Slow saving of ZIP-compressed files in Photoshop

[warzenbeisser]

Hi, this is to the attention of the Photoshop development team. While not strictly speaking a bug, I consider the matter urgent.

As a photographer, I routinely develop my RAW files in Lightroom Classic, do the final edit in Photoshop, and save my master files as ZIP-compressed TIFFs. I just set up a new Mac Studio to speed up my workflow, and to my dismay, I noticed that the current version of Photoshop still takes copious amounts of time to save ordinary 40–50 Megapixel photos as an 8-bit per channel ZIP-compressed TIFF. According to the activity monitor, Photoshop apparently computes the compression on a single core only, not even using the GPU.

Hey, a pro grade digital camera compresses and saves some 20 to 30 RAW images per second while one of the fastest PCs available today still takes many seconds for just a single TIFF file? I bet there must be a way to substantially improve on this excruciatingly slow performance by optimising the code (parallel computing on all available CPU/GPU cores, more efficient algorithm, better machine code).

Another thing that I noticed is network activity each and every time I save a file from Photoshop. I have turned off all diagnostic feedback, and I certainly do not want Photoshop to waste any time by “phoning home” at every file save. You know, time is money. I work with local ssd storage at the highest bandwidth that I can afford, and I do expect save operations to be as fast as possible. Please review your code and do what is necessary to ensure an instant and speedy execution of every save command. Thank you.

[jazz-y]

Tiff is a rather old format that has a number of security problems due to the peculiarities of the internal data structure. I do not know the exact reason, but I suspect that Adobe is trying to protect your system from possible problems as much as possible, as a result, it performs a lot of additional checks on the file structure, leading to a noticeable decrease in performance.

I use TIFF only as a format for data exchange (in cases where it is necessary for the receiving party). I recommend that you use PSD for storing files (if you do not have the file compression option disabled in Photoshop settings, then you will get a good balance between speed and final file size).

[warzenbeisser]

Thanks for your recommendation jazz-y. I try to avoid proprietary formats for long-term storage, but I guess PSD is not changed as often as, say, INDD with all the ensuing compatibility issues. Furthermore, I usually edit the metadata and send JPEGs to my clients, so switching the archive format would not complicate things. I am going to do some tests and consider this option.