Photoshop CS5 Optimization Conclusions

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.

The MPG Pro Workstation and MPG Pro Laptop

Looking for the best possible Mac Pro or MacBook Pro for Photoshop? Be sure to check out the MPG Pro Workstation and the MPG Pro Laptop. Consulting is also available.