Computer Improvements to Handle RAW?

[Neuner]

I know that RAW images are tedious, but it takes 3-5 minutes for one to load into PS on my relatively decent computer. Where is the choke in the loading process and what upgrade would help the loading of these pics?

While loading my CPU is barely used, only half of my 1.2Gb of RAM is used. I will either load from my SD card or an internal SATA harddrive but during the loading process my main IDE C: drive is taxed fully? I don't get why this is happening...

 

[Iron Flatline]

That sounds unusually long. Even though more memory definitely helps such processor-intensive applications as Photoshop, it should not take that long. Run a spyware/adware application to see if something is sitting in your computer and sucking up resources.

 

[Neuner]

see if something is sitting in your computer and sucking up resources.

It's called Microsoft Windows ...but yes I keep my computer really clean & free of spyware. I usually use EndItAll to shut down any other cluttersome programs running in the background.

The other computer is ancient using an AMD Duron 700mhz, but it's not much slower in loading RAW images. The CPU and memory aren't taxed much either, but it to relies on my main hard drive heavily which appears to be the bottleneck.

What's a typical load time for everyone?

 

[Big Mike]

Could it be an issue with the number of images you have in the folder/directory? Maybe PS is trying to bring up thumbnail previews for a whole lot of RAW files and that is slowing everything down... :scratch:

 

[Neuner]

I view my files in detail mode, not thumbnail mode, is this what your refering to?

I've tried it with only a couple of files in the folder and it's still the same.

The load time is also slow using Nikon's PictureProject. These slow load times are what is preventing me from using Nikon's NEF format all of the time. I'm not fond of jpg, but it's been a lot faster.

 

[astrostu]

It sounds like something is not set properly. I would suggest doing a clean install of PhotoShop and seeing what happens after that.

 

[Neuner]

Not sure how to check the speeds of my hard drives. In the device manager I see that the Current Transfer Mode is Ultra DMA Mode 5 over standard IDE ATA.

 

[Smith2688]

Belarc Advisor (http://belarc.com/free_download.html) would probably tell you the hard drive rpm's.

 

[YellowBay]

If your C: Drive is getting used fully it would suggest that the PC is writing to the pagefile constantly. That would tend to indicate that the page file is running out of space.

Have a look at the properties of the disk and see how much free space you've got (just right click on the disk icon). You can also have a look in the system manager and see how much space you've allocated to the pagefile.

You can move the pagefile to another disk or partition if you've got one.

Failing that, delete some stuff

 

[Neuner]

I got 14 out of 40Gb Free. How do I look in the System Manager. What is this, or how do I get to it?

Thanks, Neuner

 

[theusher]

[removed]

 

[Neuner]

Very strange occurance. As suggested by Yellowbay, I set up my PageFile to be cleared upon shutdown. My loading time then dropped in half. Later in the day I re-opened PS and it started downloading updates. I then opened a NEF file and it instantly brought the image up into a different 'pre-adjustment' screen. Before I could only adjust the exposure, now I can adjust all of the aspects including brightness, contrast, sharpness, crop, etc. After I adjusted the settings I clicked for it to open the file into PS and it only took seconds!

I guess I was using an old version of their NEF converter? I've usually checked for updates, but this is the first I've seen of this one. It couldn't have taken them this long to figure it out correctly, could it?

 

[usayit]

Some suggestions that come to mind.

1) Max out on memory
2) Check for virus scanning software. Once that rather large RAW file makes it onto your computer, the virus scanner will kick in. Some (like norton) eat up resources like crazy scanning through that file. No way around it.. you either let it finish scanning then proceed or setup a filter to skip RAW files from being scanned.
3) Don't load directly from the SD card. Copy the RAW files to internal harddrive first then open.
4) Turn off system restore feature in Windows.
5) Turn off all GUI animation effects. Use classic desktop
6) Check system event logs for errors. Mainly disk related errors are the main concern.
7) If you have a spare drive bay and connection, use the secondary disk as orkspace.
8) Software (including O/S) up to date?
9) C: IDE is taxed fully? Could be swap writes as Neuner suggested. I believe you can move swap/pagefile to the secondary SATA drive.


... or dump windows.. sorry couldn't help myself.

 

[WDodd]

usayit had some excellent general things that everyone should do to their PC.

I have an AMD 4000+, 2GB RAM, and a 74GB Raptor HD and my PS3 loads RAW files in about 5-10 seconds probably shorter.

I would assume it is something software related that is hogging the system resources. Do any of your other programs run slow or is it just PS? Could be that you just need to add some stuff to your PC.

 

[Neuner]

Very strange occurance. As suggested by Yellowbay, I set up my PageFile to be cleared upon shutdown. My loading time then dropped in half. Later in the day I re-opened PS and it started downloading updates. I then opened a NEF file and it instantly brought the image up into a different 'pre-adjustment' screen. Before I could only adjust the exposure, now I can adjust all of the aspects including brightness, contrast, sharpness, crop, etc. After I adjusted the settings I clicked for it to open the file into PS and it only took seconds!

I guess I was using an old version of their NEF converter? I've usually checked for updates, but this is the first I've seen of this one. It couldn't have taken them this long to figure it out correctly, could it?

I appreciate the help, but it gets aggrevating when posts aren't read all of the way through. In my post I state that after the PS update triggered, opening an NEF now only takes seconds.