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Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended White Paper
Photoshop, if they were fragmented when initially installed. The efficiency of scratch disks is also degraded if
the space used for virtual memory is fragmented. You can achieve real performance gains by regularly
defragmenting the drives you use for scratch disks, image storage, and application loading.
Both Windows and Mac operating systems have defragmentation utilities built in. Consult your computer’s
Help files to ensure that utilities are activated and, if need be, perform a manual defragmentation of all drives
to ensure their continued performance.
5. Minimize History States
The ability to jump backward and forward through the editing steps
stored in the History panel in Photoshop is a very useful feature.
Photoshop implements this feature by storing additional copies, called
History States, of the image on your hard drive.
A full copy at the original size is stored for every operation you perform
that affects the entire image. Smaller changes, like individual paint
strokes, require less information per state. The more editing you do, the
more hard-drive space will be used for the History States of the
document. The History States setting in the Performance panel is set to
a default of 20 but can be adjusted from 1 to 1,000, depending on the
amount of scratch disk space available and the complexity of your normal image-editing work. If you find that
Photoshop is running slowly after you’ve made a few editing changes, then try reducing the number of states.
Fewer History States does mean less opportunity to reverse editing changes, but this action frees up memory
resources and can bring new life back to a slow-running machine.
6. Avoid “Out of RAM” errors when running memory-intensive features
Some Photoshop features, such as Content-Aware Scaling, 3D, and Liquify and filters such as the Distort filters
are more memory-intensive than others. If when you’re working with these features, Photoshop starts to
respond slowly, doesn’t respond, or returns “Out of Memory” or “Out of RAM” errors, then increase the
amount of RAM and scratch disk space and close any other programs running at the same time as Photoshop. If
the problem persists, then switch to a 64–bit system with more available RAM and scratch disk space.
7. Reduce the number of open files
The more pictures you have open in Photoshop, the more resources your machine is using just to maintain
each open file. To speed up processing, make sure that you open (and keep open) only files that are essential
for your current editing task.
8. Clear all available memory: Purge Undo, Clipboard, or Histories
The Edit > Purge command can be used to free up RAM space that is
being used to store Undo, Clipboard, and Histories entries. Since this
command cannot be undone, it should be your last resort when you
need to eliminate an “Out of RAM” error during a memory-intensive
task.
9. Run Photoshop by itself
A simple way to speed up Photoshop is to make sure that no other programs or utilities are running at the
same time. After closing unnecessary programs, use your operating system tools to determine which utilities
are still running hidden in the background. The golden rule is that if the program or utility is not essential for
the editing task, then close the software.
This is especially true if you are using features that rely heavily on the GPU (mainly 3D). Having another
application that also relies on the GPU and VRAM open while using these GPU features in Photoshop CS5 will
significantly degrade overall performance.
UsetheEdit>Purgecommandtoremove
informationcurrentlybeingstoredinmemory.
enumberofHistoryStatesusedbyPhotoshop
canbealteredviatheHistoryStatesseingin
the Performance section of the Preferences
dialogbox.