How can I specifically assign Photoshop CS3 to RAMdisk?

mickymicky
edited February 2008 in advice
Long story cut short:

I've got a MacBook Pro 2GHz 15" MacBookPro1,1 Intel Core Duo with 2 GB and I can't stuff my RAM into it. A bit of a pain in the arse when I work with 400+ MB PSDs. I've been given a tip to try assigning PS CS3 to a RAMdisk. I managed to find a really neat utitliy which creates a RAMdisk at startup:
Esperance DV 2.3.2

Esperance DV is a prefpane for System Preferences for creating a RAM Disk. The object is to place the temporary files such as the mask of a navigator, the Builds files & Intermediates xCode's, etc... A RAM Disk is the use of a part of read-write memory (RAM) as a hard disk.

Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16518
Now how do I assign PS CS3 specifically to the RAMdisk?

tia

Comments

  • MeskaMeska
    edited February 2008
    Don't you just change the Scratch disk setting in prefs and point it to the Ramdisk?

    If you need a long term solution, i would suggest you backup all your data, repartition your hard drive to accomodate 3 volumes, 1 for your main apps, 1 for work and a third smaller sized partition (your PS scratch disk) which you should leave empty (i find 20-30gb is fine with 1gb PS files). Then reinstall the OS and move your data back, point PS to the new scratch. Works fine on laptops.

    You got to remember that if your images are 400mb in size, Photoshop has 4 x copies of your image it holds in 'memory' (that is either in RAM or writes to your hard disk scratch - default is you main drive, which would conflict with the many processes that Mac OS X has running concurrently)... imagine the chaos!

    On towers, add a second drive on a different bus, and format it clean, and point PS's scratch disk setting to that.. you'll get blistering performance, particularly on Mac Pros...
  • mickymicky
    edited February 2008
    meska said...Don't you just change the Scratch disk setting in prefs and point it to the Ramdisk?
    Yo mesk =)

    that's what I did but apparently it's not assigning PS CS3 specifically to the RAMdisk.
  • MeskaMeska
    edited February 2008
    I think then that PS is aware of Ramdisk being a temp solution. It would prefer solid memory or hard disk to work on.
  • mickymicky
    edited February 2008
    well i've also got three external FW drives assigned to PS as scratch disks as well....

    I'm just looking for a way to sped things up a little when I switch between apps because after a while my MBP starts to lag if I'm working on a huge PSD
  • mickymicky
    edited 4:45AM
    1,53 GB of VM for PS CS3. Normal?
  • mickymicky
    edited 4:45AM
    wtf?

    how come a 230 MB PSD with 6 layers scrolls lag-free while a jpg of the same PSD lags when scrolling about?
  • mickymicky
    edited 4:45AM
    ... oh.... because the ruler is switched off in the PSD :/
  • mickymicky
    edited 4:45AM
    using the RAMdisk as a scratch disk does speed up opening files though.
  • MeskaMeska
    edited 4:45AM
    ... but that would be about it only. I can't see any (significant) difference in performance using a Ramdisk.
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