Photoshop Real-world Performance Gain?

[donkeytra]

Hi all,

I've been looking into replacing my PC with a MP for print design usage for quite sometime now. I was recently playing with my co-worker's new PC w/ i7 and a 1gb video card, and with PSDs that are up to 2gbs, it gets pretty slow even with basic tasks like draging, and etc.

So, I was wondering if this this something even the mp won't help, or it could be improved? Also, what do ppl usually do to improve Photoshop performance on mp?

Thanks in advance.
Albert

 

[NathanCH]

2Gbs .psd? Jeez

I can't imagine what you could be working with that would make it 2Gbs?

 

[rhett7660]

Shouldn't it be a 2gb .psb file? Isn't that what psb files were made for. Large photoshop files?

Also, what are the files of? Photographs?

 

[bearcatrp]

How much memory does your friends computer have? Sounds like he is lacking memory and its writing to virtual memory allot.

 

[Macinposh]

Hi all,

I've been looking into replacing my PC with a MP for print design usage for quite sometime now. I was recently playing with my co-worker's new PC w/ i7 and a 1gb video card, and with PSDs that are up to 2gbs, it gets pretty slow even with basic tasks like draging, and etc.

So, I was wondering if this this something even the mp won't help, or it could be improved? Also, what do ppl usually do to improve Photoshop performance on mp?

Thanks in advance.
Albert

Sounds a bit weird. I work daily with PS with first gen mp,raid10 system,10gigs memory (ps can only use about 3-4gigs) and work with layered files around 500mb-1500mb.Pics are usually 16bit,300dpi pics with 2-30 layers.
No problems whatsoever.
The raid makes a lot of difference.


Why are you working with 2gig pics? You really need it for ultrahigh end output or what?


I would say that the top three powerbooster for PS are :


1. Keyboard shortcuts (and macros if you do repetitive stuff.). By far. Like,100.000 fold speedincrease...
2. Good drawing tablet. Saves time,is more accurate and protects you from injuries like tendonitis..
3. Raid disks.

 

[donkeytra]

This is my the first time working on such large psd as well. A client sent us a large poster psd that's close to 2GBs, and asked us to match that size, so we did. But we had to flatten layers as we went alone tho.

@bearcatrp, H

 

[donkeytra]

This is my the first time working on such large psd as well. A client sent us a large poster psd that's close to 2GBs, and asked us to match that size, so we did. But we had to flatten layers as we went alone tho.

Thanks for mentioning RAID, I will look into that!

@bearcatrp, he has 4GBs of memory.

 

[Tesselator]

You're friend is making a beginner's mistake. An image file (almost) never needs to be larger than about what the camera produces. There's some actual math behind this.

Here's a little formula for determining a nice correlation between a "good" print resolution and pixel dimensions needed to achieve it:

Print_Size_In_Inches x (PPI ÷ Viewing_Distance_In_Meters) = Pixels​

Where we assume maximum PPI = 300 and minimum Viewing_Distance_In_Meters = 1 (arm's length).

Let's plug in some variables and see what we come up with:

For an 8x10:

8 x (300÷1) = 2,400 pixels
10 x (300÷1) = 3,000 pixels​

Looks OK.

How about for an A1 (23.41"x 33.11") sized poster:

23.41 x (300÷3) = 2,341 pixels
33.11 x (300÷3) = 3,311 pixels​

Look about right to me.

And for the A1 poster your proper PPI should be 100 from the result of viewing the print from 3 meters away. Anyway this is a general rule of thumb and obviously if you intend to view an A0 poster from a meter or less away you are going to need a very big file.

The intended viewing distance is the critical factor here. If the A1 poster was to be placed in a hallway within your company's building for example, where the viewing distance might typically be 2 meters you would need a bigger file. Like:

23.41 x (300÷2) = 3,510 pixels
33.11 x (300÷2) = 4,966 pixels​

Or something pretty close to that. You can also alter the equation by assuming that 200ppi or 240ppi is the basis for "good enough" print densities.

The exception to this is when you're creating a large print that also needs to be viewed close up like a huge wall map you might view in a subway or something. And in those cases it's better to create illustrator type vector files anyway.

So that's that. But a multi-gig file in CS4 on a Mac (even the new ones) will be dog-fricking-slow and if you're graphics card is a lower memory model (like 256 MB or maybe even 512 MB) the display may even bug out on ya. This is true for both largeness caused by over-resolution and largeness caused by using many many layers. Inherently CS4 on 64-bit windows should be more robust than the current mac version of CS4 which is only 32-bit at this time.

 

[donkeytra]

@Tesselator, thanks for the equations, very helpful indeed. As for where the image will be used, it's out of our hands since the file will be passed to different branches around the globe, and ppl will use it whever they see fit.

Good point on 64bit, I guess we will all have to wait for CS5, when it's 64bit ready for osx.

 

[Macinposh]

Good point on 64bit, I guess we will all have to wait for CS5, when it's 64bit ready for osx.

Wellcome to the party,it is a bit crowded here though...
People have been waiting since the CS2 to adobe apps to become multicore/64bit aware. What,3 years? And I could almost eat my cat if the CS5 would be both. Or either...

 

[Tesselator]

Well, it's already as multi-core aware as it's likely to ever be. The way core PS routines work it just isn't possible for it to go much faster than it does. For that we need higher clocks. Whatever, for me it's fast enough. The workflow slows me up hundreds of times more than it's processing speed. I wouldn't change it much though. It's fairly well designed in support of a wide range of tasks and workflows.

It does need to be 64-bit but it's Apple's fault that it's currently not. Apple told all their developers they 64-bit system was Carbon. Then just when everyone was finishing up their code Apple said: NO! WAIT! We're going to make it Cocoa instead. Kinda lame IMO.



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[Macinposh]

Well, it's already as multi-core aware as it's likely to ever be. The way core PS routines work it just isn't possible for it to go much faster than it does.

As sad as it is,it might be so. But it has little to do with coding and a lot to do with adobes laziness. Still,after theese years many filters and processes are still single core... Ok,to be truthfull,apparently it is hard to code some of that kind tasks to multicores. In some rare cases it might be even slower.
The creative suites would have to be written totally new and at the moment adobe does not see it profitable-vs-performance gains to do so.
Maybe in the future.

Whatever, for me it's fast enough. The workflow slows me up hundreds of times more than it's processing speed. I wouldn't change it much though. It's fairly well designed in support of a wide range of tasks and workflows.

I am happy for you!
For me the ps is "fast" enough for maybe 60% of the work I do.Magazine sized pics with layers.
But it is too slow when things get big,ad´s and stuff with multiple layers and big files to start with. Files of 1gig-2gig are not uncommon.
Then you apply lens blur to some of the 20 layers and go do something else for the next 5 minutes. Knowing all the time that the ps is barely using one core to the processing...

It does need to be 64-bit but it's Apple's fault that it's currently not. Apple told all their developers they 64-bit system was Carbon. Then just when everyone was finishing up their code Apple said: NO! WAIT! We're going to make it Cocoa instead. Kinda lame IMO.

Well,there is allso two versions of that. The other is that apple had said loud and clearly before the intel transition what the future will look like. Adobe ignored that part and got caught with their pants down...That was about 4 years ago...

 

[Tesselator]

Shouldn't it be a 2gb .psb file? Isn't that what psb files were made for. Large photoshop files?

No.

File size has little or nothing to do with it. Image size does however.

PSD is for pixel dimensions 30K x 30K and under.
PSB is for pixel dimensions from 30K to 300K.

The TIFF format has a file size limitation of 4GB but no pixel dimension limits. So, if you have a very large image that you need to use with a program other than Photoshop, use TIFF. TIFF supports the maximum image dimensions allowed by Photoshop and file sizes as large as 4GB.

 

[Tesselator]

Well,there is allso two versions of that. The other is that apple had said loud and clearly before the intel transition what the future will look like. Adobe ignored that part and got caught with their pants down...That was about 4 years ago...

Well, I was working for a very large graphics company during the time Apple was making all these moves. I read all of the developer communication statements and roadmaps. Adobe has zero fault in this. It's ALL 100% on Apple here. They changed it mid-stream on everyone! So really it's Apple who pulled Adobe's pants down for them. And all Apple had to say for themselves was: "Oops!".


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