Problem with saving

[hampshireman]

I have Photoshop CS4 Extended, ver 11.0 on a Mini Mac and when trying to save a picture having modified it, it is taking ages to save. I get the revolving blue wheel, then the beach ball, then often the blue wheel again. Any clues please?

[snberk103]

All photos or just one in particular?

[hampshireman]

All of them, thanks

[snberk103]

Ok... going to need some more info...

Does it eventually save, so the issue is the time it takes? Or does it end up not saving at all? How big are images? How much RAM do you have? How old is the Mini? Do the images have lots of layers, or are they pretty simple? Do you tend to keep lots of programs open at the same time? Are you saving to the internal hard drive, or to a thumbdrive or another external hard drive?

What I am trying to do is to gather information to see if it may be an installation problem, or perhaps you are just really pushing the system.

Is your copy CS4 licensed? If it is, then if you need to reinstall it is not a problem. If you are using an unlicensed copy, then hopefully it is just you are pushing the system.

[hampshireman]

Thanks for this. Not a techie here so hopefully I can give you what you want. Yes it always saves - it's the time element that's the problem.

Not sure how old the Mini is, I got it 2nd hand but it's 4G memory. It has used 77 out of 119. of which 2.3 is photos. I enclose a screen shot that may help.

PShop is unlicensed.

I usually have Mail and Safari open

Some photos are fairly simple but some have maybe 3 layers. From a recent one yesterday it started out as 3.3MB and when I finished with it, it was 283KB.

I save them all to an external USB.

Very few of them are on the internal hard drive

[snberk103]

My first guess is that the slow down is due to Photoshop trying to save to a USB external drive, and not a bad installation of Photoshop (illegal perhaps, but not corrupted). The USB connection between the Mini and external HDD is slow, so it can take some time to move all those bits over the wire.

However, lets look at some other stuff just be sure.

There is an application on your system called Activity Monitor. You can find it in Applications > Utilities Or, you can just do a search for it with Spotlight... whatever you find more convenient.

One of the tabs in Activity Monitor is System Memory. There is an info panel below, with graphs and colours and stuff. We will want to see that. Also, above that, there is dynamic list of 'processes' being run. One of the column headings is called 'Real Mem' (for Real Memory). Click the column heading. This will sort that column in biggest to smallest, or vice versa. Clicking the column heading toggles between biggest or smallest at the top. We want the biggest numbers at the top.

The next time Photoshop is grinding away. Open this page of Activity Monitor, and post the screen shot. Thanks.

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With that done... now let me get preachy for a moment. Please spend the time (and money) it takes to get a licensed version of a photo editor. We, as creators of intellectual property (that is easy to steal), ask that other people respect our rights and pay us for the content we create. We should in return have the same respect for other people who create content - in this case Adobe.

There are other free or inexpensive editing programs. I hear Pixelmator recommended very highly and very often. Most non-professionals don't need the full power of Adobes's CS suite. There is the much more affordable Photoshop Elements if you need an Adobe product. Or, perhaps you qualify for an educational license - which is a phenomenal deal for the CS package.

[hampshireman]

Thank you, I am most grateful. I have been through what you suggest and found the elements you wish to see and will do as you request.

I do understand your lecture. I have a Mac guru who has helped me enormously when problems arise on the hardware etc, but he's not a P/shop man, hence my query in here. However he has all of the programmes on his office equipment and just gets me them, keeping me up to date as much as I need to be.

I doubt I could afford the original version and I realise there are others on the market, but as I was given it without a problem I feel I can stick with it. Of course I can't go to Adobe for assistance.

[hampshireman]

It seems to be OK now as I am not saving to the memory stick, but to the hard disc.

Many thanks.