Is 16gb Ram Enough For Photoshop
Meri Thilmony
Hello! I'm desperately in need of some help. The work laptop I was provided is not running Adobe products (I primarily work in PS, Illustrator, INDD) well enough. It constantly freezes, crashes, or has the spinning wheel, which is slowing down my workflows considerably. My organization uses sharepoint, and originally we thought the slowness was due to the Sharepoint issues, but now that they have been resolves, my machine is still struggling to run, and anytime I open a single image in photoshop or a 4 page flier in Indesign, the memory usage shoots up to between 75 - 90%. I've spoken to IT who is going to be providing more RAM. Is there anything else I can request that would help Adobe run easier, or any specs that I could ask for to make a case for getting a new machine.
I appreciate any insight you can give - really struggling with the choppy workflow and crashes. I work on so many projects simultaneously and this makes it incredibly difficult to pivot and work quickly.
The main bottleneck in Photoshop is the scratch disk, and I bet that's the problem here. There is no such thing as "enough RAM" no matter how much you have, so Photoshop writes temporary working data to disk. This is known as the scratch disk.
Both the operating system and Photoshop need free disk space. Usually at least a few hundred GB is recommended. A 6TB (6000GB) USB drive runs about US$100 so it shouldn't be a big expense for your IT folks.
Thank you for your answer! I can forward these recommendations to our IT dept. When I do work with files I've downloaded locally, which I did for quite a while due to our Sharepoint issues, I had the same issues with Adobe products (on top of some other ones). Thank you for taking the time to asnwer.
My Mac Pro 2010 is now obsolete. I used it very happily with photoshop version 5.5 and the raw files from my Canon camera (CR2). I guess I did most of the work in camera so tweaking with camera raw and then a little bit of work in photoshop has usually been enough.
But last year I got a new camera- a Canon 90 D with a new raw file format ( CR 3) which my old version of photoshop can't work with and of course I am unable to update to the newest version of photoshop/subscription as my operating system can't go past a certain point.
Having spoken to Apple they recommended the Mac mini with upgraded RAM to 16 GB and upgraded storage to 1 TB - telling me that this would be ample for now and future proof my set up (as I explained that I like things to last- I do not enjoy constantly changing my kit.) I was also very relieved as this is more realistic for me financially.
My concern is because I will be forced into constantly upgrading photoshop versions (and from what I understand it will be getting hungrier and hungrier each iteration,) will this 16GB RAM be enough in years to come? I hoped to have my new machine last 10 years or so like my old one.
It feels impossible to gauge from my experience; as mentioned I used an older version of photoshop with my Mac pro that I owned outright and wasn't constantly growing- I just don't know how to account for this.
Also; I understand that RAM is important and from having a look at some other threads that scratch disks are important. I don't know how you know what scratch disk you get as this isn't mentioned in the Apple description?
Also- I understand that the mac mini is now 2 years old and perhaps I should be more worried about that... I considered waiting for the new minis but undersatnd I could be waiting ages and I am really stuck without a new machine.
You can probably tell this is not my area of expertise-I've no embarrassment in admitting that , I LOVE to be creative but I get fed up pretty quickly thinking about all this stuff, I am out of my depth knowledge wise and have been looking for ages and STILL feel out of my depth & just wish it could be simpler and that companies would give their machines and software longer lives. Lol- rant over- I do accept I need a new machine and appreciate any advice onthe above. I'd love to avoid an expensive mistake - either monetarily or by giving myself a pain inthe neck and having to upgrade super soon.
An SSD is pretty much vital for any version of Mac OS since Sierra as I understand it. But they are not known to be long term reliable. [which is why I like my 2012 Mac Mini Server [used as a desktop mac] as it has user replaceable hard discs (yes room for 2) and user upgradable RAM too. Mind, 2012 is getting to be a long time ago.
I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer:: co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
I tried this- spent quite some time looking at these options but sadly cant get the right version of DNG. For a while I hobbled along using the canon free software to view and sort then converted to TIFF to move over to photoshop but its very very very slow and so bumpy with too many crashes by the canon software... I want to do more photography and this workslow is probably at least 5 x slower & frustrating... ! I would not recommend.
Hi again- Just googled SSD! Thats interesting that they're not likely to last 10 years- seems like longevity is even less likely which makes me question spending the extra thousand pounds on the more powerful machine/ Studio if its not likely to last long anyway...
I have 32GB RAM on my old 2012 iMac (it's on it's last legs) and 32 on my 2020iMac Pro in addition to 1TB storage. I use a 4TB external for all of my images. It's a tough call right now, I was looking at the new Macs and nothing jumped out as the one. I would upgrade as much as you can - they say the new M1 is fine with 16gb ram.
If you need more than 16GB of unified memory, you must move up to the base model Mac Studio, which is actually a great base model because it already includes 32GB unified memory and more processing power than the current version of Photoshop can use (good for future-proofing). If you wanted to lower the cost of storage, put more files on an inexpensive external drive. The reason Apple internal storage costs so much is that it is the fastest available, but for photography, less expensive external USB storage is fast enough. That would let you buy the base Mac Studio as is, without paying more for upgrades.
Thanks Conrad....yes agreed I am starting to think I am being ambitious on the 10 year front... wanting machines to last til the hardware konks out is not in sync with the industry and whatever I think of it environmentally and finacially, I do need to accept it is what it is...
So, I purchased my M1 MAc mini last year -- I bouhght the 16GB ram and 2 TB hard drive -- mainly I was using this for video edtiing and now have moved over all my graphic design work to it. While it is an amazing machine and depending on your workflow it may be a great machine for you. It handles photoshop like a beast - the only problem I have is when I have Phostoshop, Illutrator and InDesign open it does slow down a bit - funny thing is the program that runs terrible on it is Adobe Acrobat
Im a graphic designer and dont use RAW but I did find a RAW file to open and see how it works -- it opened the camera raw editor in .5 secs -- making adjustments is instant and when done it opens in photoshop super quick. I attached the photo I used. If you have any questions or would like me to run some tests on the file I attached let me know.
I think Conrad has an excellent point above: it's not really the hardware specs you should worry about, it's the hardware generation and what it will support x years ahead. If you can't install the latest OS and therefore not the latest application version, 64 GB of working RAM is a moot point. Actually, you could just as well argue that it's wasted.
Ten years is probably unrealistic, for the above reasons. The hardware will still work, but you may be limping along with a lot of software limitations. It shouldn't be like that, god knows we throw away far too much perfectly functional stuff, but unfortunately that's how the computer industry works nowadays, and you have no choice but to play along.
I have an early 2011 13" MacBook Pro that still works great, its only been a couple of years since support for High Sierra ended. And that was a lower-end machine. A high-end box like a Mac Studio should have a useful life somewhere around 7-10 years in production.
I am wanting to buy an IMAC for photo editing with enough RAM to run photoshop and Adobe lightroom. I understand 16-32GB is suitable. How does this relate to the new iMacs with unified memory and faster chip capacity. Do I still need 32 GB - I can't seem to find an IMAC this big.
The current 24" M3 iMacs use the same 'base' M3 chip as some of the entry-level 14" M3 MacBook Pros. For this chip, the RAM choices are 8 / 16 / 24 GB, and for both systems, there's a limit of one external display. Since Adobe recommends 16+ GB of RAM for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Lightroom Classic, I would not get only 8 GB if I knew, right off the bat, that I might be making heavy use of Adobe photo processing programs.
If you're using Photoshop/Lightroom, then 16GB would be the minimum choice. If you do a lot of batch editing, with large numbers of photos active, then you might look at the 32GB option. But otherwise, 16GB would be fine.
If you're in the US, Macs can be ordered online direct from Apple. Also from Apple, you can shop the refurbished Macs, as they're often configured differently than base models. The advantage of either is they come with new Mac warranties.
I upgraded from 16gb to 32gb and it was much needed. I actually hit a limit with 16gb because of multiple chrome pages open, UE4 editor, 3dsmax, Maya. If you are going to do modeling as well and texture painting I would say 16gb is not enough if you want to use your pc normally while multi-tasking.
About the choices, more memory will always benefit, and sometimes helps more than a CPU upgrade. GPU and a fast SSD is extremely important as you start to work with large assets or larger projects, so hands-down the priority on upgrades would always be: memory, SSD, CPU and GPU. The price for each one bumps a lot, so you can measure more the benefit of an upgrade expending less at first and knowing you are OK purchasing expensive items later.
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