how much RAM do you need these days?

[Jonathan Wienke]

I find 2GB to be rather limiting when stitching images together, but for single images, it's OK.

[yasooo]

Thank you for the insight.  When I bought my computer 4 years ago, 1GB was as much as my mother board can handle, and I thought it was more than enough, but I guess the digital world is changing so fast that we need even more power. My friends weren't kiddin' when they said I would probably need a new computer before a D2X.

[IanS]

Under Windoze, a single application cannot access more than 2GB of memory, so photoshop as an application is limited to 2GB. Windows itself can use more than 2GB of memory, and so if you have more than 2GB, either Windows will use the extra, or if you run more than one application, windows can let each application use different '2GB chunks' of memory so that you're not wasting your time installing say 4GB. However, Windows itself can't address more than 4GB.

You won't see any change to this until you switch to the 64-bit version of windows-xp, and have a processor that can handle 64-bit addressing. Believe it or not, the latest P4 CPU's have some 64 bit extensions. Of course, you will also require Adobe to provide a 64-bit version of photoshop too...

[DaveLon]

So far in the Mac World, Photoshop CS will use almost (only) 2 gig. I'm hoping that when Tiger is out (10.4) with 64 bit addressing, that limit will be broken.

Dave S

[yasooo]

Hi, the Nikon D2X has come out in the stores here in Japan yesterday (low price about $4,244, average around $4,280).
Already I see some people here talking about how capturing one image from this camera uses up about 1GB of memory in the computer, and that about 2GB should be necessary for stress free operation.  I never thought about this before, but how much RAM should a computer have these days to work with data from 10MP+ cameras such as the D2X or D1s MK2?  Thanks for your input.

Depending on the camera, and on whether you're in 8 or 16 bit mode, files coming in from the raw converter can be between 50 and 100MB.

A good rule of thumb is that Photoshop wants about 5X more RAM than the size of the file being worked on. So, I would regard 500MB is the absolute minimum if you're using an 8MB or larger camera, and are working on your files in 16 bit mode.

But, now you start adding a few adjustment layers, and all of a sudden you can end up with even larger files.

The answer therefore is, get as much RAM as your computer can hold, and you can afford. Fortunately RAM has become very inexpensive over the past couple of years.

I suggest a minimum of 2GB for serious Photoshop work.

Michael

[Tim Gray]

Subject to correction - I don't believe PS CS can make use of any more RAM than 2 gig (actually something around 1.7 if I remember correctly).

Question: If I have more ram than 2 gig available - does that mean PS will be able to use that as an alternative to the scratch disk?

[IanS]

Just to more directly answer the posed question, 3GB is probably the maximum that can be installed and used to give best photoshop performance, 2GB (ish) for photoshop itself and then the remaining 1GB will be used by windows for various stuff. I would expect that you'd be hard pressed to see much performance increase going from 3 GB to 4 GB.

You'd then really need a faster CPU, although I've heard that above 3.4GHz, the P4's have some cooling issues...

Of course on a Mac the world may be a better place, but I have no experience in that area.

Ian.