Photoshop Pros in here > seperate scratch disk?

[robins2001]

hi there, i am a user of photoshop/illustrator etc

i heard that if the scratch disk is set on a different harddrive to what the os/photoshop is on then things generally run smoother, is this true?

my mac has an 80gb main drive but i am considering getting a 40gb for the scratch disk and for general extra storage...is it worth it?

cheers

 

[virividox]

you only notice the scartch drive if you do serious photo editing on large files. if you arent that serious then you probably don't need it. but if you got the cash and are thinking of really taking ur photoshop to the pro level then by all means get another hard drive, but remember if ur initial hd is slow then it doesnt matter if ur new hd is fast cuz the data still has to go from ur old hd to the new one

 

[Mr. Anderson]

Basically that's the rule - although if the disk that has the PS app starts to fill up - it will take a lot less to cause problems. Just make sure you have about 2x the amount of disk space available than the image you're editing.

And watch out with layers - you start adding them on and you can really increase the PS image size.

D

 

[neut]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
And watch out with layers - you start adding them on and you can really increase the PS image size.

D

... but layers are the only way to work in photoshop.

****

robins2001: you won't need a scratch disk unless your doing print work (ie. files with 150+ ppi). and even then not until your canvas is larger than 'letter'. RAM is more important, but a scratch disk can make things smoother with large files (with 300ppi files at 'tabloid' it can get to 1G+ in no time!!! ...well, depends on how intense you like to get ).


peace.

 

[robins2001]

thanks for all the info

most of the stuff i do in photoshop is for print..

the machine has 1gb of ram so do u think that will cover me?unless i start doing large files of say 1gb in photoshop

say i bought another harddrive just for storage alone...would it be better to set that as my scratch disk anyway, as long as its the same speed as my primary drive?

 

[neut]

Originally posted by robins2001
the machine has 1gb of ram so do u think that will cover me?unless i start doing large files of say 1gb in photoshop

well, your OS taking up RAM too, so are any running progs, and background services...so i think you'll typically have less than 1G free RAM, but you should be ok for the most part.

Originally posted by robins2001
say i bought another harddrive just for storage alone...would it be better to set that as my scratch disk anyway, as long as its the same speed as my primary drive?

yes, regardless of speed, it couldn't hurt. just set it as the secondary scratch disk if it is a slower drive or if it's not always online.


peace.

 

[Viv]

Twice the file size in ram was all ways the advice I used to give.

As soon as you make an edit to the document a temp file is made to allow you to do an Undo.

It has to live somewere and ram used to cost more than the Mac so scratch disk was used.

As the drives were slow and the bus it was on was not too quick ether we used to try and make sure it was on a seperate disk/bus to speed things up.

But the Macs came with a 500Mb drive then! now you have 1Gb of ram! so the file will stay there until you hit a file size of about 400Mb (2x400+800 still leaves 200 for the system).

Chuck another 500Mb of ram in if you are concerned (1.5 total) as that will allways be a quicker option.

Scratch disk speed and ram speed is like comparing a car and a jet fighter! so more ram more speed.

Viv

 

[neut]

Originally posted by Viv
Scratch disk speed and ram speed is like comparing a car and a jet fighter! so more ram more speed.

Viv

damn! you fixed you analogy just as i went to make a smart ass remark... oh, well.


peace.

 

[evoluzione]

ideally you want a disk solely for a scratch, this will help it stay at optimum speeds, the more stuff you put on there, and the more you delete stuff, the more it fragments, and slows the disk reading/writing down.

as Mr. A said, try and leave at least 2x the space but i think it's actually 3x the image that photoshop uses, what with all the undos and stuff. regardless, it's worth having a dedicated scratch disk after you've maxed out on RAM.

 

[Viv]

Originally posted by neut
damn! you fixed you analogy just as i went to make a smart ass remark... oh, well.


peace.

You know I posted it then proofed it, and I just had this funny feeling that I had better sort that last line out

Lucky for me that I did

Viv