Hi,
Question: Are the File Sizes too large for my iMac Mini?
I bought this computer in February 2023.
Storage is:
Photoshop and Lightroom (Creative Cloud and up to date)is painfully slow (60sec per command) and it keeps crashing…….. several times daily. I am working with file sizes of 1.7GB Plus, including Layers and Masks.
Question: Are the File Sizes too large for my iMac Mini?
Thanks in advance,
Geoff
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Replies
Photoshop and Lightroom (Creative Cloud and up to date)is painfully slow (60sec per command) and it keeps crashing…….. several times daily. I am working with file sizes of 1.7GB Plus, including Layers and Masks.
By @geoffl18657010
The Storage screen shot shows less than 100GB available. Personally, I like to keep between 100-200GB free on my Mac startup volume, and more is better. But my files are much smaller than yours. If I worked with 1.7GB+ files, I would try to have a lot more space free on my Mac startup volume for the Photoshop scratch file. Because for files of that size, the Photoshop scratch file wants to be massive (it’s always many times the size of the file itself, because it stores things like History states). If there isn’t enough room on the default scratch volume, Photoshop can slow down or crash.
And in fact I don’t have that much space free on my Mac, so when I do need to edit Photoshop files that large, I connect an external 1TB SSD, which are cheap now. In Photoshop > Settings > Scratch Disks, I assign that external volume not just as a scratch disk, but as the primary scratch disk (the one at the top of the list). That way, Photoshop first goes to the big empty external SSD for the scratch file, and does not use up internal storage.
Some might say that you can look at deleting the files making up the gray part of the storage bar. That might help, but only temporarily. Much of that space is used for large temp/cache/snapshot files so if you were to delete them, they might be regenerated soon. So it’s better to move large files to external storage, and/or attach large fast external storage as a Photoshop scratch disk.
The computer itself (M2 Mac Studio) is a very good choice for this type of work, at least as far as the CPU and GPU. For files of that size, it is possible that 32GB of Unified Memory might not be enough. But if you open Activity Monitor and the Memory tab shows Memory Pressure as green most of the time, then memory is not the problem, it is more likely to be storage space.
I used a programme called Clean my Mac. I found it easy to understand and simple to use. It cleared about 65MB of unwanted 'stuff'.
By @geoffl18657010
Just keep in mind that if it literally cleared off 65MB (megabytes) of files, that’s…almost nothing, in this context. In my earlier reply I was talking about keeping 100GB (gigabytes) or more free on the primary Photoshop scratch disk. A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes. Now, if it really cleaned off 65GB not MB, then that should help, but how much it will help depends on the size of the Photoshop documents you edit. Very large Photoshop documents need hundreds of GB of scratch space, so clearing off just 65GB may or may not make enough difference.
The other thing is, it depends on what kinds of files CleanMyMac deleted. If they were the kinds of temporary files I talked about in my earlier reply, then those are just going to come back anyway.
But, if it turns out that it actually helps, then that would be great.
External drives are fine, its NETWORK drives that are bad news.
By @Lumigraphics
I agree and I think locally mounted external volumes are fine.
@D Fosse, Is there a link to where Adobe advises against external drives?
The article I’m familiar with is this one:
Networks, removable media | Photoshop
which says (see the last paragraph and last line in particular):
Adobe Technical Support only supports using Photoshop and Adobe Bridge on a local hard disk. It's difficult to re-create or accurately identify network- and peripheral-configuration problems.
Important: External hard drives should work with Photoshop without a problem, although depending on how they are connected, might be slower than working with files on your internal drive. Testing against these drives by temporarily disabling them and working exclusively on an internal drive is appropriate. However, Adobe is not stating that there should be regular problems storing files and working with external hard disks.
Also, I think that is another article that is out of date. It keeps talking about hard disks, but 2-4TB external SSDs are so affordable and tiny now that they are widely used, including by me. I work directly with images on external SSDs (locally mounted over USB 3) every day.
The Adobe article does seem to focus its concerns on network-mounted and removable media. And it should be clear from that quote that “removable media” does not mean all externally mounted volumes. The way they have traditionally used the term “removable media” was for easily swappable media that goes in a slot, such as SD cards, cartridge drives (like the old Zip, Jaz, and SyQuest cartridges), and other hot-swappable volumes. Not hard drives and SSDs connected using a USB/Thunderbolt cable.
"Technical Support strongly recommends working in Photoshop directly on the local hard disk. To prevent data loss, save files to your hard disk first. Then transfer them to the network or removable drive in the Finder or in Windows Explorer."
By @D Fosse
I think that type of phrasing in the Adobe tech article is what is leading to the confusion, and it is a problem we still see in Creative Cloud documentation and announcements (like the widely misinterpreted announcement about the discontinuation of Creative Cloud synced files). The phrasing is technically correct, but written in a way that may not be clear to some, leading to a potential misinterpretation that it is a warning about external volumes in general. When, upon closer reading, it is not such a warning.
It says “Technical Support strongly recommends working in Photoshop directly on the local hard disk.” Well, an external SSD or hard drive is a local hard disk, because technically it is locally mounted, so then those must be OK. The second sentence supports that, specifically calling out “network or removable drives,” implying that non-network and non-removable drives (such as external SSDs/hard drives) are OK.
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