HOW MUCH RAM FOR PHOTO EDITING?

[colliewalker1]

I have 512 MB Ram of which the average 'free RAM is'247MB - my O/S is Windows XP. Should this be enough RAM for editing scanned photos in tiff form( these can be 20MB plus individually) or should I upgrade to 1GB - or even MORE?!

[Rob612]

The concept is really easy. The more RAM you have available, the better. Personally, I am working on two different machines, one with 4 GB and one with 16. But I won't consider anything less than 2 GB, at least for PS.

[PacAce]

I have 512 MB Ram of which the average 'free RAM is'247MB - my O/S is Windows XP. Should this be enough RAM for editing scanned photos in tiff form( these can be 20MB plus individually) or should I upgrade to 1GB - or even MORE?!




The more RAM you can throw into your computer, the better. However, to answer your question, if you are only going to be working on one scanned image at a time and aren't going to be creating a lot of image layers and using RAM hungry filters, then what you have may be enough. Photoshop does not use the RAM directly for storing the images you are working on. All images are stored in what's known as scratch disk. The RAM is used to cache as much of the scratch disk image as will fit into the available RAM. Obviously, the more RAM you have, the less PS has to go to the scratch disk to unload and reload parts of the image to and from scratch disk.

If you can live with the performance you are getting from PS for the images you are working on, then you have enough RAM. If you think PS is dog slow when editing, then you need lots more RAM. :)

[Jesper]

The concept is really easy. The more RAM you have available, the better. Personally, I am working on two different machines, one with 4 GB and one with 16. But I won't consider anything less than 2 GB, at least for PS.You really have a machine with 16 GB RAM ?!? A normal, 32-bit version of Windows can't even handle more than 4 GB...

It depends on how intensely you use Photoshop, but for normal use, I consider 1 GB RAM adequate.

[mdr]

I have 1GB and find this more than adequate for Photoshop editing, even with images scanned from transparencies at 4000dpi.

[Belmondo]

I have 512megs on my laptop, and occasionally run into problems with Photoshop (insufficient memory messages). I have 1 gig on my desktop, and have never had a problem with memory, but I do intend to add another gig just to speed things up.

[gramps]

I went from 512 megs to 1 1/2 gigs on my desk top, the change made a huge difference in pscs.

[Jack W.]

My gf has a 2 year old HP system, P4 2.5g, 512mg RAM.
She was using PS 7 with no problems. I bought PSCS2 for her, and she installed it yesterday.
So far, no problems with either PS or Bridge.
However, she is not a power user of PS. She takes pics of birds in her backyard, and just uses PS to brighten, sharpen, that kind of thing. No plugins, hasn't as yet gotten into layers, masks, actions, etc.
I have a Dell 8400, P4 3.0g, 1g DDR2 SDRAM. PSCS2 and Bridge both run fine and dandy here, and while I'm not a power user either, I do use layers, plugins, ACR, etc.
But, yesterday I added another 1g of RAM. Didn't seem to need it, but hey, ya only go around once!

[PhotosGuy]

Only you can answer that question as you've seen above. I only have 512 & sometimes work with 100MB files with several layers. The FEW times PS is slow doesn't bother me as I'm usually watching TV while I edit. So, if a 5 sec wait bothers you, then add more memory. ;-)

[cmM]

1.5 GB
Sometimes PS still acts up.... especially when I batch process like 50 16bitt tiffs at once lol :-P

[J Rabin]

PSCS is limited to using a max of 2 GB no matter what the computer has. PSCS2 I am sure breaks that barrier, but have not checked www.adobe. I have 2GB and the only time I have problems is trying to run Nikon scanner at same time as PSCS. That's a Nikon software problem. A minimum for decent PSCS would be 700+. The max is always best, and you can allocate how much of the max PSCS uses in the preferences menu. The biggest performance gain I obtained was getting a dual processor Mac last year. That made some PSCS operations drop from 4-8 minutes to 35 seconds. J

[Pelao]

In general, not just for PS, it's a good idea to have as much RAM as you can reasonably afford. Running XP and PS, plus the usual background stuff (anti-virus, a browser, maybe an e-mail app) I would suggest 1 GB.

Another thing - having lots of RAM is only good if you let PS use it. I have set PS so it can use 70% of available RAM.

[Feihung08]

In general, not just for PS, it's a good idea to have as much RAM as you can reasonably afford. Running XP and PS, plus the usual background stuff (anti-virus, a browser, maybe an e-mail app) I would suggest 1 GB.

Another thing - having lots of RAM is only good if you let PS use it. I have set PS so it can use 70% of available RAM.
Good tip Pelao! But how do you make this adjustment if you dont' mind?!?!

[CyberDyneSystems]

I'm running 1GB of good fast RAM,. PSCS and 1DMkII RAW files converted to 16 bit definitely tax that 1GB.. I need both more RAM and more CPU power.

When I shot the 10D and converted to 8Bit tif's in PS7 I never felt I needed more.

Mostly I think it is the huge 16 tiffs that are slowing things down.. but PSCS instantly felt like it needed more RAM than PS7 as well.

[PacAce]

PSCS is limited to using a max of 2 GB no matter what the computer has. PSCS2 I am sure breaks that barrier, but have not checked www.adobe.
The good news is that PSCS2 does, indeed, up the limit of RAM it uses. It's up from 2 GB to 3.5 GB. :D

But the bad news is that you need a 64-bit architecture machine to take advantage of it, such as a PowerMac G5 running Mac OS X or 64-bit Wintel processor machine running Windows XP-64. :confused:

[Rob612]

You really have a machine with 16 GB RAM ?!? A normal, 32-bit version of Windows can't even handle more than 4 GB...

It depends on how intensely you use Photoshop, but for normal use, I consider 1 GB RAM adequate.

Actually the 16 GB machine has the server version on it :D Forgot to mention this "little" detail... I found that W2003 Server, once stripped out of all the bells and whistles that are typical of the server role (i.e. no server services running, IIS, DNS, AD etc) and used as a workstation its quite reliable and of course it handles more ram and more CPUs, if you work in a SMP environment.

I do a lot of video editing, and that machine is primarily used for that purpose. It happens that I use also PSCS on it, and believe me, you can feel the difference. Give it a try if you have a chance. True, PSCS only used 2 GB, but having a lot of RAM hndled by the OS helps smoothing things alot.

[JX]

from Jesper post

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob612
The concept is really easy. The more RAM you have available, the better. Personally, I am working on two different machines, one with 4 GB and one with 16. But I won't consider anything less than 2 GB, at least for PS.

You really have a machine with 16 GB RAM ?!? A normal, 32-bit version of Windows can't even handle more than 4 GB...

It depends on how intensely you use Photoshop, but for normal use, I consider 1 GB RAM adequate.


Jesper has a very good point. The maximum amount of memory that can be supported on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 is 4 GB. However, Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition supports 32 GB of physical RAM and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition supports 64 GB of physical RAM. So Rob612, what operating system are you using?

[JX]

Rob612


I must have posted my question, while you were posting your explanation. You answered my question. I thought about doing the same thing when I build my next PC.

[smittymike19]

i have 512 in my computer and it runs perfectly fine. I use cs2 and only have to wait a few seconds if i apply a filter or perform a major change. i imagine if i were doing this for a living id beef up my ram, but since I only get a few good photos, the extra time isnt too bad. Next computer I get will have at least 1gb of ram to help speed things along..

[Rob612]

Rob612


I must have posted my question, while you were posting your explanation. You answered my question. I thought about doing the same thing when I build my next PC.



Do it, you will never regret the time to setup another machine, just remember to strip out all the useless (for workstation use) services so you do not waste CPU cycles in useless things.

As for what edition I am using, we have NFR copies and licenses of almost everything MS does, being a MS retailer (see the thread about what we do for living). So I used the Enterprise version. I know, sounds like an overkill, but since for our business need the standard server edition is OK for us... I decided to use this other license to build my personal NLE machine and use all the RAM. This especially important when at times you have a NLE session going on and at the same time other heavy tasks running in the background (i.e. an MPEG encoding session or the similar).

[Pelao]

Good tip Pelao! But how do you make this adjustment if you dont' mind?!?!

Hi
In PS Preferences, select Memory and Image cache. there you can tell PS how much RAM it's allowed to use.

[Volatile]

I'm working on a panoramic picture, and the .tiff file is 425mb. PTAssembler was running very slowly, so I moved up from 1GB to 2GB and it runs much better now.

I never had a problem before I started this big pano project.

HTH

[colliewalker1]

I'm running 1GB of good fast RAM,. PSCS and 1DMkII RAW files converted to 16 bit definitely tax that 1GB.. I need both more RAM and more CPU power.

When I shot the 10D and converted to 8Bit tif's in PS7 I never felt I needed more.

Mostly I think it is the huge 16 tiffs that are slowing things down.. but PSCS instantly felt like it needed more RAM than PS7 as well.

My post started a really interesting thread and I'm grateful to all the contributors.

The reference to 16bit tiffs is very pertinent as its since I have been dealing with scans of that type that I have been getting error messages from PS.

I'll definitely be getting another 512 MB of RAM after reading these posts.

[chris.bailey]

I've just gone from 2gb to 4gb PC 3200 on a win XP Pro Dual Zeon system and set PS to use 50% of it i.e its maximum usable of 2 gb. Made a big difference when working on 1dMkII 16 bit tiffs, especially if I have a few open at a time. RAM is cheap at the moment so what the heck.

[toddb]

I'm only running 1GB right now. For processing large images, it can be too little, depending on what I'm doing. Ram is only one part of the equation. I have my first scratch disk set to a drive other then the OS and it's pointed to a striped Raid0 array with read and write times in the 80-90s. So it's quite a bit faster then a normal standalone drive which really helps when processing allot of files. Not that it's a good substitude for memory but it helps. You can see what your efficiency is at all times. Look at the bottom of PS on the left side...see that little right arrow. Click on that and select Efficiency. It will tell you if you don't have enough memory.

[Wazza]

Seems my system is getting out of date.

A touch over two years old, and I have 1Gb of DDR 333mhz.

Does fine for having many full size jpgs open, and batching them to resize for web.
Still haven't shot Raws often, as I don't have access or money to a good raw editor. Until then, I'm sticking to jpg.

[Jesper]

... as I don't have access or money to a good raw editor. Until then, I'm sticking to jpg.That's not true.... you got Canon Digital Photo Professional with your 20D, which is a good RAW converter, and RawShooter essentials 2005 (http://www.pixmantec.com) is a very popular and good free RAW converter. :rolleyes: