p.1 #1 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
When people on here say Photoshop is no longer accessing the scratchdisk as they have lots of ram, are they SURE? I initially thought it was odd when a noise I hadn't noticed before (More than likely due to having loud music on whilst editing) when using alt+click to hide/show all layers was infact my hardrives seeking. It's almost inaudible but I tend to have very sensitive hearing.
So, i'm just working on a large 120 scan building up my layers as you do, and I go to liquify a section of the image. Now it's a large image and even though my PC is fast I don't expect it to absoultely blitz everything I throw at it, and liquify is typically a pretty crap part of Photoshop for speed anyway. So out of curiosity I open up task manager to see what my CPU usage is like.. bouncing along the bottom, jumping upto 25/30% every so often, usually when making larger adjustments, felt happy, and clicked OK. Something made me open up Resource Monitor and noticed the hardrive jumping upto 180mb/s usage. Expand the view and it is indeed Photoshop absolutely tanning the hardrive. All the while my Ram usage is at around 5GB.
So, if this is indeed normal, a word of advice folks Invest in a RAID0 scratchdisk volume if you do large edits on large files.. Because photoshop seems to prioritize the scratchdisk before ram in some cases. If this is not normal or doesn't happen to you, please state specs, PS version, settings etc, tar.
For those interested, computer is a 3.2ghz Quad, 16GB of ram, RAID0 array for OS (Which is also the scratchdisk), and Photoshop CS4 64-bit ram usage is set at 70%, Cache Levels 6, History states 20.
p.1 #3 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
HerbChong wrote:
it always writes to the scratch file. it may not read anything back.
Herb...
It wasn't reading anything back when the Liquify result was applying, however this still means the scratchdisk will be a bottleneck to a system-ram heavy machine, correct? From all the comments here I was lead to believe the scratchdisk wasn't coming into the equation at all.
p.1 #6 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
Ok it seems whenever using Liquify it runs the whole thing off the scratchdisk! Everytime you render a new step it needs to write it, which on this large file even a simple show/hide backdrop is causing minutes of delays, even with a pretty fast HD setup. Why it can't fill the ram up first before resorting to scratchdisk is beyond me.. Sort it out Adobe!!
SSD's for scratchdisks are an expensive solution.. Two raptors in RAID0 would be cheaper and last longer too!
I played with Ramdisks not too long ago but one of the driver files was unsigned and lead to an unbootable operating system.. Haven't really wanted to go back since! Could be a solution for when playing with these files though.
p.1 #8 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
AdrianRogers wrote:
I played with Ramdisks not too long ago but one of the driver files was unsigned and lead to an unbootable operating system.. Haven't really wanted to go back since! Could be a solution for when playing with these files though.
Do an Acronis image before you set it up. The ram disk really takes all the delays out.
Normal cheap SSDs are ok and not faster than a good hard drive for random read and writes, you need to buy a SLC one or one of the newer Intel MLC drives that has multiple controllers.
p.1 #9 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
Unfortunately that freeware ramdisk program doesn't seem to want to install, even when run as Admin and with compatability mode. Shall try and search for another! Worth a shot.
The Os problem was rectified by just using the repair function of the Vista CD. I'll have it on standby
p.1 #10 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
I use a RAM disk on my mac pro, with 16GB there is plenty to spare. Unfortunately I'm only able to max it out at 2GB right now, wish I could go larger.
But I did some tests and get around 1000mb/s read/write with it. Who needs a SSD?
p.1 #13 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
AdrianRogers wrote:
Ok it seems whenever using Liquify it runs the whole thing off the scratchdisk! Everytime you render a new step it needs to write it, which on this large file even a simple show/hide backdrop is causing minutes of delays, even with a pretty fast HD setup. Why it can't fill the ram up first before resorting to scratchdisk is beyond me.. Sort it out Adobe!!
that shouldn't be the case. But photoshop cannot use all 16GB of your RAM anyway. The maximum for image data is 3GB, +1GB for the plugins & filters, +2GB as cache for the scratch disk. So 6GB total. Try to set the usage to 100% in photoshop because it can't use all anyway. Restart it and see if it helps.
HerbChong wrote:
it always writes to the scratch file. it may not read anything back.
Herb...
no it doesn't, as least it shouldn't. it should only does that when the max allowed RAM runs out.
p.1 #14 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
shinew7911 wrote:
But photoshop cannot use all 16GB of your RAM anyway. The maximum for image data is 3GB, +1GB for the plugins & filters, +2GB as cache for the scratch disk. So 6GB total. Try to set the usage to 100% in photoshop because it can't use all anyway. Restart it and see if it helps.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.. I've got photoshop using just over 10GB of ram right now with a simple image upres, again with quite a bit of read/write scratchdisk activity (Used up 282GB of temp space on the C: drive according to explorer).. However the memory was still incrementally being used up as the progress bar was completing.
I'm going to try creating a Ramdisk now to see how that effects the performance in Liquify.
p.1 #18 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
HerbChong wrote:
but it does. i just told you. it's designed that way.
Herb...
unless you're on the designer of photoshop, I'm gonna have to trust Adobe on this: ...If Photoshop has insufficient memory, it uses hard-disk space (scratch disk) to process information. Because accessing information in memory is faster than accessing information on a hard disk, Photoshop is fastest when it can process all or most image information in memory (RAM), without using the scratch disk... http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb404439
p.1 #19 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
shinew7911 wrote:
But photoshop cannot use all 16GB of your RAM anyway. The maximum for image data is 3GB, +1GB for the plugins & filters, +2GB as cache for the scratch disk. So 6GB total. Try to set the usage to 100% in photoshop because it can't use all anyway. Restart it and see if it helps.
scratch that, my bad. you're using CS4, I thought you were running CS3.
p.1 #20 · Photoshop still using scratchdisk with 16GB of Ram
I'm running 64bit CS4 as mentioned in the OP so none of the paragraph about CS3 applies. It can use more than 6GB (i've got a little over 10GB assigned to CS4 alone in the preferances panel) just seemingly not when using the Liquify filter. Which is becoming quite fraustrating as it's never using more than 4-5GB of temp space when doing adjustments, so the ram could easily accomodate, it just insists on running the whole thing off the hardrive instead
Invest in a RAID0 scratchdisk volume if you do large edits on large files.. Because photoshop seems to prioritize the scratchdisk before ram in some cases. If this is not normal or doesn't happen to you, please state specs, PS version, settings etc, tar.
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