Photoshop CS5 Cache Tile Size = Sharp Stick In The Eye

Use 1024K; don’t even think about using 128K!
Settings above worked well.

The Cache Tile Size setting is a sharp stick in the eye. Use it wrong, and you’ll be a hurtin’.

It’s startling that the recommended default setting yields hugely impaired performance. See the graph below.

Adobe’s online help says: “To quickly optimize these settings, click a preset...”. Nonsense. Might as well jab a sharp stick in your eye.

This is a careless design decision (or maybe an outright mistake) that will hurt many customers by wasting their time needlessly. Something else should be done, up to and including CS5 figuring it out automatically for any particular file (self analysis). But at the least, not offering a sharp stick.

The settings shown at right performed about as well as anything I tried, though there are so many combinations that it’s possible there’s a better set. For general use, I’d probably use a history of 100 or so, because I like history.

The graph below says it all— don’t even think about using 128K tiles with big files.

Time in seconds, lower is better