Whats casuing this lag in PhotoshopCS4?

[dav9]

Hi, When I'm clone stamping, which I do very fast, (cant do it slow as its harder & doesn't feel fluid to get a good result). Sometimes it lags, the effect takes a 1-2secs to appear slowing down the whole procedure.

Here are my system specs i7 870, 4gb ram, wd 320gb 7200rpm hdd, nvidia gt220, running two very large monitors. not sure if its the gpu or hard drive?

ty

 

[Emulex]

so you have swap on hdd? if so ditch for ssd. the Geforce 220 i have i has 1gb of ram so that is not the problem.

i'd say drive then ram

 

[dav9]

so you have swap on hdd? if so ditch for ssd. the Geforce 220 i have i has 1gb of ram so that is not the problem.

i'd say drive then ram

yeah, ram was updated to faster more capacity, still lagged sometimes with old ram. must be hd. i would have thought hard drive wouldn't be needed? that it does it all in memory. Until you save your work, then it uses hard drive?

 

[rivan]

yeah, ram was updated to faster more capacity, still lagged sometimes with old ram. must be hd. i would have thought hard drive wouldn't be needed? that it does it all in memory. Until you save your work, then it uses hard drive?

If the entire image+swap space won't fit in RAM, it offloads the rest to hard disk. Frankly, unless you're working on very large images (in the many-hundreds-of-megs range) I don't think it'd be your RAM either.

Check your preferences->performance to see how much RAM you're allowing PS to use (dont put it all the way up; allow an appropriate amount for the rest of your machine; OS, other concurrent apps, etc). Lowering the number of history states may help (unless you use them), if RAM is the issue.

I'm curious if it might be your GPU; but I suspect it's not. My Mac's far older and has a GT120 pushing a 2560x1440 and a 1280x1024, and doesn't really stutter when cloning.

What else do you have running? Antivirus? Are you doing any network operations? I know those are huge culprits for me. AV scans always make my machine stuttery, and sometimes having networked drives mounted/mapped will do the same, under both Win and OSX environments.

 

[dav9]

If the entire image+swap space won't fit in RAM, it offloads the rest to hard disk. Frankly, unless you're working on very large images (in the many-hundreds-of-megs range) I don't think it'd be your RAM either.

Check your preferences->performance to see how much RAM you're allowing PS to use (dont put it all the way up; allow an appropriate amount for the rest of your machine; OS, other concurrent apps, etc). Lowering the number of history states may help (unless you use them), if RAM is the issue.

I'm curious if it might be your GPU; but I suspect it's not. My Mac's far older and has a GT120 pushing a 2560x1440 and a 1280x1024, and doesn't really stutter when cloning.

What else do you have running? Antivirus? Are you doing any network operations? I know those are huge culprits for me. AV scans always make my machine stuttery, and sometimes having networked drives mounted/mapped will do the same, under both Win and OSX environments.

My anti virus is always running, could be a culprit? The images are a few dozen MB & RAM usage is never maxed out. Tends to happen more when other windows are open i noticed.

 

[CuriousMike]

Remember, a 5MB file on disk (jpg) isn't the same in memory.

x*y*4 = bytes in ram.

So, a 1024x768 image takes up:

1024*768 = 786,432 pixels * 4 ( RGBA ) = 3,145,728 = 3MB

A 10megapixel photo might be 3600x2400.

3600*2400*4 = 34,560,000 = ~34MB.

Photoshop keeps multiple copies of your image in memory, so a single "34MB" file might take 100MB of ram.

RAM likely isn't your issue.

 

[Emulex]

dude what is that GT120 . i have that too it sucks balls. it must be a Geforce 220?

but yeah ram dude. i'm doing my next box (light use) with 24gb of ram to avoid swapping in cs5. plan to upgrade my mac pro to 24gb when i find some good fan control software (got 24gb free ddr3 RDIMM but has no thermal sensors).

 

[jsedlak]

How big is your image, and how big is the clone?
Are you running 64bit photoshop?

 

[homercles337]

OPie, if youre using 32-bit get a new graphics card. If 64-bit get more RAM.

1024*768 = 786,432 pixels * 4 ( RGBA ) = 3,145,728 = 3MB

Ha ha, thats not how memory works. In memory (this gets converted to ints for display) each memory element is a single precision float (32-bits, 4 bytes), then by 3 for RGB (for simplicity we will ignore alpha since jpg does not contain an alpha channel). A 1024x768 image is 9,437,184 bytes (9.4 MB) in memory.

Photoshop keeps multiple copies of your image in memory, so a single "34MB" file might take 100MB of ram.

No it does not. Pshop keeps delta pixels in history, not a whole image. That would be colossally stupid.

To OPie, Pshop does keep the result of each manipulation in history for "undo." Each mouse click increases the amount of memory being used. Keep that in mind with slow downs. You can save, close (this is important to release fragmented memory), reload.

 

[rivan]

dude what is that GT120 . i have that too it sucks balls. it must be a Geforce 220?

It's not great, but I work on multi-gig files and redraw isn't generally that much of an issue.

To OPie, Pshop does keep the result of each manipulation in history for "undo." Each mouse click increases the amount of memory being used. Keep that in mind with slow downs. You can save, close (this is important to release fragmented memory), reload.

You can also adjust how many of these it stores in your preferences, under performance - "history states". More states means more memory used.

RAM might not be maxed if you're not allowing PS the maximum it'll take (again, a preference). If you've got 4 gigs, and only allow PS 1 gig in that preference, your machine's ram won't max out (only PS's will) but you'll still go to swap file on disk (bad).

That said, I'd take a look at other processes that are easily stopped to test their effects. Kill your AV for a cloning session; disconnect from your network for a session.

 

[pcslookout]

You don't even have to run a active virus scanner to begin with. Create a limited account, turn on DEP, and AppLocker.

Unpassable security for free with no performance impact at all.

 

[Lorne]

1. CS4 has a serious issue with HT, Turn it off, CS5 has fixed this.
1.1 If your running Vista OS remember there is a redundancy of memory use for every window open.
1.2 Both Vista and Win7 have issues with the 2D to 3D api, Especially with ATI cards (AMD has made some improvements with drivers)
1.3 Both Vista a Win7 PS speed can get a boost in render speed if you open and close the taskmanger before proceding (This one is a flaw by MS 2D to 3D api).
2. Set the usable memory in CS4 or all PS at least 80pct or higher if working with large PSD files to get away from paging.
3. suggest getting a secondary drive as a temp drive for PS if your not running SSD or raid.

A faster GFX card can improve image movement, Look for cards with high memory speed eg GDDR5 even if it has a lower end core.
Dont toss older cards of same make as CF/SLI/ Hybrid CF/SLI helps.

You can also set up an action button to PURGE often it helps.