Inspiring

Question

Photoshop slow performance with 16bit files at 100MP, with mbp 16" too low end?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
August 7, 2021
2 replies
3341 views

hi

i am not sure, if latest photoshop has optimized code for heavy I/O loads?

i am mostly working on 100MP .psb files at 16bit with about 30-50 layers.

i realized, that the performance is mostly laggy and i cannot work in realtime.

for example, turn on / off one color-adjustment layer needs 3-5 sec to show result "before/after".

i am asking myself, if my hardware is too slow for these i/o loads (need a mac pro?) or if photoshop is not

optimized for 16bit files at 100MP with many layers.

my hardware:

latest macbookpro 16" with 64GB RAM and 2TB SSD, graphicscard has 8GB RAM.

i use an external thunderbolt 3 ssd as dedicated /empty scratch disc (1TB)

(running on big sur 11.5)

i work on 2 external screens, 1 x 32" Benq sw321c (4k), and a second NEC 27" at 2560px.

enclosed a screenshot of my monitored stats: (istatmenu)

thanks!

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

rob day

Community Expert

Just clarify, by 100MP you are referring to the .psb file’s pixel dimensions—10,000 x 10,000 px—and you don’t mean the file size is 100MB right? A 16-bit file that size with 30-50 layers would be many gigabytes—what is your Photoshop Info panel showing for Document Sizes?

petsAuthor

Inspiring

@ rob: yes, 100 Megapixel raw, saved as .psb with 30-50 layers in 16bit (10.000 x 10.000 px)

info panel shows about 10-30 GB filesize.

i am wondering, why PS is not allocating more memory, as i am monitoring, and its mostly allocating 30-40GB RAM.

@ d fosse: may i conclude, that my laptop (mbp 16" 8core, with 64 RAM and external 1TB ssd for scratch) is really too low end, and i need a tower computer with more i/o and 2 ssds inside? (in my case a mac pro 2019 or the mac pro 2022 with silicon)

thanks!

D Fosse

Community Expert

Why don't you just try it?

It's not a bad machine, but it doesn't have the ultimate scratch disk setup for Photoshop. This is just what Photoshop requires from any machine. My desktop system would also be "underpowered" if I disconnected all the internal disks and put PS scratch on an external.

If it doesn't make a difference, we'll look elsewhere. But make no mistake, the scratch disk is essential for good Photoshop performance. It's usually the first real bottleneck that people will hit.

D Fosse

Community Expert

Photoshop will handle this with no issues, but your hardware may not.

First of all, this requires a very large amount of free disk space for the Photoshop scratch disk. I suspect that's the main bottleneck. An external drive is never ideal, whatever the interface. Try to move the scratch disk to the internal drive. You need at least 500 GB free space for this, preferably more.

If that doesn't help, I would suspect the video driver - which, unfortunately, is integrated into the operating system on Mac. So there isn't much you can do about that. On Windows you could have updated the driver separately.

petsAuthor

Inspiring

i am questioning this, as i have 64 GB RAM and i am monitoring constantly, when i work with 100MP files in 16bit, RAM usage is at about 50GB "only". i am also monitoring my scratch disc, there is very few swap activity.

i am using a thunderbolt ssd external, as adobe said, the internal ssd, if its the only one, should not be set as scratch disc, if there is OS and work activity, too.

D Fosse

Community Expert

The scratch disk is always used, however much RAM you have. There is no such thing as "enough RAM" to Photoshop. Think of RAM as a fast access cache to the scratch disk's main memory.

Working with the file sizes you do, I can promise you that the scratch file will quickly grow to many hundred GB.

Photoshop runs its own memory management and I'm not sure the operating system will record the disk swapping, beyond the disk space that Photoshop allocates and requests from the OS.

Anyway, just try it.

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