Geek Posted January 31, 2011 Posted January 31, 2011 <div class="KonaBody"><p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/adobe-photoshop-icon.jpeg" alt="adobe photoshop icon" title="adobe photoshop icon" width="128" height="128" class="alignright size-full wp-image-12208" /> Adobe Photoshop was running a bit sluggish on my Mac recently, so I set about to make the app run faster with a few tweaks. While these were done on my MacBook Pro, there’s no reason the tips wouldn’t work the same on a Windows PC running PS too.</p> <p><strong>1) Quit Other Apps</strong> Before digging around in the Photoshop preferences, quit any other apps that you are not using. This frees up additional system resources to devote to Photoshop instead.</p> <p><strong>2) Raise the Memory Usage</strong> More memory the better! This gave me a large speed increase:</p> <ul> <li>From Photoshop Preferences, click on “Performance”</li> <li>Adjust the slider upward to use more RAM, the more you can spare the merrier</li> </ul> <p>A quick note regarding RAM: Computers love RAM, and so does Photoshop. If you’re a frequent Photoshop user or you do anything else that involves significant memory consumption, adding more memory to your computer is a good idea. You can read my <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2010/11/17/macbook-pro-8gb-ram-upgrade-review/">review of upgrading a MacBook Pro to 8GB RAM</a> if you haven’t already, or <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2010/10/29/does-your-mac-need-more-memory-how-to-know-if-you-need-a-ram-upgrade/">find out if you need a RAM upgrade</a>. <span id="more-12201"></span> <strong>3) Set Scratch Disks</strong> If you have multiple hard drives, use them for virtual memory:</p> <ul> <li>From the Photoshop “Performance” Preferences go to “Scratch Disks” and add your additional hard drives</li> </ul> <p>This is really only relevant to those users with multiple hard drives, so those of us on laptops generally can ignore this one.</p> <p><strong>4) Adjust the Cache Levels</strong> Most users benefit from a lower cache level:</p> <ul> <li>Open the Photoshop Preferences and click on “Performance”</li> <li>Set “Cache Levels” to 1</li> </ul> <p>Note that if you’re working with large single layered images like a high res digital picture, setting the cache level higher will speed up performance instead. Adjust this setting based on your current usage.</p> <p><strong>5) Never Save Image Previews</strong> Caching image previews slows things down:</p> <ul> <li>From the Photoshop Preferences, click on “File Handling”</li> <li>Set “Image Previews” to ‘Never Save’</li> </ul> <p>This reduces Photoshops RAM and CPU usage by avoiding the image previews.</p> <p>While these tips are specific to speeding up Photoshop, the tweaks may apply to other Adobe apps that have similar preference options too.</p> <p><strong>What else can I do to speed up Photoshop?</strong> Outside of app specific tips, the other things you can do to boost nearly any apps performance are getting more RAM and upgrading to a faster hard drive for your computer. 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