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Best settings for Photoshop and 650m?

S

sneak3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 14, 2011
537
80
Sup folks.

I was wondering what would be the best settings for using photoshop in my mid 2012 macbook pro, which has the nvidia 650m.

I'm looking exclusevely for performance, not so much with filters but brush responsiveness.

I like having GPU processing enabled but I'm not sure if I should go with "Advanced" or "Basic" mode. There's also "Use opencl" and "use graphics to accelerate computation".

What do you guys think?
 
L

librarian

macrumors regular
Sep 24, 2011
107
3
Everything in advanced should be enabled. Brush draw performance is also tied to your RAM,scratch disk setup, and history settings.
Are you using a wacom tablet? And what MacOs version are you running?
 
S

sneak3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 14, 2011
537
80
librarian said:
Everything in advanced should be enabled. Brush draw performance is also tied to your RAM,scratch disk setup, and history settings.
Are you using a wacom tablet? And what MacOs version are you running?
Click to expand...

Yeah

- wacom tablet
- Latest Mountain Lion.
- History settings is 50 (but brush doesn't seem to lag after several strokes, if it lags, is at the first 10 strokes, not later).
- 16gb ram
- scratch disk is the SSD in which the OS is.

How about drawing mode, I can't seem to precisely tell which mode is best for me. Do you have some guidelines or recommendations regarding the use of Basic or Advanced?
 
L

librarian

macrumors regular
Sep 24, 2011
107
3
you have smoother scaling (zooming, object scaling) with normal and advanced gpu features. Alpha, Crop and Rotation will be handled by the gpu as well.
blending mode, Color Mix, Sharpen, Clone tool and advanced paint brushes are also gpu ehnanced.
You have overall better performance and the difference is noticeable on bigger files with multiple levels. This use your VRAM, all of it if possible. Performance may degrade over time if you're using multiple monitors with multiple big files open (by big files, i mean 300 dpi stuff with dozens of layers and masks).
You have the 512MB or the 1 GB 650m?
512mb of vram sometimes can be tight with main display+external, if performance degrades over time after hours of use just reboot the computer.
VRAM use between Normal and Advanced mode is around the same.
Basic mode reduces VRAM use a lot, but you will rely on CPU on most of tasks wich can be more slower for simple stuff as panning your canvas.
If you use Photoshop extensively as your primary application you should set Advanced mode.
 
S

sneak3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 14, 2011
537
80
librarian said:
you have smoother scaling (zooming, object scaling) with normal and advanced gpu features. Alpha, Crop and Rotation will be handled by the gpu as well.
blending mode, Color Mix, Sharpen, Clone tool and advanced paint brushes are also gpu ehnanced.
You have overall better performance and the difference is noticeable on bigger files with multiple levels. This use your VRAM, all of it if possible. Performance may degrade over time if you're using multiple monitors with multiple big files open (by big files, i mean 300 dpi stuff with dozens of layers and masks).
You have the 512MB or the 1 GB 650m?
512mb of vram sometimes can be tight with main display+external, if performance degrades over time after hours of use just reboot the computer.
VRAM use between Normal and Advanced mode is around the same.
Basic mode reduces VRAM use a lot, but you will rely on CPU on most of tasks wich can be more slower for simple stuff as panning your canvas.
If you use Photoshop extensively as your primary application you should set Advanced mode.
Click to expand...

Thanks man, very good explanation!

I have the 1GB 650m.

I do have an external monitor as well, which I mostly use for video playing while working with photoshop in the built-in display.

1- You think in my case Advanced mode will be the best then, 1gb vram would be enough? I mainly work with 4000x2000 canvas (not sure if it matters though).

2- Being a nvidia GPU, should I still tick "use opencl"?

3- Cache is set to 4. Makes sense?

4- Lastly, should I feel performance differences if I lower the history to, lets say, 25?
 
S

sneak3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 14, 2011
537
80
Gpulvi said:
Have you tried http://makephotoshopfaster.com?
Click to expand...

Yes I have. Unfortunately I find it very lacking. They say to set Cache to 1, but that is completely relative to how one uses photoshop, so it's not a good and general advice that will benefit everyone.

In my case for instance, it would speed the startup process but the overall responsiveness, which is one of my priorities, would suffer.
 
L

librarian

macrumors regular
Sep 24, 2011
107
3
History is RAM/HDD job, with your setup you should be fine with 50 and performance difference should be minimal when compared to 25.
Make some copies of your layers sometimes, because painting in PS is 100% dependant on your history states (wich are lost when you shut down PS).
Cache levels: the more cache levels you have the more performance you get while painting on big files but this has a cost on load, import, and save speed. I personally use 4.
OpenCL is used on some of the newer filters they added with CS6 and CC such as the Blur Gallery filter. You should leave it enabled if you use those filters for performance boost.
 
S

sneak3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 14, 2011
537
80
librarian said:
History is RAM/HDD job, with your setup you should be fine with 50 and performance difference should be minimal when compared to 25.
Make some copies of your layers sometimes, because painting in PS is 100% dependant on your history states (wich are lost when you shut down PS).
Cache levels: the more cache levels you have the more performance you get while painting on big files but this has a cost on load, import, and save speed. I personally use 4.
OpenCL is used on some of the newer filters they added with CS6 and CC such as the Blur Gallery filter. You should leave it enabled if you use those filters for performance boost.
Click to expand...

Awesome!

I was recommended to untick opencl to get more performance. But maybe the person wasn't so sure about that. Would you say that OpenCL only kicks in with filters and for the rest is completely ignored?

Aside from that, I'll tick everything else + advanced mode + cache 4 + history 50.
 
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