To speed up Photoshop CS3, one should understand that its speed is affected most by the available RAM memory as well as the computer processor speed. But those aren’t just the factors that affect performance. There are other things as well like the options you have selected, the workflow, your operating system as well as your hardware configuration. Optimizing your operating system as well as your hardware configuration would not only help speed up Photoshop CS3 but improve the performance of your applications as well.
Photoshop CS3 supports many new image dimensions as well as files and as such it requires more advanced system performance when compared to its predecessor. The maximum file size that it can support is 300,000 x 300,000 pixels, except for PDF files because those are still constrained by the 30,000 x 30,000 pixel limitations.
So, what can you do to speed up Photoshop CS3? Look below for some tips.
The options you select as well as the plug-ins that you use in Photoshop greatly affects its performance, the ones which affect it the most are the ones listed here.
- Setting Scratch Disks
What is a scratch disk? A scratch disk is similar to a virtual memory in a Mac OS. So for the best performance possible, you must set the primary scratch disk to an already defragmented hard drive that is not used to run the operating system as well as having a good amount of unused space. It should also have a fast read and write speed.
- Adjust Cache Levels
Photoshop makes use of image caching to draw high resolution pictures faster on-screen. To enable the Cache Levels options, specify the number of low resolution versions you want Photoshop to store or cache. The more versions you save the slower Photoshop would open the files. The default setting for this is 6 but you can go lower by choosing a number between 1-8. Setting it to the lowest possible would help increase and speed up Photoshop CS3 performance.
- Minimizing Palette Preview Thumbnails
Photoshop uses extra memory to display the thumbnail previews in the layers, paths and channels palettes so the more preview thumbnails that Photoshop displays and the larger their size, the more memory is being used to draw and update them. To minimize these previews, click on Palette Options from the Palette pop-up menu then select the smallest size or none for the thumbnail size and then click OK.
- Dragging and dropping files
Dragging and dropping in between layers of files is way more efficient than when you are copying and pasting them. Dragging files bypasses the clipboard and directly transfers the data. Copying and pasting on the other hand would involve more transferring of data and takes more time.
By customizing the system you can help speed Photoshop cs3. You can also do this by increasing the amount of memory allocated to Photoshop you can do this by closing applications that you are not using or by disabling extensions that aren’t significant.