Photoshop Elements slow with external drive [was "Beginner"]

[yahyah9]

Do I all of my photos on an external drive and then import a few at a time onto photoshop?   I can't have all of my photos loaded onto my computer.

Also I have a trial of photoshop on my computer.   Why does it make it run so slow?   Is this normal?

Thanks

Debbie

[Nancy OShea]

If you're using an under powered computer, Photoshop will run slow.  Keep in mind that the system requirements are only a  baseline recommendation.  You also need a fast CPU + plenty of physical and RAM memory to support your operating system + Creative Cloud + all your other apps and utilities.

Photoshop system requirements

I do work with images stored on an 1TB external drive but it does make things a tad slower.

[yahyah9]

Ok so obviously I am very new to all of this.   My computer is i5-7200u  cpu @ 2.50GHz  2.70 GHz    8.0 GB 64 operating x64 processor window 10.   Is this going to be OK to run the program?

64

[Nancy OShea]

Go to Edit > Preferences > Performance  and Scratch disk. 

How much RAM and physical memory are you giving Photoshop?

[yahyah9]

do you mean edit on Elements?

[Nancy OShea]

Moved from Photoshop to Photoshop Elements forum.

[MichelBParis]

yahyah9  wrote

Do I all of my photos on an external drive and then import a few at a time onto photoshop?   I can't have all of my photos loaded onto my computer.

Also I have a trial of photoshop on my computer.   Why does it make it run so slow?   Is this normal?

Thanks

Debbie

My experience with Elements:

- Your hardware is ok for Elements (could be better, but I can work comfortably enough on a similar config)

- Storing the media on an external drive is quite common, I'd recommend a USB3 external drive (... and another one for backups). There is not much speed difference with the internal drive on most cases.

- Setting the 'scratch disk' may be important. It's not recommended to put it on the external drive. I suppose you have a single internal drive, so the important factor is to have enough space for the scratch disk in your preferences. See the Edit >> Preferences >> performance settings of the editor. The default setting should be good.

- Speed problems may be different in the editor and in the organizer. What can be dramatic is to have different 'automatic' 'background' tasks running : face detection, search for missing files, smart tagging... Maybe start by disabling them to see the difference and reenable them progressively. Face tagging in a big library can run for days... even weeks until the indexing is finished.

So, if you can tell what feature is slow or sluggish, we might advice something else.