Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
RAM
One of the resources that Photoshop loves and that afects your work in
the application is the amount of
RAM
(
random-access memory
) on your
machine. Although the recommended RAM to run Photoshop is 1 GB for
both Windows and Mac, the amount of RAM necessary when working
with Photoshop depends on your project. Photoshop's RAM usage heavily
depends on the size of the iles that you open in Photoshop, because
each ile you open in Photoshop uses RAM equal to about four times
its size.
The more RAM your system is fueled by, the larger the iles you will be able
to handle in Photoshop. For example, if you are working with website images
and images in low resolution, you will not feel that much pain when working
with only a little RAM memory. But if you are working with iles that must be
printed, or 3D content or animation iles with a lot of layers, you will
deinitely need a lot of RAM to be able to work easily.
The current Windows version, Vista, can load a maximum of 4 GB RAM, and
Mac OS X can hold up to 8 GB RAM. So I always recommend buying as much
RAM as you can aford, because RAM is the thin line between working in joy
or pain in Photoshop.
Photoshop is a really smart application when dealing with memory: when
you open Photoshop, it loads some of its iles into the RAM, such as the
fonts, presets, and others. Then it starts to use parts of the RAM for opening
and working on your iles. After using up the allocated RAM amount for
Photoshop, it starts to take from the scratch disk. The
scratch disk
is a part of
the hard disk that Photoshop uses as a virtual memory when it reaches the
limit of the allocated iles in the RAM. Let's focus on the RAM memory now,
and dig deeper into the topic of scratch disk memory after.
Because it is smart, Photoshop enables you to customize how it deals with
RAM and to set a limit for it to use from the memory and memory allocation;
these settings are located in this Photoshop Preferences dialog box. I
remember a very funny mistake of mine when I was learning Photoshop. I
allocated all the memory to Photoshop—which left nothing for my
operating system and other applications! Actually, it is a common mistake,
but it will kill your computer, and you will never be able to work with other
products properly, so be careful when setting the memory usage limit.
The default Photoshop RAM memory allocation depends on your operating
system and the amount of RAM you have in your machine. Also, it depends
on whether you run a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. For example, if you
are running Mac OS 10.4.11 or later, Photoshop will use up to 3.5 GB of the
available RAM. In Windows, the Photoshop 32-bit version can use up to
1.7 GB in the 32-bit Windows version and 3.2 GB in 64-bit Windows, and the
Photoshop 64-bit version, which runs only on 64-bit Windows, can get as
much as your computer can aford. And Photoshop is supported by Windows
