Win XP Pro + PS CS + Scratch Size

RE
Posted By
Rainer_Ehlert
Feb 27, 2004
Views
726
Replies
16
Status
Closed
Hi,

I made an extensive search here in the Photoshop folder but did not find any info about my question, which is:

I have a Strange behaviour which I never had with PS 7.0.1.

I have allocated about 90% of my RAM 1.5GB to CS. I open the programm and open an image. Immediately CS tells me that, according to the file size eg. 101MB, that 974MB are already used. Here PS 7.0 only says 178MB are used.

Now I begin to work on the image and of course as it should be the scratch size increases and when having reached 1.27GB of course as it should be begins to use my harddrive (external 120GB Iomega Firewire).

Now comes the strange thing.

I open a 77KB, YES 77.000byte JPG image, and CS tells me immediately that from the 1.27GB 594MB, Yes 584 Megabyte are used, for a ridiculous 77KB JPG image?

There must be something wrong or has it to do something with the vcache of WIN XP PRO.

I never had this behaviour with PS 7.0.1.

What is wrong in my setup?

regards Rainer
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CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 28, 2004
That is correct.

Where are you looking at the image size?

Also recall that JPEG is a lossy compressed format – the document size in memory will be much larger than the size on disk.
RE
Rainer_Ehlert
Feb 28, 2004
Hi Chris,

I did take a look at the browsers info. OK I just checked it. It goes up to 1.2MB when looking at image size, but even so.

But did you carefully read my post? In PS 7 a 100MB files occupies at first opening about 170MB, OK? The same file (image) at first opening uses what I said above, OK?

Why does CS need for a ridiculous 1.2Megabyte more than 500MB at first opening?

This is 416.7 times the file size.

I regret having spent the money for buying CS, after the fact that 7.0 was working so well. The reason was I need the 16bit layer possibility, but if I would have known that memory problem I would have better spent my money somewhere else.

This is not normal. More than 500,000,000byte RAM for a file of 1,200,000. Absolutely inimaginable.

That is what happens when one believes the people of a Marketing Department. This is the second time Adobe fools me.

regards Rainer
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 28, 2004
Yes, I looked at what you said.

And the number will depend a lot on what you’re actually looking at – the document size in memory, the scratch usage, etc.

And the size changed probably because CS can use larger VM tiles for better performance. And if you’re looking at the scratch number, then the larger tiles plus nested layer sets and other changes require a larger initial scratch allocation.

Yes, it sounds quite normal and easily explainable.
RE
Rainer_Ehlert
Feb 28, 2004
Sorry, but CS is not even faster than 7.0.1 working the same files.

So what?

I already tried with vcache and also does not help.

Now that I upgraded also to XP from 98se and bought another 512MB RAM I thought I would need a safety belt on my office chair because of speed and what happened I stepped down from a Ferrari to a Fiat Cinquecento :-))

OK, software programmers do whatever you want with your customers.

It allocates 500 and something MB for I do not know what and the first image processing also increases scratch size and after 3-4 processings, having 1.27GB of RAM begins to use the Harddrive???

Well. It resembles every time more end more like Microsoft.

regards Rainer
L
LenHewitt
Feb 28, 2004
Rainer,

I have allocated about 90% of my RAM <<

You may well find that a RAM allocation of 50% will give you better performance
BP
Brian_Peart
Feb 28, 2004
Len,

You may well find that a RAM allocation of 50% will give you better performance<<

Really? I remember being chastised for setting Ram allocation to 72% in my thread "CS uses HUGE amounts of memory"! (Post 38).

To quote: "its a bloody awful setup"

How come you are recommending such a low memory allocation now? Has some more information come to light that I have missed?

I spent some time "tuning" the memory allocation as per Scott Byer’s recommendation and have come back up to 90%. Most of the time this is fine for me.

What made the biggest difference in improvement for me was adding a second physical hard disk and defining a huge 60GB partition to the primary scratch file. That really improved things.

But I agree with Rainer’s thoughts that in CS, all of a sudden we seem to be dealing with monsterously huge files – hundreds of megabytes. I appreciate that its supposed to be better, but the overhead just seems way out of proportion. We now seem to be dealing with Gigabytes and Gigahertz, whereas before it was ‘only’ Megabytes and Megahertz.

Brian
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 28, 2004
Brian

You are joking (again) I hope. You surely don’t think you were chastised in that thread. You were given an enormous amount of very helpful advice I thought. It certainly showed me the light as I began that thread with the assumption that the massive scratch allocation was a problem and halfway through I realised the error of my initial instincts. A simple comparative speed test showed that CS is as fast as or faster than 6 on both my systems, regardless of file size.

You are right in that according to Scott you should not lower the memory allocation to 50%. My interpretation of Scott’s advice is that the tuning process is very simple. Set the PS memory allocation as high as you can afford to, leaving enough room for the OS and whatever else you may be running. This will obviously vary and some plug-ins need extra memory outside of that allocated for PS etc. Start high and work down until it is comfortable is my interpretation. Re-read Scott’s post for more detail. I am having no probs on my 1 Gb system running at 90%.

There has been some advice to lower the memory allocation but this is in cases where people are having other problems such as the dual channel 2 Gb RAM problem reported at times. Maybe others as well but I don’t think this is general.
L
LenHewitt
Feb 28, 2004
Brian,

Has some more information come to light that I have missed?<<

Not that I am aware of, and if Rainer is prepared to follow Scott’s advice re tuning I’m sure that will be of help to him.

If I can get him to THINK about RAM allocation, then that will be a start…
L
LenHewitt
Feb 28, 2004
Brian,

Has some more information come to light that I have missed?<<

Not that I am aware of, and if Rainer is prepared to follow Scott’s advice re tuning I’m sure that will be of help to him.

If I can get him to THINK about RAM allocation, then that will be a start…

[EDIT]

Even better, I have now put Scott’s advice from two separate Topics into a single FAQ Topic:

"Tuning Photoshop CS" <http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.2cd05650>
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 29, 2004
Len

Good idea putting that into the FAQ as it comes up so often. I forget where the snippet about Win paging file size came from. Very recent I know but there is so much going on in here. I presume that Scott was referring to a 1.5Gb RAM system in the first sentence. Although it is clear what he means from the second sentence, you can bet that somebody will say that Scott Byer said the paging file should always be 3Gb which is probably not the case with smaller amounts of RAM.

By the way, are you empowered to remove FAQ topics – specifically the one about NVIDIA and Adobe Gamma Loader. This is out of date and can be confusing.
AS
andrew_spiering
Feb 29, 2004
what i don’t understand is that why people link scrath and memory usage together… they have nothing to do with each other at all. You should never put the mem allocation above 75% and if you, well of course your going to see slowing. I mean if you want i am sure you could call adobe tech support and they would tell you the same thing.
L
LenHewitt
Feb 29, 2004
Andrew,

they have nothing to do with each other at all.<<

That’s not so. In fact they are highly dependent upon one another, to the extent that you cannot even use more RAM than you have available scratch space for starters.

Additionally, initial scratch will be governed by the amount of allocated RAM.
L
LenHewitt
Feb 29, 2004
Mick,

are you empowered to remove FAQ topics <<

I’m empowered to move mountains if required <vbg> I’ll take a look….
AS
andrew_spiering
Feb 29, 2004
Len,
I ask you this, according to the prefrences in my photoshop cs I 580mb of ram to play with… 50% of that is allocated to photoshop which is about 290mb… the HD where i have my scratch disk on only has 180mb that is usable at the time i assigned it to be the scratch disk… Now according to you that is impossible, because i could not use more then 180mb of ram… because thats my scratch disk amount of space… But the fact is the amount ram i can assign to photoshop is based on the amount of ram in my machine that is usable… My scratch disk is based on the amount of hard drive space thats usable on the drive you assign the scratch disk to. All the scratch disk is cachable space that photoshop uses to throw info in and out of mainly about your photo’s you will notice the more you do with the photos the bigger the scratch disk gets… They are totally seprate from each other. I could have 128mb of ram and have a scratch file of 1.4gb if that was usable on the drive. I do not see your logic in how they are linked when my photoshop is setup to disprove your logic and my photoshop runs just fine.
IL
Ian_Lyons
Feb 29, 2004
Andrew,

1. The figure quoted by Photoshop as being the amount of Available RAM is an estimate and almost certainly an overestimate at that.

2. Assuming there is sufficient hard disk space the "minimum" scratch disk size will be slightly less than the amount of RAM allocated to Photoshop.

3. For most users the "maximum" size for the scratch disk is limited by the amount of available hard disk space. The "actual" size will grow according to what the user is actually doing in Photoshop. Likewise the "rate" of growth.
L
LenHewitt
Feb 29, 2004
Andrew,

Now according to you that is impossible, because i could not use more then
180mb of ram… because thats my scratch disk amount of space… <<

It is. Photoshop will still let you SELECT whatever percentage you choose but will not be able to use more than the available scratch space.

Photoshop uses the Scratch as its PRIME memory. The available RAM is used as a cache for that scratch data. That is why you will ALWAYS have a scratch file even when no images are open.

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