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I live in a camper van with a West Highland Terrier for company.
My passion is creating images but it is a work in progress.
I am always willing to share what knowledge I have and can be contacted through the comments on this post or e-mail ADRIAN
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Monday 18 May 2009

Two Water Troughs

Photoshop

Improving Performance in Windows Vista

This is not a tutorial my object is to get some information and general feedback about a subject I’m a touch hazy on. I don’t have Photoshop but use Elements 7. Hopefully this will change as after a couple of years with Elements I feel that the tools in CS 3/4 warrant the expenditure. If only for their entertainment value.

The problem is waiting; the following are the steps I’ve taken to reduce it. The solutions can be divided into two separate areas. The first are the settings in Photoshop itself and the second optimising Windows Vista. So here goes.

Open Elements/Organiser and go to Edit.

Down at the bottom you will find Preferences click on it and select Editor Preferences then select Performance

When the box opens up you will see an option that allows you to apportion more RAM to Photoshop I gave it about 70%. Much more and I suspect you would have problems with the operating system.

Next go to history, I dropped this to 20, I edit non-destructively so it’s quicker to just delete a layer in the layers pallet. Plus I’d never remember what I did ten key strokes ago never mind fifty or whatever the default setting is. Fifty Ctrl+Z’s, the mind boggles!

Proceed to Cache and I went for broke here, ‘The full Monty’. As far as I understand things this speeds up redraws, histograms and such matters. Must be good then!

Nearly done, the last option is to designate a Scratch Disc, I’m lucky I have an empty Data disk which I have allocated for this. As I understand things, when Photoshop runs out of Ram it uses Hard Drive memory as a sort of stop gap. It doesn’t seem a particularly bright idea to have it running to Drive C or whatever drive windows is installed on. If you can’t avail yourself of this luxury I can see no good reason not to buy an external Hard Drive plug it in and designate that as your scratch disc. You don't need much about the same as the RAM you've got. So if you can partition it (see below) you will get a back up drive as well for a few pounds.

All done, restart Photoshop and things should be better. I assume you have to restart it. One does if you install plug in filters.

Speed up Vista

If you are a graphics fan ignore this as it will turn your computer into a pretty drab environment.

Go to Computer (used to be My Computer) Click System Properties, select Advanced, go to Visual Effect Performance and hit the radio button Adjust for best performance. Don’t panic... 'Cpt. Mainwaring'... everything goes a mucky black and white and a crude sign says please wait. No expense spared here then! Do as you’re told and all will come back on but without 3D effect, with simple icons, no fade or swirly bits it must speed things up. I tried it but as I like things pretty restored settings to Let Windows Decide.

Try stitching a panorama. It seems to work faster.  I haven’t actually timed the same stitch before and after. I’m not quite that bored, you never know, if I don’t get away soon the stop watch may well be employed!

There is a further stage and that is repartitioning your Hard Drive, looks a bit dodgy to me! So have left this one till I have either an old computer or somebody elses to try it on. The simplest article I found is here

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