PS write to disk

[Jeremy Roussak]

I have a Mac Pro and CS5. How long should it take PS to write a 160Mb TIFF to disk, from hitting cmd-S to the progress bar disappearing? It seems awfully slow but I might just have expectations that can't be met.

Jeremy

[Jack Flesher]

I have a Mac Pro and CS5. How long should it take PS to write a 160Mb TIFF to disk, from hitting cmd-S to the progress bar disappearing? It seems awfully slow but I might just have expectations that can't be met.

Jeremy

Every system is going to be different; layers will matter, ram will matter and the speed of the disk or array you write to will matter.  But even so, with a modern system it should be pretty quick.  I can tell you my 3 year old Mac Pro -- which has 24 G of ram, 16 of which is allocated to CS5, and I write images to a fast array -- will save a 360MB tiff in under 2 seconds, which means a 160MB tiff should be under a second.

Hope that helps,

[Jeremy Roussak]

Every system is going to be different; layers will matter, ram will matter and the speed of the disk or array you write to will matter.  But even so, with a modern system it should be pretty quick.  I can tell you my 3 year old Mac Pro -- which has 24 G of ram, 16 of which is allocated to CS5, and I write images to a fast array -- will save a 360MB tiff in under 2 seconds, which means a 160MB tiff should be under a second.

Hope that helps,

Yes, it does, thanks. My system is similar to yours but I have only 10G RAM and I'm writing to two disks using the built-in RAID: it takes over a minute, so there's obviously something seriously awry.

Jeremy

[John R Smith]

Yes, it does, thanks. My system is similar to yours but I have only 10G RAM and I'm writing to two disks using the built-in RAID: it takes over a minute, so there's obviously something seriously awry.

Jeremy

I would say something is wrong. My ancient XP laptop with 1.5 GB RAM and a tiny 75 GB HD will save a 75 MB TIFF from PS in under 5 secs.

John

[PeterAit]

I would say something is wrong. My ancient XP laptop with 1.5 GB RAM and a tiny 75 GB HD will save a 75 MB TIFF from PS in under 5 secs.

John

I think it depends on the circumstances. If I open a 250MB TIFF directly in PS and then "Save As" to either my internal RAID 0 or my external eSATA RAID 0 it takes less than a second. But if I have opened a RAW image into PS from Lightroom and have worked on it, then save it, a similar-sized image takes a lot longer. 5-10 sec. I assume this is due to the extra processing required due to the PS-LR link.

[Jack Flesher]

into PS from Lightroom and have worked on it,

Why I said layers matter

One other thing I didn't mention is tiff compression matters too.  FWIW you can use the standard tiff save dialog settings that come up, of None/Interleaved/PC, even for Macs...

Regardless, a one minute save time for a 160MB tiff regardless of layers and compression indicates an issue somewhere in the chain.

[Jeremy Roussak]

I think it depends on the circumstances. If I open a 250MB TIFF directly in PS and then "Save As" to either my internal RAID 0 or my external eSATA RAID 0 it takes less than a second. But if I have opened a RAW image into PS from Lightroom and have worked on it, then save it, a similar-sized image takes a lot longer. 5-10 sec. I assume this is due to the extra processing required due to the PS-LR link.

That's very interesting. I'd not tried saving other than as part of a round trip from LR. I now find that if I open, in PS, a file of about 160Mb from LR, make an alteration (to a single-layer file, creating no new layers) and then click simply Save, it takes ages: a minute or so. If I Save as to the same disk, it takes only a second or two, not even long enough for the Saving TIFF file progress window to appear.

I'm rather confused. What can I do to solve this problem? I'm using LR2.6 / CS5, if it makes any difference.

Jeremy

[Jack Flesher]

then click simply Save, it takes ages: a minute or so. If I Save as to the same disk, it takes only a second or two, not even long enough for the Saving TIFF file progress window to appear.

Sounds like your raid array is the number 1 culprit.

[JeffKohn]

The options for TIFF format can have a big impact on save times. Saving a file with just a background layer using no compression is very fast, even for big files. Add in compression and/or layers and it becomes much slower. Even just "promoting" the background to a real layer will increase save time.

[PeterAit]

That's very interesting. I'd not tried saving other than as part of a round trip from LR. I now find that if I open, in PS, a file of about 160Mb from LR, make an alteration (to a single-layer file, creating no new layers) and then click simply Save, it takes ages: a minute or so. If I Save as to the same disk, it takes only a second or two, not even long enough for the Saving TIFF file progress window to appear.

I'm rather confused. What can I do to solve this problem? I'm using LR2.6 / CS5, if it makes any difference.

Jeremy

My guess is that the extra save time is not actually writing-to-disk time but has to do with extra processing or other files that are involved when you are "checking back in" a modified file to the LR catalog. But, that's only my surmise. I agree it is annoying and would be a great place for Adobe to speed things up.

[ErikKaffehr]

Are you saving them as compressed TIFFs? That slows down a lot!

Best regards
Erik

Yes, it does, thanks. My system is similar to yours but I have only 10G RAM and I'm writing to two disks using the built-in RAID: it takes over a minute, so there's obviously something seriously awry.

Jeremy