Advice for Photoshop .psb large format

[Amedeus]

I do work with large images (5-7GB) in Photoshop.

My "standard" retouching system is a 2011 iMac (top of the line then ;-) ... ) with 32GB ram, one (external) 500GB Samsung SSD as scratch disk and two 8-bay Drobos for storage/back up. 1 T drive in the computer.

Although the above setup is adequate for images up to 2GB, once over that, things become very slow ... THe last 7GB image I worked on took about 7 days of work to finish the last complex filtering action. I was biting nails the power wouldn't drop out .. lol

My current system is not much younger but is a MacPro with 2 quad cores running at 2.4Ghz, 64GB and two (internal) 500GB Samsung SSD as scratch disk, the rest is unchanged ... let's say that this made my life much more pleasant.

I do try to keep the layers to a minimum by flattening as soon as I believe the desired intermediate goal is achieved.

Just an FYI.

Rudi A.

[Keldrilh]

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

Thanks a lot, i really appreciate your feedback. Your suggestions are helping me to find the right configuration.

I already stepped on Pudget system website few days ago. Actually they have some article very good and usefull articles about Destoktop configuration for Photoshop. But they are in far away Australia! and I'm in Italy!!

Just one more question.

The mother board has only one M.2 connection. If I take an adaptor for the second M.2 Drive, will it loose quality the transfer rate?

[jp]

Your laptop is good for solitaire, word processing, and light Internet browsing. The quoted desktop is probably 25x the computer and much more appropriate.
I'd agree that a 4gb video card will probably be fine and save a couple hundred you can use elsewhere.

It's possible you don't need quite so large a file, but I'm not privy to the nature of your tasks. Each layer basically doubles the original memory requirements in PS as it needs before/after renderings for turning layers on and off quickly.

You'll want a 4k IPS display as well. That too will be much nicer and more appropriate than a consumer laptop display which changes tones depending on the angle you look at it.

[Preston]

But they are in far away Australia! and I'm in Italy!!

No, they are located in Washington state, USA. That is a bit closer to Italy. I am not sure what their policy is for international shipments, though. You would need to check with them. If you send an e-mail, they will get back to you in short order.

The mother board has only one M.2 connection. If I take an adaptor for the second M.2 Drive, will it loose quality the transfer rate?

I am not sure. However, my 'prime directive' is Keep It Simple. As I said above, your choices for drives are solid, and will get the job done. If you need additional storage space, or a scratch drive, you can always add another HD, assuming the case and mother board will handle it.
--P

[locutus]

Don't get to hung up on needing a M.2 PCI-e SSD, they are screaming fast but a normal midrange SATA connected drive will be fast enough for your uses.

To put it in perspective; A decent Samsung SATA SSD will do the initial read of the size of files you are working on in 9 seconds, the M.2 one in 4, if the software is any smart it wont read/writeout the whole fileset on each manipulation after that.

So spending more money on saving that part is not the most efficient place, more memory will be a better use of that money and if you are using Adobe tools that support GPU acceleration a dedicated graphics card helps.

[Keldrilh]

Thank you all for the suggestions!

[Jim Andrada]

And since it was suggested you look into it, the 4k (and other size) "video guys" edit low(er) resolution "proxy" files that are linked to the original files so all the editing actions can be applied to the high resolution files when it's time to render the final video. I "only" record 2.5k video and even so it will fill a 500GB SSD in 40 minutes or so. And it's possible to do something similar in PS, although I've never had to try it.

https://www.videomaker.com/videonews...-your-workflow

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...oxy-Image-quot

[Keldrilh]

And since it was suggested you look into it, the 4k (and other size) "video guys" edit low(er) resolution "proxy" files that are linked to the original files so all the editing actions can be applied to the high resolution files when it's time to render the final video. I "only" record 2.5k video and even so it will fill a 500GB SSD in 40 minutes or so. And it's possible to do something similar in PS, although I've never had to try it.

https://www.videomaker.com/videonews...-your-workflow

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...oxy-Image-quot

I'll give a look. thx

[locutus]

Software like Lightroom or Silverfast do this proxy editing by default already, they work on a screen sized copy and then once you are happy they will render out full resolution results.

I dont think Photoshop can do this though.

Another item; if you can stretch it (and honestly its expensive) the Dell 2715k monitor is pretty much the best thing ever since sliced bread for working on high resolution files, you get 15 megapixels of onscreen resolution (a 1920x1080 monitor is about 2) it gets very close to looking at a large format slide....

[Jac@stafford.net]

Here is Adobe's page on PS optimization. Hope this helps.