Photoshop super slow

how much ram do you have? how full is your hard drive? do you have an external drive that you can use as a scratch drive?

there are a lot of variables, it's hard to say without knowing more.

 

It defintely is not your Chrome. I ALWAYS have Chrome open, Photoshop and Picasa. And even sometimes Outlook.
Like Molly said, it depends on a lot of things. Are the projects you are working on very heavy and do you clear your cache a lot?

 

so this makes me wonder?
am I supposed to clear the scratch disk or does it do it itself?

 

The scratch disk is just working space to give PS more room to breathe, so to speak. As long as there is space available on a secondary hard drive, PS will use it (up to the limits specified in the PS preferences). But if your secondary drive is full then it isn't doing any good.

 

so would it be better to have a secondary ehd set up just for a scratch drive?

 

i'm not sure what the maximum you can allocate to the scratch disk is, but i don't think you need an entire HD. You'd be better off maxing your RAM in general.

 

lol oh MOlly, I only understand half of what you say! lol maxing my RAM? lol, I have an extra EHD...so was thinking i could use that as a scratch disc. I guess I don't get the breathing room, if you can erase the things it used(photoshop)

 

Ha, Anne, I understand what you mean. My dad talks to me a lot that way... Me like: What? Ugh, no... Simply do what you think is necessary and I'll see if it works! ;-)

 

Do you have a lot of styles and/or fonts installed? That can slow things down too. I know it definitely slows down on opening... I'm not positive about that slowing down file saves, but it could be something to try...

 

True, KAren, that could be a reason...

 

Have you had it open for a while? I find things start slowing down for me when I haven't closed photoshop in a while. I am bad to leave open for weeks at a time. It's like a whole new program when I let it rest for a bit.

 

when was the last time you rebooted your computer? that helps too!

 

I agree. Reboot the computer. Always helps some anyway.

 

Are you working in 32 bit? I work in 8 bit because it's faster for working on and especially saving layouts. Check your settings.

 

have you done a purge of your history state? chances are if you have copied several different items, they are still around, and photoshop is still keeping track of them for you. After you purge, more RAM becomes available immediately, however it is a permanent move.

This is a great article about optimizing performance - just changing a few things in your preferences speeds up PS a great deal:
http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-performance-photoshop-cs4-cs5.html

 

Thanks for the article Nettie!

 

RAM, RAM, RAM. I had 3 GB and recently upgraded to 8 (all by myself! Google it!) and now I never ever have problems. It used to take minutes to open a little PNG file. Now I can stream video and zip along in PS CC without a hitch.

So, to sum up: RAM!