PSD TIFF and Performance

[jknotzke]

  Hi

  I edit many of my photos in Photoshop using layers, etc. When the outputted TIFF is large (which is often the case) PM is very slow in rendering it.

   Are there some performance tweaks I can use to make PM work faster on TIFF files ? Are PSD files better ?
 
   Here is a screenshot of my settings:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1mcb8r71smgklow/Screen%20Shot%202013-10-16%20at%208.19.59%20.png

   Thanks!

   J

[Kirk Baker]

  Hi

  I edit many of my photos in Photoshop using layers, etc. When the outputted TIFF is large (which is often the case) PM is very slow in rendering it.

   Are there some performance tweaks I can use to make PM work faster on TIFF files ? Are PSD files better ?
 
   Here is a screenshot of my settings:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1mcb8r71smgklow/Screen%20Shot%202013-10-16%20at%208.19.59%20.png

TIFFs are slow to load simply because they tend to be large in total disk size.  PSDs are in the same category.

JPEGs load fast because they're compressed and the decompression speed is fantastic.  Less data to read off of a relatively slow device.

Where are your TIFFs and PSDs located?  If they're not on a local fast disk, putting them there would help.  Putting them on an SSD or fast RAID array will also help.

There are no settings that can compensate for the slow loading of large files off of slow media.

-Kirk

[jknotzke]

  Hi

  Thanks so much for the quick reply. The customer support here always amazes me.

  Ok, so from what I can gather, there's no embedded jpeg in a TIFF or PSD. That's a shame.

   Edit:

   Scanning Adobe's support pages and I found this:

"When saving a PSD, you can set a preference to maximize file compatibility. This saves a composite version of a layered image in the file so it can be read by other applications, including previous versions of Photoshop. It also maintains the appearance of the document, just in case future versions of Photoshop change the behavior of some features. Including the composite also makes the image much faster to load and use in applications other than Photoshop, and may sometimes be required to make the image readable in other applications."

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-7758a.html#WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-7782a

  Is PM able to just read this composite ? Wouldn't that speed up the rendering of the image ?

   What about caching ? I don't mind paying a performance hit when it's first loaded but what about after ?

   I know Bridge caches but IIRC (and correct me if I am wrong) but it will have to regenerate a preview each time you change the file. So there's no real advantage there.

   I'm on a Macbook Pro and my files are stored on an external Firewire 800 drive. I'm thinking it might be time to get myself a larger desktop and load it up with SSD's.

   Thanks again

   J

[Kirk Baker]

  Thanks so much for the quick reply. The customer support here always amazes me.

  Ok, so from what I can gather, there's no embedded jpeg in a TIFF or PSD. That's a shame.

   Edit:

   Scanning Adobe's support pages and I found this:

"When saving a PSD, you can set a preference to maximize file compatibility. This saves a composite version of a layered image in the file so it can be read by other applications, including previous versions of Photoshop. It also maintains the appearance of the document, just in case future versions of Photoshop change the behavior of some features. Including the composite also makes the image much faster to load and use in applications other than Photoshop, and may sometimes be required to make the image readable in other applications."

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-7758a.html#WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-7782a

  Is PM able to just read this composite ? Wouldn't that speed up the rendering of the image ?

   What about caching ? I don't mind paying a performance hit when it's first loaded but what about after ?

   I know Bridge caches but IIRC (and correct me if I am wrong) but it will have to regenerate a preview each time you change the file. So there's no real advantage there.

   I'm on a Macbook Pro and my files are stored on an external Firewire 800 drive. I'm thinking it might be time to get myself a larger desktop and load it up with SSD's.

Photo Mechanic definitely caches image data, both on disk and in memory.  Photo Mechanic is unable to render PSDs that don't have the composite layer in them.  Since you're seeing PSDs render in PM, you're already doing that.

You can change cache size both on disk and memory, but I don't recommend going higher than 768 MB in memory and even less is often better, depending on the size (width and height) of images you're working with.  If your images are over 30 megapixel then set the memory cache no higher than 512.  You can change these settings in the Caching section of the Preferences dialog.

Having faster local storage could help somewhat but don't expect miracles.  FW800 isn't particularly slow like a networked drive.

-Kirk

[jknotzke]

  I shoot with a D800 and a D3s and PM is crazy fast using just those files. Where it bogs down is when I add layer upon layer in PS and then view it in PM.

   Where I really notice it is when I choose Save As or Upload. When I click "Ok" the dialog box just stalls with the Ok button depressed. Then after a while it starts to export the TIFF. It would be cool instead if you coded it so that it closed the dialog box right away and then just added that initial processing time to the export dialog progress box.

   The reason being is that with the way it is now, it feels as if the application is crashing, when it isn't.

  I bumped the disk cache and I'll maybe lower the memory cache to see what it does. I'll also do some performance testing between TIFF and PSD. Without actually timing it, it appears PSD is faster.