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Background: have been using Ulead PhotoPaint 11 since time immemorial for photo-retouching. This is OK but old and does not accept the Nikon RAW files flavour (NEF). I therefore decided to try out the popular Photoshop (PS)
To make it quite clear, this was done on a computer with what Adobe claim is minimum RAM, 2 GB, although all other computer specs are well over the minimum. I would expect my problems would have been lessened with more RAM, but certainly not eliminated. The computer runs under Win 7 Pro, 64 bit and is my main office computer with many tens of apps installed, chosen because it has a high quality scanner and the USB cable for my Nikon camera attached.
NEF files are Nikon's take on quasi-lossless compressed RAW files and need a codec to decompress. The compression ratio varies from about 1.5:1 to 4:1, the latter for shots with large areas of even colour and intensity, averaging about 2:1. The decompression produces true RGB files. Irrelevant here but there are reports that highlights in the decompressed files suffer slightly but I've not been able to confirm it.
PS comes in 3 flavours, PS, PS Lightroom and PS Essentials.
Stage 1: I installed the full PS which is a monster bloatware application. I loaded 4 ~5 MB NEF files and started the learning curve. I was impressed with its performance; it did everything I needed +++. Surprisingly, switching back and forth between the files was almost instantaneous, making me realise that all four were in active RAM, not in the virtual RAM scratchdisk and there was no way to free the memory taken. The crunch came when I had added a few layers to the files (I may be wrong, but I had the impression that each retouch operation added a layer to the RGB file, so that the RAW file remained intact!). Anyway, it was not long before the scratchdisk started to take over, making each new operation unacceptably slow; a quick check with system manager showed >95% physical memory was taken. This did not perturb me as it was intended to use it eventually on a different machine, normally used for video work, with 6 GB RAM. What did perturb me was that, when I exited PS, it liberated only a small proportion of the used memory, less than 200 GB (presumably that part needed to run the actual software). The result was that the computer became s-l-o-o-o-o-w, even with just mouse movements. I deemed this behaviour unacceptable, because it meant that in real life, on my video machine, I would not be able to run my video software after a large retouch session without a reboot. However, to confirm my hypothesis, I re-started PS and was able to take up where I left off, even to the extent of performing a long series of Ctrl-Z operations! This confirmed that my RAW files + all the work I had done on them remained in RAM while I was trying to browse the Internet etc. Incidentally, another downside was that PS CC + CC was EUR 856/year, which, alone, was prohibitive.
Stage 2: I rebooted to clear the RAM of all vestiges of PS and my tests and uninstalled PS.
Stage 3: I installed PS Lightroom. Exactly the same problems. However, the price was acceptable at EUR 130 for a permanent licence. Probably acceptable to my needs, other than the memory issue.
Stage 4: I rebooted to clear the RAM of all vestiges of PS and my tests and uninstalled PS Lightroom. It then struck me that if it could keep things in RAM after exiting, it would need to be doing something to keep them there. I did a search for PS and found about 20 folders/files that had not been uninstalled and deleted them. I then did a search in the registry and found 497 lines containing "photoshop" and deleted them. Uninstall PS does not clear the registry! Reboot.
Stage 5: I installed PS Essentials. Exactly the same problems. However, the price was very acceptable at EUR 60 for a permanent licence. Possibly acceptable to my needs, other than the memory issue.
Stage 6: I rebooted to clear the RAM of all vestiges of PS and my tests and uninstalled PS Essentials. I did a new search for PS and found about 12 folders/files that had not been uninstalled and deleted them. I then did a search in the registry and found 315 new lines containing "photoshop" and deleted them. Uninstall PS Essentials does not clear the registry! Reboot.
I then did a search to find out why Adobe did their memory management in such a bizarre way. This is deliberate and they claim that it is to ensure max speed in use. (And to hell for anyone wanting to use other apps after exiting the PS app
) Fair enough, it is their choice to use such a system of memory management and thus to alienate a few potential customers who "try before buy". The forums are full of complaints on the subject, so I found out a posteriori. It is my belief that PS is great for professional photographers who have a dedicated computer for using it, but it is crippling for those, like myself, who use a photo-editing app for one image and then go on to something else.
Does anyone know of a photo-editor that is reasonable in price, can accept NEF files, has a good number of features, is stable and has better memory management? Thanks!
To make it quite clear, this was done on a computer with what Adobe claim is minimum RAM, 2 GB, although all other computer specs are well over the minimum. I would expect my problems would have been lessened with more RAM, but certainly not eliminated. The computer runs under Win 7 Pro, 64 bit and is my main office computer with many tens of apps installed, chosen because it has a high quality scanner and the USB cable for my Nikon camera attached.
NEF files are Nikon's take on quasi-lossless compressed RAW files and need a codec to decompress. The compression ratio varies from about 1.5:1 to 4:1, the latter for shots with large areas of even colour and intensity, averaging about 2:1. The decompression produces true RGB files. Irrelevant here but there are reports that highlights in the decompressed files suffer slightly but I've not been able to confirm it.
PS comes in 3 flavours, PS, PS Lightroom and PS Essentials.
Stage 1: I installed the full PS which is a monster bloatware application. I loaded 4 ~5 MB NEF files and started the learning curve. I was impressed with its performance; it did everything I needed +++. Surprisingly, switching back and forth between the files was almost instantaneous, making me realise that all four were in active RAM, not in the virtual RAM scratchdisk and there was no way to free the memory taken. The crunch came when I had added a few layers to the files (I may be wrong, but I had the impression that each retouch operation added a layer to the RGB file, so that the RAW file remained intact!). Anyway, it was not long before the scratchdisk started to take over, making each new operation unacceptably slow; a quick check with system manager showed >95% physical memory was taken. This did not perturb me as it was intended to use it eventually on a different machine, normally used for video work, with 6 GB RAM. What did perturb me was that, when I exited PS, it liberated only a small proportion of the used memory, less than 200 GB (presumably that part needed to run the actual software). The result was that the computer became s-l-o-o-o-o-w, even with just mouse movements. I deemed this behaviour unacceptable, because it meant that in real life, on my video machine, I would not be able to run my video software after a large retouch session without a reboot. However, to confirm my hypothesis, I re-started PS and was able to take up where I left off, even to the extent of performing a long series of Ctrl-Z operations! This confirmed that my RAW files + all the work I had done on them remained in RAM while I was trying to browse the Internet etc. Incidentally, another downside was that PS CC + CC was EUR 856/year, which, alone, was prohibitive.
Stage 2: I rebooted to clear the RAM of all vestiges of PS and my tests and uninstalled PS.
Stage 3: I installed PS Lightroom. Exactly the same problems. However, the price was acceptable at EUR 130 for a permanent licence. Probably acceptable to my needs, other than the memory issue.
Stage 4: I rebooted to clear the RAM of all vestiges of PS and my tests and uninstalled PS Lightroom. It then struck me that if it could keep things in RAM after exiting, it would need to be doing something to keep them there. I did a search for PS and found about 20 folders/files that had not been uninstalled and deleted them. I then did a search in the registry and found 497 lines containing "photoshop" and deleted them. Uninstall PS does not clear the registry! Reboot.
Stage 5: I installed PS Essentials. Exactly the same problems. However, the price was very acceptable at EUR 60 for a permanent licence. Possibly acceptable to my needs, other than the memory issue.
Stage 6: I rebooted to clear the RAM of all vestiges of PS and my tests and uninstalled PS Essentials. I did a new search for PS and found about 12 folders/files that had not been uninstalled and deleted them. I then did a search in the registry and found 315 new lines containing "photoshop" and deleted them. Uninstall PS Essentials does not clear the registry! Reboot.
I then did a search to find out why Adobe did their memory management in such a bizarre way. This is deliberate and they claim that it is to ensure max speed in use. (And to hell for anyone wanting to use other apps after exiting the PS app
) Fair enough, it is their choice to use such a system of memory management and thus to alienate a few potential customers who "try before buy". The forums are full of complaints on the subject, so I found out a posteriori. It is my belief that PS is great for professional photographers who have a dedicated computer for using it, but it is crippling for those, like myself, who use a photo-editing app for one image and then go on to something else.Does anyone know of a photo-editor that is reasonable in price, can accept NEF files, has a good number of features, is stable and has better memory management? Thanks!
But Your RAM problems with Adobe products is something i read about some time ago also. There were some tests made on some Polish website, that shows that 16GB RAM is best solutions for Photoshop 
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