Tips For Working With Large Image Files In Photoshop Without Lag – With today’s ultra-high-resolution cameras, it’s easy to shoot multitasking panoramas that put a significant strain on your computer and post-processing software. Other large files can cause similar problems, such as high PPI scans. Lately, I’ve been re-editing some of my old panoramas and I’ve found a lot of ways to modify Photoshop’s default settings. I would like to share them today.
In this tutorial, I’ll take an in-depth look at those Photoshop settings and share my tips for optimizing your panorama workflow. The tips also apply to other high-resolution images you might open in Photoshop, such as large scans with large file sizes.
Tips For Working With Large Image Files In Photoshop Without Lag
Not everyone will attach their panoramas in Photoshop. Lightroom offers a simple stitching process, and third-party products like PTGui offer more extensive and in-depth settings. However, most photographers use Photoshop more than any other program for their panoramas.
Working With Very Large Files
However, bringing hundreds of megapixels of data into Photoshop can be a difficult process. Large files can turn your previously stable setup into a mess of errors and crashes. While my suggestions below may not solve those specific problems, they will greatly reduce the level of problems.
The Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling panel contains several useful settings. The most important for working with large files is “Disable compression of PSD and PSB files”.
If you’re not already familiar, PSB files are a great way to store panoramas or other large files at full resolution while maintaining support for layers, masks, smart objects, and other important features. It is similar in functionality to Photoshop PSD files, but omits PSD’s 30K length and 2GB size limits.
However, even on very fast computers, saving PSBs can take a long time. On my computer, with a 5950x CPU saving 7GB/s on an NVME SSD, saving large files was ridiculously slow. Rather than a hardware bottleneck, it was a software bottleneck. Simply put, Photoshop’s compression approach is a slow, single-threaded process that can’t be speeded up much with better hardware.
Why The Hell Are My Brushes Lagging? I’ve Got 16gb Of Ram An Rtx 3060, Ryzen 7 3800x, It’s A Pretty Decent Setup And Hardly Any Bottle Necks. Only 40% Of My
This is a big problem when editing panoramas or other large files. Disabling compression makes saving and opening files a whole lot faster, all at the expense of less disk space.
For reference, Photoshop took just four seconds from 1:23 to save the file and increased the file size from 2.6 to 3.7 GB. Considering disk space is about 2 cents per gigabyte, if you value your time at more than $2 an hour, you should definitely turn off compression and skip it.
To increase how often Photoshop automatically saves your images, change the Auto Save Recovery information from 10 minutes to the default value of 5. It’s also found in the Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling panel.
Of course, don’t rely on Photoshop’s autosave; Recovery saves can be inconsistent and outdated even at the fastest intervals. But with large files, it is a fact that Photoshop crashes more often. The automatic recovery feature will save you from headaches at times.
How To Make A Gif In Photoshop From Video
By going to the Performance tab (Photoshop > Preferences > Performance), there are several options that can improve Photoshop’s performance with large files. This is especially true if you have good hardware.
The first step is to increase the amount of memory Photoshop is allowed to use. Giving Photoshop more space, of course, reduces the space used by other programs on your computer. But editing large files in Photoshop is so demanding that I consider it a worthwhile trade-off.
If you find you’re still multitasking or controlling your memory allocation, consider adding more. I’ll have hardware upgrade recommendations later in this guide.
The history and cache settings (even in the performance tab) can be a bit opaque for the average user. Fortunately, Photoshop has some quick settings that take your hardware into account. With just one click of the Huge Pixel Measurement button, Photoshop aims to optimize those cache settings for your hardware and offer the best performance for large files.
How To Speed Up Photoshop Without Buying A New Computer
GPU support in Photoshop is weird. Unlike some applications, Photoshop does not rely heavily on GPU acceleration for many functions. While things like Adobe lens blur, neural filters, and select and mask are using the GPU for acceleration, features like scrubby zoom and smooth brush resize won’t work at all without the GPU.
While these features are nice, you can edit without them. If you’re experiencing GPU-related errors such as incorrect rendering, some crashes, or image artifacts, consider troubleshooting Photoshop’s GPU settings.
You can check Help > GPU Compatibility to see if Photoshop works properly with your GPU. You can also try turning the GPU off and on again and updating the GPU drivers.
Additionally, NVIDIA has a dedicated driver branch called Studio Drivers that can provide better support for content creation applications like Photoshop. If you use Photoshop more than gaming applications, they might be worth installing instead of the Games branch.
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When Photoshop runs out of available RAM, such as when running a large panorama, it is forced to use disk space. Making sure Photoshop is converted to your fast drive can help reduce the negative impact of swapping. If for some reason your fastest disk isn’t your startup disk, you can choose it from the Scratch Disk setting in Photoshop > Preferences > Scratch Disk. (You can read more about installing and clearing Photoshop Scratch Disk here.)
For some use cases, it may be a good idea to have a dedicated backup drive. Designating a secondary SSD protects your primary drive from being overwritten, as well as reducing the impact on free space. I’ll go into more detail about drives in the next hardware section.
The following sections detail what hardware you can upgrade to improve performance when editing large images. For some devices, such as laptops, not all of these updates are applicable, but instead can help guide future purchasing decisions.
Note that the following tips will not speed up all types of post-processing, such as bulk editing or working with video. If you are looking for advice on any such topic, feel free to ask me in the comments.
How To Reduce The Size Of Jpeg And Other Image Files
Photoshop, as I mentioned in the “PSD Compression” section above, does not scale well in parallel. This means that upgrading to the latest powerful processor with 16 or more cores is not the best way to spend your money. Instead, look for a processor that has a reasonable number of cores but fast single-threading.
Generally, an i5 from Intel or something in the middle of the Ryzen range would be a good choice. Also, newer generations with faster IPC performance will be a better choice than older multi-core chips.
In general, unless you’re on an older platform, a CPU might not be the best place to spend your upgrade dollars.
Instead of upgrading your CPU, consider investing your dollars in more memory. For working with large image collections, more RAM can make a big difference. This improvement becomes even more apparent when you consider the cost of adding RAM. With the recent transition to DDR5, fast and high-capacity DDR4 kits can be a great value, for example.
Fix Photoshop Brush Lag For Good
16GB and even 32GB packages are available for cheaper. With this much RAM, you can edit large files while running other programs such as Lightroom. Higher speeds may offer minor performance improvements, especially on AMD’s platforms. 3200 or 3600 speed kits are the sweet spot for price and performance. However, if you’re already using high-capacity kit, don’t upgrade just for speed.
Many Photoshop operations are GPU-accelerated, and Photoshop’s GPU requirements are very low. If you’ve had a discrete GPU for years past, you’re probably fine.
Even for programs with more GPU support like PTGui, I rarely found my GPU under any significant strain. With the recent high prices of GPUs, this component is a low value upgrade.
Switching to an NVME SSD can dramatically speed up all your computing activities, from loading and running programs to sharing and moving files. Getting a faster 1TB or 2TB SSD like the 980 Pro can significantly improve your PC’s speed. If your computer supports Gen 4 SSDs, it can be 20-30 times faster than spinning disks, not to mention improved random and I/O performance.
Help Will This Run Adobe Photoshop?
I like pairing SSDs with multiple spinning hard drives as a low-cost storage feature. In other words, you’re not working on this drive, you’re just storing your backups there (or images you may no longer need in the future, such as panorama element photos). Especially for panoramas, large scans and other large files, this can save you quite a bit on your overall costs.
I have a bad habit of duplicating layers for small changes. While this isn’t a big deal for smaller files, with larger images, simply duplicating the background