photoshop performing extremly slow?? help please

[Erik]

This may be a solution, but anyway: when you don't get any better results, we continue digging together untill this is solved, ok?

problem is I don't have any experience ith XP, but the Pro version cannot be bad.

about the scanning: I don't know which scanner you have, but normally you can specify how big the output must be, either in size or in %. The resolution is in fact used for the amount of detail you want.: if you have 300 dots in one inch, then you can easily see a detail that is 1/150th of an inch wide. If you have 100 dots in one inch, you can't see a detail that's only 1/150th. See what I mean?
You can use the resomution for changing the size of an image by changing the number of dots/pixels per inch in Image>Image size if you uncheck the resampling box.

Try this: scan something at say 150dpi and then at 15 dpi. Look at what happens.

succes, and 'till soon, hopefully with good news.

[Erik]

And what is the name of that temp file, and what *is* it?

[Revert]

Hey Grandad i'm not a Photoshop expert, unfortunately. I am A+ and MCSE certified though so i know a little bit about Windows. Wow, those are some big files you are working with. I run XP with a lesser system than you and i don't have slow downs. Biggest files i've worked with though are 48mb's. I have an AMD thunderbird 1.2, 512mb PC133 Crucial Ram. ATI Radeon graphics card. I have a 40 gig 7200 rpm and a 10 gig 5200 rpm drive(it's totally dedicated as scratch disk). I generally set my Ram to about 50% in Photoshop, had no problems with that setting.

From your description if you're having probs with small files too it certainly sounds like a memory issue. On boot up watch the screen for the Ram count. If all is working you should see 640 if their installed and working correctly. Did you check your motherboard manual for your Ram slots? Not all boards are identical but there are limitations on your memory configurations. An example of mine, an EPOX 8kta3+. I can place either single or doubled sided in dimm 1 and 2. If i place singled sided in dimm 3, dimm4 has to be single and same spec. If i place double sided in dimm 3, dimm 4 has to be empty. The same applies if i install to Dimm 4 first, dimm 3 has to be configured correctly. As well as this, it's generally not a good idea to mix different brands of ram. Then you have cas latency, some memory modules run at cas latency of 2, some at 3, again, not good to mix them. I've had problems in the past mixing modules now i stick with one brand, same cas latency and everything runs smooth in Photoshop. If you're in the US, consider crucial ram, www.crucial.com. They can select the correct ram for your system and last time i used them, free delivery. In most peoples opinions, they also make the best. Worth thinking about as these no name generic modules sometimes can be really poor quality. You have a pretty good system, shame to waste it with cheap ram.

Quick mention about processes running in XP. I have 27 running and that's a pretty standard with XP, doesn't cause any slow downs for me.

Oh yeah, the recommendation from Microsoft for Ram is Ram +12. For you that's 652 and 652, making them the same size helps prevent your paging file from defragmenting.

[kiwi]

Thanks Revert



Photoshop 6 did have an issue with not erasing temp files on quitting Photoshop,but apparently the engineers fixed the problem with 6.0.1


There was a lot of discussion on the Adobe useres group about this issue,so check out their knowledgebase as well it might be helpfull


Cheers

Stu.

[Revert]

Stu, i did have problems with memory in Photoshop, crashing until i upgraded to 6.01. It's a big improvement.

[grandad]

hi ya...

REVERT...thank you for your input...your points are very intersting
and i will be looking into the ram issues and slots ect on my motherboard...on boot up it shows 640 megs...but i have not checked on the dim slots... i will do that today however...

i am going to save for more (better brand name) ram...although now its quite expensive again..
i live in australia and things arent cheap as they are in the US

KIWI...i have the update installed and i have checked the knowledge base but cant find a lot

i will be doing the changes today to my system i will let you all know how things go if you are interested in the outcome...

i am totaly amazed at the freindlyness and the eagerness by members to help newbies such as my self out with problems..

this is truly a GREAT board and i look forward to being able to do the same for others

i thank you all again for your help and suggestions

grandad

[Revert]

Good luck, i'll be interested to hear if you resolve it or not. There's lots of tweaks that i know for XP to improve performence but to be honest, with the system you have, you shouldn't have to tweak. Fast processor, you're board is very good, normally stable and a good graphics card, only the Ram lets you down .

May also be worth your while to run a full scan on your hard drive, to include the surface scan. Never mentioned it before as you said you have no probs running other software. They may not be as memory intensive as photoshop though. So you may as well check it out. If XP performs like you expect it to then it certainly seems like it's hardware related. As great as XP is lots of people have problems with running applications. It sucks really that i had to pay for the full version when i should have been able to purchase just the upgrade but it's not a good choice right now. Way too many problems with upgrading.

Wish i could just pop over, be a lot easier to diagnose. I know you're searching for articles relating to photoshop but i really think it's down to your particular system. There's a piece of hardaware in there right now that's not particularly happy and the no1 suspect is ram, followed by hard drive, followed by motherboard and lastly video card, though unlikely.

[Erik]

I agree with Revert. From the first moment it struck me as odd to have 2x256 and 1x128. This 128 seems to be added separately because it just isn't logical. A friend of mine who had a PC assembled for her had problems with her software and after I changed the, how do you call it: brandless RAM, into Apacer, it all worked fine. At the shop they tried to convince her that it was the mainboard or the processor and that she did do something wrong so there was no more guarantee on those parts...

[theKeeper]

Hey fellas...

I haven't read all the posts here thoroughly, so i don't if you've tried this or not grandad...

Find your PS Prefs file and rename it, then restart Photoshop. If this doesn't solve anything, change the prefs file name back to what it was.

Recently i had a situation whereby opening a 512x512 default, single-layered document, caused PS to create a 270+mb swap file. I resolved this by letting PS recreate the prefs file.

Now, it uses only a 100-130mb swap on the same size file. Which is something i can deal with.


If you can't manually find this prefs file (with a .psp extension), use the search function with this as your criteria: *.psp

Chances are if you're using W2K or XP that the file will be in a hidden folder. In which case, when you do your search, use the extra options and tell windows to search within hidden files & folders too. Either that, or manually "unhide" your system files/folders before searching.

If you have a problem with finding this file, let me know.

[fdeaton]

Erik nailed most everything in his explanations, but I have found that rather than looking at scan dpi numbers I look at the filesize to determine what I want to do. Normally a 20meg file is more than enough for an 8x10 color print output, in fact an image 8x10 @ 240ppi should be optimum. I'm not familiar with your printer, or it's software, but I would experiment in there some.
I work in an environment where we have a negative archive of several hundred thousand negatives. When we archive these negatives we do it at 10"xwhatever the small dimension falls to. Negative sizes are 35mm to 70mm, and we archive @ 300ppi. This satisfies most publications I deal with.
Scratch disk--yeah-you need a totally separate volume for this separate from everything else. All of my machines run at least 1 gig of ram, but Photoshop always uses the scratch, no matter what! I normally keep my ram usage at about 50-60% with Photoshop.
I would try some other tweaks before reloading Photoshop, and your processor (AMD) should be great for PS--the Adobe engineers love the AMDs and all have great things to say about them.
This has been a long post for me--did I help any? Stay in touch and we will sort out ur problems. I have found that Photoshop runs extremely stable on my W2K box and should also on Xp although I have no experience on it. BTW, my home box is a 600 Intel Cele OC'D to 900 and it will run some operations faster than my dual processor Mac G4s--all running 1 gig of ram!