Photoshop maximum ram usage problem

[Ivairexe]

My laptop's RAM is 8GB, but Photoshop only uses 3GB of it.
In Preferences, the maximum amount I can use is 3 gigs

[jane-e]

@Ivairexe wrote on June 15:

You posted to Photoshop Developers and are not a developer. I've moved your post to to the Photoshop forum for you.

What is your OS version and your Photoshop version? How large are the files you are trying to open?

Jane

[Conrad_C]

What else is running? I think it calculates the maximum by looking at how much the system is making available to it. If other applications are running and need a lot of memory, there might not be a lot left for Photoshop. Try quitting other applications, or try restarting your computer, and then try increasing the maximum RAM amount again.

Never set the RAM amount to 100%. The reason it recommends a setting of no more than 70% is that you don’t want to starve the system and other applications, or the laptop will slow down a lot or start crashing. Photoshop will never be able to use all 8GB because some must be reserved for the system, integrated graphics, other applications, etc. 

8GB RAM is not considered a lot today. It is the Minimum amount in the Photoshop System Requirements, so it’s not considered ideal. 16GB is now the Recommended amount.

[Trevor.Dennis]

It sounds like your OS is only 32 bit.  Can you open Photoshop, and go Help > System Info > Copy and paste to this thread?  If that is what is going on, then I'm guessing that you are not using the most recent version as it needs a 64bit OS.

https://helpx.adobe.com/nz/photoshop/system-requirements.html

Either way, it's going to a miserable experience trying to use Photoshop with the sort of system spec that comes with 8Gb RAM.

[Conrad_C]

Oh, that’s a good one. 🙂 I was wondering what would limit it so far down to 3GB, but I forgot that a 32-bit system or application could be a reason, if the system is that old.

[Trevor.Dennis]

It wouldn't even be CS6 as Photoshop became unusable on 32bit systems with CS5.  If you tried allocating  Photoshop all the RAM it would allow, then you couldn'tr print because there was no memory for print spooling.  Third party plugins wouldn't work.  The trick was to be less greedy with RAM for Photoshop and put up with long waits for Scratch space reads and writes, and this was when HDDs could only manage 80mbs.  I've read that NVMe drives will be managing 10 to 15 Gb/s with PCIE 5.0 but they are alreading reading 6.8Gbs !!!