Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
its your needs. Photoshop deals with both operating systems in the same
way, so the only diference that you will notice is changes in shortcuts
between keyboards for each operating system.
Note: The main diference between both operating system shortcuts is
between two keys on your keyboard. The Command (CMD) key on the Mac
is the same as the Control (CTRL) key in Windows, and the Option key on
the Mac is the same as the ALT key in Windows. I will mention both
shortcuts in tutorials and examples to avoid any confusion.
When I irst learned Photoshop, I did not pay any attention to the hardware
requirements, because my computer speciications are very robust. But I
soon realized that I could get the best performance out of Photoshop by
being a little bit smarter.
Actually, Photoshop is too smart when dealing with your hardware, and it
works in a diferent way than other Adobe products do, so you have to really
understand what your computer needs to work in the optimum way with
Photoshop (especially the 3D features). In the Preferences dialog box, you
will see a variety of options to specify how Photoshop deals with your
system resources such as memory and storage.
But the following questions remain: What are the resources that you have to
take into consideration when installing Photoshop? Which resources can be
managed, and which ones require a hardware upgrade? You'll ind the
answers in this topic.
Hardware Resources Utilization
There are resources in your computer to consider regardless of your type of
Photoshop project, such as RAM, processing power, and hard drive storage
space, and special consideration should be given to the graphics card, which
will enable you to handle 3D content and render 3D projects in Photoshop.
Along with other features such as Canvas Rotation, Scrubby Zoom, and so
on—that is, GPU features, and there are a lot of them—the Painting feature
also relies a bit on your graphics card. But before digging more into
resources that you need to consider while working with Photoshop and
how to optimize it for the best Photoshop 3D performance possible, I will
mention the general system requirement to install Photoshop for both Mac
and Windows.
Processor
Although Photoshop does not require a multiprocessor computer, having
one will help many of Photoshop tools, ilters, and 3D features work much
faster than they do on a single-processor computer.
