Photoshop light room

[k5MOW]

Good morning everyone

I am in the process of getting a new computer. The new computer that is coming is definitely fast enough sorry don't remember the actual processing speed but it only has four megs of RAM. Is 4 megs of RAM enough to get started in Photoshop and light room how well will it run. I will eventually upgrade to at least eight but my question is is 4 megs of RAM enough to get started using Photoshop and light room will it run OK.

Roger

 

[jaomul]

Yes

 

[PhotoriousMe]

Yes you should have no problems RAM wise. When running photo editing software like PS and LR it's always good to make sure you don't have anything else running at the same time. This will help to speed up the processing.

Dave

 

[KmH]

FWIW - Lightroom - is a proper noun (name), just one word and capitalized.
2 GB of RAM is the minimum required, but 8 GB of RAM is recommended by Adobe. Plus 1 GB of Video RAM and OpenGL 3.3, and 2 GB of available hard disc space for use as a scratch disk.

System requirements for AdobeCC/Lightroom for Mac and Windows OS

 

[The_Traveler]

It will run but slowly as he fetches to and from disk.

Ram is cheap, buy more

 

[nathan cox]

If you have the time to wait for the computer it will run fine otherwise get more ram

 

[beagle100]

Good morning everyone

I am in the process of getting a new computer. The new computer that is coming is definitely fast enough sorry don't remember the actual processing speed but it only has four megs of RAM. Is 4 megs of RAM enough to get started in Photoshop and light room how well will it run. I will eventually upgrade to at least eight but my question is is 4 megs of RAM enough to get started using Photoshop and light room will it run OK.

Roger

4 GB RAM is enough to get started with Lightroom

 

[TCampbell]

You really should get 8GB.

There's a difference between having enough memory... and having a computer that is able to do memory swapping and paging so that it will at least "work" with the limited resources it has.

When I launch Lightroom, it will take about 1.1 to 1.2 GB of RAM just from launching it. But as I "use" Lightroom and watch it's memory utilization... moving from image to image and growing my collections, applying adjustments, etc. Lightroom will quickly start to chew through more memory and will take several more GB of RAM (as I check it's memory utilization right now, it's currently using 3GB of my RAM... *just* that one process). Keep in mind your OS itself will need a lot of RAM and lots of other background processes on the machine will need RAM.

This will quickly put you in a situation where the computer doesn't have as much RAM as it wants and will force it to start "paging" and "swapping". Computers will start "paging" first... and if that doesn't free up enough RAM they'll start "swapping".

What's "paging" and "swapping"? When a computer program is running, it occupies some memory to hold the program code (the instructions) and other memory to hold the data (your information as well as information the program needs to keep track of what it's doing -- but it's not computer code.)

To free up memory, the computer frees memory in chunks called "pages". If the page holds code, and the computer isn't immediately using that particular bit of code, then it can simply free the page and make it available to another program without saving the information on the page because the page only held "code" and the code is already on your hard drive (those are the programs that you launch). So if that particular program needs those instructions again, it can simply reload that page from disk. This is the fastest way to free memory because it does not need to save the information on the page before repurposing that page for some other task.

Paging will slow the computer down, however... because while some programs are in the background and hardly doing anything, some programs will want those code pages back and that means the computer has to go out to the hard disk, find the code that previously occupied that page, and reload it. Computers that had enough memory would never had needed to drop the page in the first place -- so they'll run faster.

There is a point at which even paging cannot free enough memory... the computer gets even more desperate for memory, it's dropped every page from every program it can, and it still doesn't have enough RAM. That computer will now start "swapping".

Swapping means the computer needs to free memory occupied by your data (not just program code). It can't just free these pages and make them available to another program because that would cause you to lose data. Instead, it has to save the contents of those pages to disk. Once saved, it can free the page and make it available to another program. But remember that when the computer gets this desperate it is already starved for RAM. This means it may just be swapping out one program's page of memory so that it can swap a different program's page of memory back in. This REALLY slows down the machine. It will "work" -- but at a crawl.

If the machine has enough memory for the tasks you want to run, then it should NEVER be swapping and (no swap out or swap in activity and the swapping file should be empty.) The paging activity should mostly consist of just "PAGE INs" but no "PAGE OUTs". Simply launch a program creates "PAGE IN" activity (that's how it loads the program to run it in the first place -- even a machine with an excess of RAM will have PAGE IN activity. But if it has PAGE OUT activity then that means it was forced to drop some program code pages to make room for other program code and that's a sign that your machine is a little lean on RAM (but not yet enough to be desperate -- if you see swapping activity then your machine is desperate.)

RAM is relatively cheap. This is an upgrade that will probably cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 (give or take).... not hundreds of dollars.

 

[Derrel]

Yes, it will work with 4 gigs of RAM in the machine.

 

[TCampbell]

Yes, it will work with 4 gigs of RAM in the machine.

Yes, it will "work" -- for sufficiently limited definitions of the term "work" (it will even "work" with 2GB) -- but it will NOT "perform" well. To get it to "perform" well... use 8GB.

 

[beagle100]

Yes, it will work with 4 gigs of RAM in the machine.

Yes, it will "work" -- for sufficiently limited definitions of the term "work" (it will even "work" with 2GB) -- but it will NOT "perform" well. To get it to "perform" well... use 8GB.

but yet the pics still look good (and perform well) at 4 GB of RAM

 

[Light Guru]

Is 4 megs of RAM enough

4 megs NO the operating system wont even run on 4 megs of ram.

4GB of ram yes that is fine.

 

[Derrel]

Yes, it will work with 4 gigs of RAM in the machine.

Yes, it will "work" -- for sufficiently limited definitions of the term "work" (it will even "work" with 2GB) -- but it will NOT "perform" well. To get it to "perform" well... use 8GB.

Sorry, but your assertion is flat-out ridiculous.

Make sure you pick up that 300/2.8 for the next portrait session. Without it, your images will suck.

Maybe next time you can try and maybe succeed in keeping your focus on what the original poster's question actually WAS.

 

[jcdeboever]

Yes, it will work with 4 gigs of RAM in the machine.

Yes, it will "work" -- for sufficiently limited definitions of the term "work" (it will even "work" with 2GB) -- but it will NOT "perform" well. To get it to "perform" well... use 8GB.

Configuring OS and drives is critical, more so than ram . Using the default Windows installation is not optimal for anyone using graphics programs. I have customers running on 4gb of ram with no issues or lag at all. I like to setup a scratch disk (not critical though) for the customer. It makes a significant improvement and very economical when they have an old system to recycle that has a functional hard disk. 4 gigs of ram, proper Windows installation optimization will garner excellent results with out adding additional, unnecessary cost.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

[TCampbell]

The OP's original post stated:
1) New computer will come with 4GB RAM
2) OP intends to upgrade to 8GB RAM (eventually)

Then asked:
Will it "run ok" in 4GB?

The answer is: Yes, it will run. But if you want optimal performance then you should do that upgrade to 8GB whenever possible.

I'm staring at the memory allocation by process. When I launch Lightroom it wants roughly 1GB of RAM and if I just work with one image it'll grow that size a little.

As I start browsing images in the Library module I can see it starting to grab a lot more RAM and it can easily grab a couple GB within a few minutes. I have a lot of images and my images are all stored on external storage arrays (because I'd run out of disk space if I kept them on the internal drive). The large number of images probably eats through more memory as I browse my images in the Library module of Lightroom.

However... I was using it yesterday to work on just a handful of images (one at a time) and looked over at the resource consumption ... and noticed that Lightroom had claimed 5.8GB of RAM (I hand't been using Lr for that long... perhaps 15 minutes.) The point being... if Lightroom has the memory, then it will use it.

I'm not sure what Lr does when it "wants" nearly 6GB and it's on a machine that only "has" 4GB (especially considering that Windows itself will want a healthy chunk of RAM of it's own.) This would normally mean it can't use caches for performance and/or the OS will have to start "paging" processes out to make memory available. I don't have a 4GB machine to test it. But I do have extensive experience in OS tuning. One fundamental rule when configuring a computer for a given task is that you size that machine for that task. I haven't seen Lightroom go beyond 6GB since I've been watching it (my desktop machine has 32GB so if it wanted the RAM, it's certainly available.) But given that the OS is going to need memory of it's own, the 8GB "recommendation" by Adobe certainly makes sense.

Memory is cheap. A single 4G module seems to be around $32 but if you buy more than one you tend to get a break. e.g. an 8GB "kit" which really consists of 2x 4GB modules is probably less than $60 (I'm checking one source and it's showing me $58 -- but the real price would depend on the type of memory and the source.)

A 4GB computer might come with a single 4GB memory module, or it might come with 2 x 2GB modules. Some computers will do something called "memory interleave". If your hardware supports this then you want to make sure that you build up memory banks with IDENTICAL memory modules. If the hardware supports "memory interleave" and you want 8GB of RAM then you'll get better performance using 2 x 4GB modules then you will using 1 x 8GB module. As mentioned earlier, computers break down memory into manageable "pages" and a "page" is the smallest unit of memory that can be allocated (if a computer program only uses a few bytes of memory, what it will get is a full "page" of memory). the pagesize depends on the hardware (4k is a common size). Non-interleaved memory means that the memory pages are sequential on a single memory module until that module is "full" and then it moves on to the next module. "Interleaved" memory means that it puts all the odd number pages on one module and the even number pages on the other module (of the pair). This allows the machine to access memory to/from both modules "in parallel" so it speeds up memory access for applications that plan to use a lot of RAM. If the memory modules are not identical then the computer will still work -- it just won't use "memory interleave" (it only works if the memory is identical.)

Will it work with 4GB? Without a doubt it will. BUT... if you want it to "perform" then you go with the "recommended" RAM size. That size is 8GB and it's listed here:

System requirements for Photoshop Lightroom for Mac and Windows OS

If you don't want to buy the 8GB on day #1 then just use the 4GB because it will work. Your computer is not going to be crashing... it'll deal with the limited memory situation. It just won't be "as fast" as a machine with 8GB. (But remember... RAM is cheap!)

To be fair... a few years ago I switched from using the typical hard drives (rotating platters) to Solid State Drives (SSD) and that made far more of a performance difference than anything. My external storage arrays are 4TB each -- so converting them to SDD would be expensive (also you don't want to insert anything into a storage array that isn't "certified" and almost no storage arrays "certify" SSDs -- but I haven't re-checked in the past year.) SSDs have come way down in price, but they're still expensive. If you really want things to scream along.... this would probably be the single most noticeable performance upgrade (it just won't be cheap.)