Photoshop CS 3 users,memory issue,heads up..

[Macinposh]

X: post from the Macpro forums. If this is spamming,mods,feel free to remove.




Dont know how widely aviable,or obvious information this is but :

Apparently in photoshop cs3,there is a intresting "feature" by default.

There is one file that isnt activated by default,resulting that your macs dont use more than 1GB of memory...


The file is in the : Applications -> CS3 -> Plug-Ins -> Extensions -> Bigger Tiles : There is a file called Bigger Tiles.plugin.

IF that file has a ~ symbol in front of it, the file is not in use and photoshop dont recognize more than 1GB of memory!!!

By removing it,and restarting photoshop,things should be groovy after that..

Well,thats what the techinician at the adobe told me. I´d be intrested to hear if he was full of *****,or right. Because I went around in our studio complex,and ALL the intel macs with CS3 was borked.

The problem wasnt present in older PowerPc macs or macs with CS2 >.



But, if anyone has any more info about the subject,like,if the above is not true,please give me the info.
Then I can get back to adobe to ream somebodys ass for being a..well..something.

 

[smueboy]

That is very interesting. The help document in the Bigger Tiles folder says the same:

Adobe® Photoshop® CS3
Bigger Tiles Plug-In
The Bigger Tiles plug-in causes Photoshop to process image data in larger chunks. This will reduce the overall time to complete many operations, especially on computers with more than 1 GB of RAM installed. Bigger Tiles will also reduce the responsiveness of the application in some situations.

The Bigger Tiles plug-in is installed in the Extensions folder, within the Plug-Ins folder in the Adobe Photoshop CS3 folder. To activate it, rename it to remove the "~" from the beginning of its name.

In the Preferences>Performance pane of PS CS3 you can choose how much memory the program uses (i let it use 2GB of my total 3GB installed). But i'm not sure in exactly what situations the bigger tile plug-in will be useful. The photoshop website says this:

Bigger Tiles plug-in

The Bigger Tiles plug-in, which is located in the Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Plug-Ins/Extensions/Bigger Tiles folder, is disabled by default. When you enable it by removing the tilde (~) from the file name, then you increase the image tile size in Photoshop. You should only enable the plug-in if you have more than 1 GB of RAM installed.

If you enable the plug-in, then Photoshop redraws more data at a time because each tile is larger, and each tile is drawn, complete at one time. Photoshop takes less time to redraw fewer tiles that are larger than it takes to draw more tiles that are smaller. Because Photoshop redraws more data at one time, each tile takes longer to be redrawn; so bigger tiles can look like they are redrawing more slowly, but they are actually redrawing more quickly than if the image had more smaller tiles.

Has anyone activated this plug-in?

 

[ChrisA]

Tile size is a compromise. Yes it can be faster to grab fewer, larger chunks of data from the disk but. One "tile" is the minimum size re-draw size. so a minimum sized redrar is slower.
Which is best depends on how you use PS. Are you zoomed in making detailed edits or are you making overall gross adjustmnts to color and so on? How large are your images and what elese is the computer doing?

 

[Macinposh]

Are you zoomed in making detailed edits or are you making overall gross adjustmnts to color and so on? How large are your images and what elese is the computer doing?

In short, I usually work with 72MB files (16bit),history levels 20,cahce 6(?), have 2-5 of them pics open at start.
I do general tonal adjustments in RGB, then quite a lot of retouching in zoomed in settings.Layers vary from 1-7 with picture size usually in the 75-350MB region. Healing brush,clone,dodge/burn etc..



Cant say ***** yet,but it felt like the scratch useage dropped radically when using healing brush,for example.
And the preview time for liquify and lens blur dropped quite a bit.
Unless this is the normal "safari seems snappier" syndrome...

I have as a scratch my main disks (4x500GB disks in raid10) and a 160GB disk as secondary.

Honestly,the speed difference between the CS2 and CS3 has been a dissapointment. Opening the pics and such are way faster,but in general usage..meh. Maybe 0-30% increase in speed.

Oh. Memory amount is 2GB and the general useage seems to be with 5 pics open around 1GB in use,1GB in free. Max amounts are still around 1.400mb in use 600mb free. No change in that.

Have to keep testing more next week,when back at studio.


Edit: normal setting is mail running in the back groun. I usually keep lightroom and even safari closed while working.