Photoshop CS3 On Demand
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Scratch Disk

When your computer doesn’t have enough RAM to perform an operation, Photoshop uses free space on any available drive, known as a Scratch Disk. Photoshop requires 5 times the working size of the file in contiguous hard drive space. For example, if the working size of your file is 100MB, you will need 500MB of contiguous hard drive space, or you will receive an error message: Out of Scratch Disk Space (I hate it when that happens). Using additional hard drives gives Photoshop the ability to divide the processing load and increase performance. Photoshop detects and displays all available internal disks in the Preferences dialog box. Scratch disks must be physically attached to your computer (avoid networks and removable media, such as zip drives, or rewriteable CDs or DVDs). For maximum speed, avoid USB, and use 4 or 6-pin Firewire drives. Benchmark tests show Firewire drives provide up to a 20 percent speed improvement when used as Scratch Disks. Think of saving one hour out of every five, or one full day out of every five. That's not too bad. For best results, select a scratch disk on a different drive than the one used for virtual memory or any large files you’re editing.

 

Memory & Image Cache

Photoshop functions in RAM memory (actually all applications work within RAM). To run efficiently, Photoshop requires five times the working size of the open document in available memory (some tests indicate 6 to 8 times). Strictly speaking, the more RAM memory you can assign to Photoshop, the more efficient the program operates, especially when opening large document.

RAM memory usage is determined by the working size of the document, not its open size. As you work on a document, you will eventually add additional layers to separate and control elements of the image. As you add these new layers, the working size of the file increases.

Figure 3.2

Setting General Preferences

Photoshop's General preferences help you configure some of the more common features of the program. Image quality settings, as well as the new History log are setup in General preferences. Other options, such as showing tool tips, beeping when an operation is finished, and using Smart Quotes, can all be turned on or off in the options area. The History Log lets you save all the History States performed on a particular document. For example, when you open an image, all the adjustments and actions performed are saved in a text file. This gives you access to valuable information, and lets you reproduce the steps performed on one image, to correct the contents of another. You can also change the size of the small font text on the Options bar, palettes, and tool tips.

Work with General Options

Click the Edit (Win) or Photoshop (Mac) menu, and then point to Preferences.

Click General.

 

Click the Color Picker list arrow, and then select Adobe or another operating system (Windows or Macintosh).

Click the Image Interpolation list arrow, and then select Nearest Neighbor (Faster), Bilinear, or one of the Bicubic options.

Click the UI Font Size list arrow, and then select a size for the user interface fonts. The change takes effect the next time you start Photoshop.

 

Figure 3.3

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