How much RAM for Photoshop?
Discussion
towman said:
Help!
Installed PS, but when I try to run it I get an error message saying "not enough RAM"
I put another set of chips in, so it now has 992Mb. How much more do i need, or do I have to do anything to "activate" the new RAM?
Thanks
Steve
Have you looked in the BIOS to make sure the added ram is being seen?
Dave
406TM
This may not actually be a RAM issue - I had this when the disk that the scratch disk was on ran out of space.
You can check this under Edit - Preferences - Plug-ins and Scratch Disks.
Ideally you would set the scratch disk to be on a different disk to the O/S, or even a 2nd partition, but whatever disk is configured will need sufficient free space - I'd leave at least 1GB free.
Another thing to check is under Edit - Preferences - Memory and Image Cache. Try increasing the value from 50% and see if that helps.
You can check this under Edit - Preferences - Plug-ins and Scratch Disks.
Ideally you would set the scratch disk to be on a different disk to the O/S, or even a 2nd partition, but whatever disk is configured will need sufficient free space - I'd leave at least 1GB free.
Another thing to check is under Edit - Preferences - Memory and Image Cache. Try increasing the value from 50% and see if that helps.
The scratch disk is an area of disk which Photoshop uses as virtual memory.
For example, if you have 512MB of RAM, and load an image that takes 1GB of memory, then instead of Photoshop refusing to load it outright, it will load some of it into memory, and the rest of it into the virtual memory file located on the scratch disk.
For example, if you have 512MB of RAM, and load an image that takes 1GB of memory, then instead of Photoshop refusing to load it outright, it will load some of it into memory, and the rest of it into the virtual memory file located on the scratch disk.
towman said:
Help!
Installed PS, but when I try to run it I get an error message saying "not enough RAM"
I put another set of chips in, so it now has 992Mb. How much more do i need, or do I have to do anything to "activate" the new RAM?
Thanks
Steve
I used to get this message up when I had 256mb RAM, the computer would freeze as well if I opened more than a couple of large images at a time
I upgraded to a gig of ram and have had no problems since. Be careful that the RAM you buy is compatible, I had to have two goes at it because the RAM that was recommended by the supplier wasn't properly recognised (it only showed up as 500mb for some reason)and I had to get them to send the stuff I thought was correct in the first place.
mattley said:
PC or Mac, and which OS?
How did you get to 992 Meg? I'm guessing you have a gig and are using 32 for some sort of onboard graphics or ram disk or something. Can you post a bit more info about the machine.
"My Computer" > "properties" gives the following info.....
Windows XP
Celeron CPU 2.00 Ghz
2.02Ghz 992MB of RAM
As stated earlier I installed another set of RAM chips (no good at tech terms! ) but this seems to have had little effect on the speed.
Steve
No, it won't 
Photoshop will, in the main happily have all the processing power it can get. By latest Photoshop standards thet's a very modest machine, and there really isn't much you're gonna be able to do to that machine that will make an appreciable difference.
PS has however become a bit of a bloatware monster, and includes loads of stuff you may well not want/need. A machine upgrade is about all you can do, but you might find an earlier version a lttle snappier.
Photoshop will, in the main happily have all the processing power it can get. By latest Photoshop standards thet's a very modest machine, and there really isn't much you're gonna be able to do to that machine that will make an appreciable difference.
PS has however become a bit of a bloatware monster, and includes loads of stuff you may well not want/need. A machine upgrade is about all you can do, but you might find an earlier version a lttle snappier.
towman said:
Steve,
Have you checked the scratch disk config settings yet?
I cant get into PS to check!! Error message states not enough RAM to launch. version 4.0 btw
Steve,
I suspect that it is telling you porkies.
If you have the release disks I would be very tempted to delete PS and try to re-install it OR check if there were any patches released for V4 (Is it Full PS V4 or Elements 4.0?)
I have known a few programs to decide they did not have enough RAM to launch especially if they opne with a default image on screen tand the image file appears to the application to be 'corrupt'. Sometimes it seemed like the end of file marker was not found so the app just carrid on loading an endlessly large file until it ran out of any size of memory you could throw at it.
Not PS either - other apps would do it - I seem to recall Acrobat had the problem with some files a few releases ago on a machine I was using.
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