DIVID Technology Riffraff & Whatnot

Having a fast hard drive helps, but scratch disks provide scalability at the cost of performance. YMMV with larger files, but these tips can help with psds of around 200mb.

Experiment with lowering memory and checking your results. There are extensive test suites for this, but you may find an easier way to measure. Don’t trust your gut, actually time something.

With each setting, try opening documents and comparing the efficiency, targeting 100%. Each change in preferences > performance requires you to restart Photoshop. This changes after Photoshop has time to “warm up”, so if you set it and run with it for a bit you will see better results. I think I ended up using about 50% and small tiles for my setup, since I also need memory for other things like a VMware.

Adobe has a technote about this stuff: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/320/320005.html

CS4 users, if you are not working with too many huge files, take a look at what happens when you drop in a few legacy plugins from Adobe: PSCS4Optional_LegacyPlugins_MAC.dmg

CS5 plugin information can be found here: go.adobe.com/kb/ts_cpsid_82824_en-us and here: http://www.adobe.com/go/ps_cs5_plugins_mac_en. This includes some of the same optional extensions.

There are some interesting tests related to this article worth checking out, especially if you have large psds or lots of extra memory: http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS5-MaxMemory.html