Advice for Photoshop .psb large format

[Keldrilh]

Hello guys,

I'm working with large images in photoshop in .psb format: 160.000 pixels X 300.000 pixels. When saved on Hard Disk the file size is 4.7 GB, but while working on photoshop it says 110/120 GB.

Problem 1) With my current laptop it takes more than 20 hours to save it. (I saved it with compression thou)

Problem 2) The image also contains a lot of layers, and when I start to work on the file, like adding objects and moving layers (please consider I'm not using filters, i'm simply creating a kind of mosaic), at the begininng Photoshop responds fast. But more things I do, more time it takes to esecute the command. After 20/30 minutes it becomes very slow, taking up to 2/3 minutes to move a layer or to add a new object... And the time keep increasing up to 5 minutes... (I tried also to remove "undo actions" but improvement is marginal)

Problem 3) I stopped to work on it as was strenuos and as I decided I need a new desktop for this project. But when I will resume my work, i estimateed the images size may increase over 10 Gb.

This is my current Laptop: DELL INSPIRION 15-3521 (Pentium 2127U 1.9 GHz / RAM 4GB / HD 500GB / Win 8.1 64 bit)

So this is the new desktop configuration i would like to check with you:

CPU: i7-6850K 3,6 GHz
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4 64GB (4x16GB) 3.000
GPU: Sapphire AMD RX 480 8GB
STORAGE: Samsung 960 EVO NVMe SSD 500 GB
STORAGE: WD Black 3.5 7.200RMP 2TB

My goal is to reduce drastically the saving time and being able to work on the image without minutes idle time beetween commands.

According to your experience do you think will it be enough to work on my project?

Do you have any suggestions to change some of the components?

Thanks a lot,
Ciao
Kel

[jslabovitz]

I don't edit those kind of images, nor do I use Windows, but I can offer a few general suggestions.

You probably need as much RAM as possible. It may not be much more expensive to just go with 128GB (4x32GB) rather than 64GB.

Are you planning on using the SSD for editing images, or just for the OS/apps/etc.? If your workflow supports it, you might consider copying your PSB files to the SSD and working on them there, then copying them back to the HD for long-term storage.

If you are going to use the HD for editing, then you'll want to maximize the speed of that storage. Look into a RAID controller with a SAS-2 interface, and then two or more hard drives that support SAS-2. If you stripe them (RAID0) you can get to about the same speed as an SSD drive, but at a much lower cost (relative to capacity).

You might want to look into what video folks are doing to edit 4K content. Those folks have worked out the bottlenecks, and are dealing with huge data all the time.

Don't forget backups!

[Keldrilh]

You probably need as much RAM as possible. It may not be much more expensive to just go with 128GB (4x32GB) rather than 64GB.

Actually I was thinking the same, but I will have to add 350euro for 128GB. So I can start with 64GB, see how it goes, and eventually increasing it later.

Are you planning on using the SSD for editing images, or just for the OS/apps/etc.? If your workflow supports it, you might consider copying your PSB files to the SSD and working on them there, then copying them back to the HD for long-term storage.

If you are going to use the HD for editing, then you'll want to maximize the speed of that storage. Look into a RAID controller with a SAS-2 interface, and then two or more hard drives that support SAS-2. If you stripe them (RAID0) you can get to about the same speed as an SSD drive, but at a much lower cost (relative to capacity).

My original post was incomplete. I correct it here. Both the storage drive are SSD.

STORAGE1: Samsung 960 EVO M.2 NVMe SSD 500GB is with M.2. For OS / running apps.
STORAGE: WD Black 3.5 SSD 7.200RMP 2TB is also SSD. Used as Scratch disk for photoshop.

You might want to look into what video folks are doing to edit 4K content. Those folks have worked out the bottlenecks, and are dealing with huge data all the time.

This is what i hope for! Maybe somebody into this kind of work will see this post and will give me his feedback!

Don't forget backups!

Yes, I already have an hard disk for this!

Thanks for your feedback,
Kel

[angusparker]

The M2 SSDs are very cheap and generally fast because they are attached straight to the main bus of the computer. For sure get a motherboard that has a high speed bus. On my now old MacPro desktop I get blazing speeds with them - consider one for OS/Apps and one for scratch. If I remember they aren't that good at being used as RAID because the bus starts to become a bottleneck if you have two of them in Raid 0 configuration so just go for the largest one (or two) you can afford - there isn't much penalty for a larger sized disk unlike with real HDs. Maximizing RAM is always a good idea up to a point. If I'm not mistaken and you should check with others on this, a fancy GPUs may not offer a huge performance boost for PS - that's I think because you aren't using a lot of vector data like with 4K video or video games - so that may not be the place to invest a great deal.

[locutus]

M.2 SSD is definitely nice to have, keep your scratch images there, it really helps with speed. Once you are done with a project you can 'archive' them to slow storage.

Note: that WD Black is *not* a SSD, but perfect for bulk data.

[Jac@stafford.net]

Photoshop likes plenty of RAM. Go for what you can afford.
Adobe designs PS to use the GPU for certain routines, so get a good one.
Photoshop does it's own 'page management' and it likes multiple scratch discs.

And go to Preferences/Performance to tell PS how many scratch discs to use, check to see if it's using the RAM available, set history and cache states to a reasonable figure, and of course it should recognize the GPU. Try that now before upgrading. It might help.

[Keldrilh]

M.2 SSD is definitely nice to have, keep your scratch images there, it really helps with speed. Once you are done with a project you can 'archive' them to slow storage.

Note: that WD Black is *not* a SSD, but perfect for bulk data.

I thought it was SSD. Got confused.

M.2 SSD are very expensive. I can afford a 500GB. Than it becomes excessive expensive.

So I was thinking One M.2 SSD 500GB to run OS/apps and One Regular SSD 1TB for Scratch. Will it work?

P.S.
I will check now for a regular good SSD instead of the WD Black.

[adelorenzo]

That system you are using now is really underpowered in terms of processor, RAM and GPU. What you are proposing will be screaming fast in comparison. I would not change anything.

[Keldrilh]

Photoshop likes plenty of RAM. Go for what you can afford.
Adobe designs PS to use the GPU for certain routines, so get a good one.
Photoshop does it's own 'page management' and it likes multiple scratch discs.

And go to Preferences/Performance to tell PS how many scratch discs to use, check to see if it's using the RAM available, set history and cache states to a reasonable figure, and of course it should recognize the GPU. Try that now before upgrading. It might help.

How much should be the scratch disk size?

[Preston]

Keldrilh,

The specs you have provided look good, but I do have a few things to share...

The video card you specced is overkill for Photo Shop. PS, at the moment, supports only a limited number of GPU accelerated functions, so you can save money (and generated heat) by going with a card in the 4 GB VRAM range.

As mentioned in post #2, it is a good idea to keep your 'working' *.PSB files on the SSD. The performance will be much improved over editing files stored on the WD Black. While RAID 0 is nice from a performance standpoint, if one of the disks fails, you lose all the data. Therefore, If you go this route, you will need a robust backup setup (you should have this anyway, as a matter of course).

One more thing about drives: M2 PCIe SSD's will throttle performance when they heat up. Therefore, I would stay with the Samsung 960, which is an excellent drive.

You will need a fairly hefty power supply. I suggest an 850W.

One final note: Your system as specced is going to generate a lot of heat, so be absolutely sure you have enough intake and exhaust fans.

I do not usually recommend PC builders, but you might want to check out Puget Systems in Auburn WA. They know their stuff.
--P