Photoshop CS5 Optimization Conclusions

2010-04-30 updated 2010-05-03 • SEND FEEDBACK •
Related: memory, optimization, Photoshop, software

This Optimizing series has more to come, so stay tuned with the diglloyd blog and/or diglloyd on Twitter.

Findings so far:

• Configuration is absolutely critical to performance, with Adobe recommended defaults for Cache Tile Size gutting performance by 80%! See the Cache Tile Size page.
• Leave Photoshop running so that it doesn’t have to allocate memory again. See the Warm-up page.
• Memory is more important than ever for large files.

Beware new releases

Anyone in “production” would be wise to treat Photoshop CS5 as beta for a few months, and let the issues settle out. It can be run in parallel with CS4, so that is another option.

Was this release rushed out the door to meet a revenue deadline? Here are just some of the obvious problems that severely impair usability; I’ve found other bugs also.

• The painfully obvious memory allocation “warmup” problem is a bad sign (I found this problem literally in the first minute of use!);
• The default cache tile size results in a severe performance impairment.
• Adobe’s plugins for controlling caching, virtual memory, etc were not available at release;
• Third-party plugins linger as 32-bit versions. Such plugins are critical to many workflows, did Adobe not have an aggressive developer program in place? Why does the 32-bit CS5 limit memory to 2100MB, thus crippling the only workaround for 32-bit plugins?
• Scrolling with the center button on my Apple mouse is now unusable (scrolls a few pixels at a time). As I do this constantly, this ruins the entire experience for me.

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