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Participant
April 27, 2022
Question

Photoshop using ram Even after all tabs are closed

  • April 27, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 3337 views

Hi,

This is tony from India. Using Ryzen 5 CPU, 3200Mhz 16 GB Ram. My photoshop is using about 50% of Ram even when all tabs are closed, also when tabs are opened but not performing anything. Is there any background processing when nothing opened in photoshop? Around 2Gb of ram was used by photoshop when just opened photoshop.

2 replies

Participant
December 28, 2023

thats it mine uses 17GB while Idle. I have no idea why. I have 64GB of DDR4 at 3200 but it causes stress on my PC for no reason. With 1 file open it starts to use 25GB+

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 27, 2022

2GB sounds a bit much, I have around 1GB idle here. Otherwise this is normal.

 

But note that if you have an open image and then close it, the reserved memory will not be released as long as Photoshop is open. That memory will be reused for the next image. This is by design, because requesting it all over again from the OS is much less efficient.

 

Generally, people are far to worried about Photoshop memory usage. Photoshop is supposed to use all available memory! That's when it works efficiently. Free RAM is wasted RAM.

 

Raster image editing is massively memory-intensive, and in reality, Photoshop will use much more memory than any installed RAM. That's why you have a scratch disk. All that temporary working data are written to disk, with RAM acting more like a fast access cache, holding only the most current data.

 

All of this is why it's important to set the memory allocation sensibly. Never go to 100%. The default is 70%, which will leave some for other applications and processes.

Participating Frequently
July 31, 2023

While reserving RAM that is being used over and over is generally a good approach, never releasing massive amounts of RAM can result in system resource issues if you are using multiple programs at the same time. It only takes a moment to allocate RAM when needed, but if it never releases the RAM for use in something like Premiere, then you are forced to close programs - and that takes a lot longer then it takes for Photoshop to allocate RAM...

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 31, 2023

It's not as simple as you think. What about running batch actions? Should Photoshop release memory between each single image opened?