23/03/2016 10SimpleStepstoBetterPhotoshopPerformanceSmashingMagazine

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10 Simple Steps to Be er Photoshop

Performance
ByGuestAuthor

Published on August 13th, 2009 in Performance, Photoshop, Tutorials 98 Comments

with

by Marco Sousa

Before getting started with Photoshop, we all should have rst visited the Edit >
Preferences menu and change the Performance settings to t our personal taste
and computer specications, but this isnt always the case in many situations
designers simply forget these aspects.

If you never changed the default performance settings in your Photoshop or you just
want to double check them to improve the Photoshop performance, here are 10
important and useful points that you may want to consider.

1. Adjust e Number Of History States

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Maybe you already went through that bad feeling of clicking undo dozens of times
and realizing that Photoshop wouldnt provide you with more previous steps, but this
problem can be easily resolved by changing the History States setting in the Edit >
Preferences > Performance menu.

There are more ecient ways of going back and forward in your projects like using
the Snapshots feature, which are essentially comfortable checkpoints of your work
that you can go back to. But if you use Undo a lot, you may want to consider adding
more states, e.g. set them to 30. However, be aware that too many states on a
single image will usually result in History Palette literally eating RAM and if you
work with less than 2GB of RAM, you probably shouldnt using the Undo Feature that
often!

Overall, you may add up to 1,000 history state levels in Photoshop.

2. How Many Cache Levels Do You Need?

The Cache Levels setting can be found inside the Edit > Preferences > Performance
menu, right under the History States. It controls the histogram and the time it takes an
image to reappear on the screen after an action is applied to it.

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By default, there are 6 cache levels; the number of levels can be increased to the
maximum of 8 which will obviously increase the rendering speed. It is particular
eective when you are working with high-resolution images. When workin with
smaller view-sizes, e.g. viewing an image at 50% Zoom, the cache levels will
determine the number of down samplings allowing Photoshop to perform
operations faster.

Photoshop uses Image Caching and if you have a good amount of RAM, like at least
2GB and work with high-resolution images, you might want to raise the level to 8 as
the speed performance will compensate the memory loss, but if you have a low RAM
amount and usually work with small images only (1-4MB), you may want to lower the
value to 1 or 2 as the RAM will be better allocated storing the images rather then
caching them.

3. Keep An Eye On Your Memory Usage

Photoshop really likes RAM and will use every little bit it can grab, but it also allows
you to limit the RAM resources of your computer that Photoshop will use, and it
even gives you good suggestions for the appropriate range of RAM values it wants.
This setting, of course, can be found inside the Edit > Preferences > Performance
menu, on the Left Side.

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The displayed available RAM is the value left for applications after the Operating
System loads into memory. If you are going to use mostly only Photoshop, or if you
have a low amount of memory, you will probably want to give it 75-80% of the
available RAM. But if, on the other hand, you are more of a multi-task kind of person
with browser, word processor, mail, Twitter client etc. being always opened, then you
might want to limit Photoshop to around 50%.

EFFICIENT USE OF MEMORY

After setting up your memory values, you can keep an eye on how Photoshop is
performing. At the base of your image window, click to the right of the document size
information and you will be able to choose Eciency which will show you a
percentage value. If this value is not 100%, it indicates that if you allocate more RAM
to Photoshop, the operations would perform faster. Closing applications or images
that you are not using can also increase the eciency not exactly a secret, but
worth mentioning nevertheless.

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4. Use Proper Scratch Disks

Similar to what happened with RAM, Photoshop also uses a good amount of your
hard drive space as the so-called scrath disk which works as the secondary
memory resource. Photoshop assumes that your primary hard drive is its scratch
disk, but you can set it up dierently with a secondary internal or external hard
drive.

If you are going to work with large images, it is recommended that you have a
dedicated scratch disk that is dierent from the one containing the image le. Using
dierent scratch disks is good, especially to avoid killing your primary boot drive
when you have just a few gigabytes left.

5. Turn Font Preview O

Photoshop users (and especially designers) like to have a good selection of fonts
always installed and ready to be used; but when the font preview is active, having too
many fonts can slow you down. Turning the font preview feature o can be a simple
and instant step towards improving your Photoshop performance. To do so, simply go
to the Edit > Preferences > Type menu and remove the check mark from the Font
Preview Size option, just as it is shown in the picture above.

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6. Use umbnails In Your Pale es

Displaying preview thumbnails in the Layers, Channels, and Paths palettes will cause
Photoshop to consume some more of your RAM as it will be constantly updating the
thumbnails to reect the changes you will be doing in your project. The memory
consumption will keep growing with the amount of thumbnails you have opened at
the same time as well as their size.

You could use the smaller thumbnail size or no thumbnail at all to increase your
Photoshop performance. To do so, in each palette, select panel options from the
palette menu as it is shown on the picture above and select the smallest thumbnail
size or None.

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7. Learn How To Use Purge

When you are working on your images, Photoshop stores image data for the Undo,
Clipboard, and History features. This data consumes memory, especially if you have
been working for a while and have a high number of History States dened (see Point
1 for more on History States).

To eliminate that extra image data consuming your RAM, go to: Edit > Purge > (
option ). Keep in mind that clearing History will remove all the history states saved
previously and you will not be able to undo your latest actions.

8. Set Maximize PSD And PSB File Compatibility to

Always or Ask
Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility increases the size of your le by attaching a
attened copy of your image when you save your image. A small amount of extra
data is included in the le when you choose this option that ensures that PSD and
PBS les saved in Photoshop will open in previous versions.

Additionally, if you want to use the Edit in Photoshop feature in Photoshop Lightroom,
this option needs to be on. To change the Maximize File Compatibility option choose
Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling.

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9. Dont clu er your Photoshop

Of course, you can easily nd an enormous amount of free stu to add up to the
default Photoshop brushes, fonts, patterns, etc. but that doesnt mean you need to
download every freebie that comes in your way. Keep it simple! Having too many
plugins and other resources installed in Photoshop will greatly decrease
performance. Most top designers use a small selection of fonts and brushes that
dene their style and that can be used in a great amount of ways for literally millions
of dierent results.

10. Reset Default Se ings

If you are using a shared machine for your Photoshop needs there is a little
Photoshop start-up trick that may come in handy. When the application is launching,
if you press and hold: Alt + Control + Shift (Windows) or Command + Option + Shift
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(Mac), a window will pop up asking you if you want to delete the Photoshop settings
le, resetting all of the preferences to their default.

Further Resources
Optimize performance of Photoshop CS4 on Windows XP and Vista1
Optimize performance in Photoshop CS4 on Mac OS2

Top 10 Killer Photoshop Combo Moves3

Is time kickin your ass? Well, learn to defend yourself! Master these killer
Photoshop keyboard combos and youll nd yourself with more time for the
important things (e.g. Facebook trivia questions). These combos assume
youre using Photoshop CS3 on Windows platform with default keyboard
shortcuts.
Professional Tips for Improving Photoshops Performance4
In this tutorial, youll take a look at the Photoshop Preferences to increase your
Performance. Depending on the Photoshop version, features for working with
3D imagery, motion-based content, and advanced image analysis, greatly
increase the requirements of both graphics and hardware.
20 Time-Saving Tips to Improve Designers Workow5
Want to save some time? Of course you do! You are probably always looking
for ways to do this faster and make that easier, its human nature! One of the
best ways to save time is experience. So always stay hard at what you do and
you will denitely save more than just time!

A B O U T T H E AU T H O R

Marco Sousa is a blogger, computer engineer student and webdesign enthusiast. He

is also one of the co-founders of Scarletbits.com6 , a blog dedicated to high quality
freebies, news, tips and tutorials for the web design community.

FOOTNOTES

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1 http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404439.html

2 http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404440.html

3 https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/13/top-10-killer-photoshop-combo-
moves/
4 http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-tips/professional-tips-for-improving-
photoshops-performance/

5 https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/26/20-time-saving-tips-to-
improve-designers-workow-part-1/

6 http://scarletbits.com

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