Improve CS2 s Performance If You Have Over 1 GB of RAM

Improve CS2's Performance If You Have Over 1 GB of RAM

I'm always looking for performance tweaks to help Photoshop run as fast as it can. I thought I'd found them all, but then one day Dave Cross, NAPP's Senior Education and Curriculum Developer (aka Total Photoshop Guru), walked into my office and showed me a really cool trick to make Photoshop CS2 manage memory more efficiently. It really only works if you've got more than 1 GB of RAM, but it works on both a Mac and a PC.

Techie Background Stuff

When you work on your images in Photoshop, it breaks your image into sections called tiles. By default, the maximum size of each tile is 132 KB of RAM. However, in CS2 you can increase this tile size by activating the Bigger Tiles plug-in. This means that Photoshop can process large images faster because it won't have to draw as many tiles (there will be fewer overall tiles, since each one is now larger).

Turbo Boost

You can Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on an adjustment layer's mask to see the mask up close. That way you can make small changes to it and clean up any small areas you may have missed.

Step One

First, you'll need to quit Photoshop. Then locate the ~Bigger Tiles plug-in file. On the Mac, it's in Hard Drive:Applications: Adobe Photoshop CS2:Plug-Ins:Adobe Photoshop Only:Extensions:Bigger Tiles. In Windows, it's in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Plug-Ins\Adobe Photoshop Only\Extensions\Bigger Tiles.

Step Two

Rename the file by removing the tilde (~) from the file name. Go ahead and start Photoshop again. Since Photoshop redraws more data at a time because each tile is larger, it will process your images faster. I know it sounds a little odd, but Photoshop takes less time to redraw fewer tiles that are larger than it does more tiles that are smaller. Don't ask me why, though, I don't make the rules here.

Turbo Boost

When using the Hand tool (H), turn on the Scroll All Windows checkbox in the Options Bar to scroll (or pan) all open documents at once.