi Martin-
>
> That does not really conform with my experience with PS- albeit on a
Mac...
> (but let's not go there! ;^)

Bill,

We certainly don't need a platform war! <G>
>
> With the operations that you feel are slowing down, what does the
> "efficiency" box tell you is going on?  The scratch disk utilization
numbers
> are only numbers- they don't directly tell you whether PS is slowing down
or
> not.

The slow down is that the scratch disk is being used too much rather than
RAM. Obviously if I have 1.5GB of RAM and a 1.6GB file there is no choice.
Even with a 500MB the 1.5GB of RAM is less than Adobe's RAM recommendation
of 5 to 7 times file size.
>
> If the efficiency goes down, then there is a problem, presumably with your
> Windows memory settings.

The problem is that Adobe does not appear to adhere to Window memory
management conventions. Have done some trials setting up multiple Pagefiles
in Windows providing up to 8GB of virtual memory on top of the physical RAM
and PS simply ignores it sending stuff off to the scratch disk for no good
reason. PS appears to be unaware of how much memory Windows is making
available to it.
>
> On a Mac, PS can't use more than 1 Gig anyway, so I use 350 MB of ram as a
> ram scratch disk; makes a big difference with 500 MB files.

I can get PS to use up to 1.5GB under Windows but only if 5 times the file
size or ~300MB fits within that. When I open a file PS takes over RAM
roughly equal to 5 times the file size just to start. Beyond 250 to 300MB PS
will momentarily use all of the available memory and than it is off to the
scratch disk with the data and PS is using less memory with the larger file
than the smaller one. It appears to like to use a maximum of about 1GB even
though more is available. While there is not a strict limit, it seems to
mimic the 1GB Mac limitation.   The RAM disk is an excellent idea however
and makes the new PC mother boards that will take up to 3GB or 4GB of RAM
more interesting. 1.5GB for PS and a 2GB RAM Scratch disk might be a real
screamer. I will try creating a 500MB RAM disk as the primary scratch disk
leaving PS with 800 to 900MB of RAM and see what I get.

Thanks,
Martin

>
> on 9/20/02 11:25 AM, Martin Wesley wrote:
>
> > One of the problems is that PS seems to basically have an antiquated
memory
> > management system that does not mesh well with OS memory management.
Even
> > with 1.5+GB of RAM PS will preferentially spool data out of memory to
disk.
> > It is not uncommon to open a large file and have it all go into RAM but
at
> > the first action PS spools it to disk and only uses a fraction of
available
> > RAM.
>
>
>
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