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philj34977669
Known Participant
October 22, 2024
Question

Photoshop Memory Issues

  • October 22, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 236 views

My friend has an almost identical PC setup to myself, with the same memory (16GB), the same SSD discs with similar free space on all drives, the same processor, Windows 10 etc...but is having real problems with the speed of use.

I have compared all preferences in PS and these are also set the same, including the values for amount of memory to use etc.

On my setup - I select a file in LR  to edit in PS and once loaded, check in the task manager it shows that PS is using about 2.5Gb memory. When done on her PC - the system shows over 10Gb being used. 

I've checked that nothing else is running; tried multiple images, tried RAW straight from import images, previously edited .tifs etc, but always this huge discrepancy in memory usage. 

Any ideas what could be going on?

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1 reply

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 22, 2024

Included in initial memory is also loading presets - brushes, gradients, patterns etc etc.

 

Photoshop sets up a scratch file immediately. That is based on expected memory needs (and expanded as you go). The number of History states will influence this.

 

If the machine has an integrated GPU using system memory (not onboard VRAM), I believe that will be listed under Photoshop.

 

Lots of factors here, and I'm sure there are more that I'm forgetting.

 

In short, this is nothing to worry about. As soon as you start actual work, that memory usage will increase by orders of magnitude anyway. There is no such thing as "enough RAM" with Photoshop. That's why it uses the scratch disk for the heavy lifting. RAM is more of a fast-access cache.

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philj34977669Author
Known Participant
October 22, 2024

I can check the number of presets she has, but I doubt it will be 7.5Gb worth.

Scratch files are set to same sizes.

Yes both systems have a GPU with settings the same.

Once working it can go to 13Gb - which on a 16Gb machine means Slooow down of everything.


Must be something crucial I'm missing that's causing such a massive difference ?

 

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 22, 2024

The scratch file size isn't something you set. Photoshop does that by itself, based on expected and actual need. In most normal situations, it will grow to 50 GB or so as you work. If you work with very big files, or have many documents open, or have a large number of history states, it may grow to several hundred GB. That's perfectly normal.

 

How does the memory graph look when this happens? Both the system memory and the GPU memory:

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