Photoshop eats my processor...

[Santilli]

I've got a 1.4 ghz athlon, with 512 mb of ram, and Photoshop uses the processor 100%, and most of the ram.

What sort of processor and ram usage do others get using the program, and at what point does it stop using the entire processor?

I'm not really into changing the processing priorities.

s

 

[Handruin]

I'm running PS 7.01 and the task consumes zero CPU time while idle and in the foreground. The application also consumes 7.7 MB of physical ram with no images open while in the foreground. (Peak memory usage is 38MB ram with no images open)

What version of Photoshop are you running and are you noticing those results with no images open? Do you have any special filters/plug-ins installed for Photoshop? How many fonts do you have?

 

[Tea]

Not directly relevant, but I've recently started using Photoshop Elements and it is s l o w !

On my notebook (Celeron 1800, 512MB) it's a slug. On my home machine (XP 2400, 1GB) ...... it's a slug. I think it's installed on my IDE data drive, not the X15 as I was not sure if it was going to prove useful or not and I was tight for space. I guess I could try uninstalling and then reinstalling it to the X15 now that I've had a reorganise and made plenty of room for it.

BTW, I'm toying with the idea of popping a 3000MHz chip in because of this. For Photoshop, should I stay with Athlons or pay the $250 extra for a P4? And if I go P4, is it worth getting the 800MHz FSB or doesn't it make much difference?

 

[Jake the Dog]

I'd go the P4 Tea. HT does make an O/S like W2K and XP more responsive and given Photoshop's SMP capabilites it'll definitely be better than a similar spec'd Athlon.

Photoshop Elements though is not SMP aware afaik.

 

[Santilli]

I'm using 6.0, and it' eats the processor when scanning in new items, and then converting the items to jpeg, or whatever format I'm using.

Thing is, I'm trying to do other work while this is going on, and there are NO CPU cycles avaliable, so nothing else really moves.


I'm sorry if my post was ambiguous, implying that photoshop ate the processor 100% of the time when open. No, just when it's doing work, and I'm trying to write something in IE, and read email, and connect to Ebays server...

s

 

[timwhit]

Why don't you just set Photoshop's priority to Low so that it will only use CPU cycles when nothing else is using them. A cheap fix that should make everything more responsive.

 

[Handruin]

What DPI are you scanning at? Also, what interface is your scanner. (USB, SCSI, etc) Maybe a TWAIN related issue or perhaps some bottleneck with the scanner's interface?

I'll scan something when I get home later and I'll watch to see if my CPU usage jumps to 100%. In general I would expect the RAM usage to grow based on the DPI setting and how large the actual item is.

 

[Mercutio]

I've seen fairly new no-name scanners that only have 16-bit TWAIN drivers. I think you're on to something Handruin.

 

[Buck]

I can see an image scanned at higher resolution eating up RAM. Make sure that you also have the 6.0.1 update for Windows if applicable. (Is this on a MAC or PC?)

 

[Santilli]

PC running 2000. Canon 1220U USB scanner, scanning at 300 to 1200 dpi.
Have not updated.

Thanks

Off we go to Adobe.

gs

 

[Dïscfärm]

I've got a 1.4 ghz athlon, with 512 mb of ram, and Photoshop uses the processor 100%, and most of the ram.

What sort of processor and ram usage do others get using the program, and at what point does it stop using the entire processor?

I'm not really into changing the processing priorities.

What DPI are you scanning at? Also, what interface is your scanner. (USB, SCSI, etc) Maybe a TWAIN related issue or perhaps some bottleneck with the scanner's interface?

I'll scan something when I get home later and I'll watch to see if my CPU usage jumps to 100%. In general I would expect the RAM usage to grow based on the DPI setting and how large the actual item is.

I'm using 6.0, and it' eats the processor when scanning in new items, and then converting the items to jpeg, or whatever format I'm using.

Thing is, I'm trying to do other work while this is going on, and there are NO CPU cycles avaliable, so nothing else really moves.

Why don't you just set Photoshop's priority to Low so that it will only use CPU cycles when nothing else is using them. A cheap fix that should make everything more responsive.

I'm sorry if my post was ambiguous, implying that photoshop ate the processor 100% of the time when open. No, just when it's doing work, and I'm trying to write something in IE, and read email, and connect to Ebays server...

OK, some misconceptions here... blah blah blah.


Your problem Santilli is that the TWAIN applet has been designed (coded) to run as "high priority" only. Photoshop is simply the host program here and not the culprit. The same problem would occur if you used any other TWAIN-capable host program to scan with. These scanning applets are typically written to run as high priority so that they can lock down any other program that attempts to use disc and presumably would cause a buffer underrun. An image file with a buffer underrun might show up as an image with horizontal black, blue, green, red, and/or white lines in it.


Depending on how the TWAIN program is written, it may have excellent memory management and use very little RAM -- no matter if you're scanning in a small (DPI) image or a large image. A well-designed TWAIN applet should read in a block -- or better yet, a few blocks -- of raw scanner image data into primary memory (RAM), probably convert it to a "metafile" format such as DIB format (Device Independent Bitmap), and write that to a temporary file on disc that it created and opened when you first started scanning. You could scan in an image that will ultimately be a 250 MB TIFF file, but only use something like 1 MB or RAM.


A nicely written TWAIN applet could also be a multi-threaded applet and have the ability to seamlessly read blocks of raw image data from the flatbed scanner, convert it to DIB format, and write converted blocks of image data to disc without any halting of the scanner or even the rest of your application programs like your web browser.

 

[Mercutio]

... and an example of a well written scanner driver would be???

In my experience, scanner drivers suck universally in ways that nothing else does.

 

[Dïscfärm]

... and an example of a well written scanner driver would be???

In my experience, scanner drivers suck universally in ways that nothing else does.

I've ran some expensive document scanning software (TWAIN) that was pretty well balanced between foreground processes and background processes; we're talking about processes that run at the application level not system level (close to the kernel). Still, the suggested use with these document scanner hosts (Panasonic document scanners) was as a *dedicated use* setup.

Image scanners normally do not have particularly large buffers or the ability to easily re-send a block of data, so they tend to depend on a scanning applet to run in high-priority mode and sometimes as a foreground-only process to make sure the host receives blocks of data without glitches.

 

[Handruin]

Out of the scanners I've dealt with, I haven't been happy with any of their drivers, particularly HP. I had a microtek that wasn't too bad, but it gave me some troubles more often than I liked.

Sadly my current (crappy) HP scanner works best with the built in XP scanning utility. (no HP drivers installed, XP default) I noticed a large improvement in scanning over the HP driver/utility. It's nowhere near perfect as it sometimes times-out during warmup, but it's much better than HP's software. I can't complain...I only paid 20$ for the scanner.

Based on Sir Discfarm's comments, you could (possibly) narrow down the culprit using sysinternal's Process explorer. This might give you an idea if any other process is consuming more CPU time.

I scanned a Music CD cover at 600 DPI using photoshop 7.0.1 and my system barely consumed 2-4% of the CPU's time. For the majority of the 30 second scan, photoshop remained a 0% CPU usage.

 

[Tea]

.In my experience, scanner drivers suck universally in ways that nothing else does.

Clearly, you have never used a Hewlett-Crapard all-in-one.
:eekers:

 

[Tea]

.In my experience, scanner drivers suck universally in ways that nothing else does.

Clearly, you have never used a Hewlett-Crapard all-in-one.
:eekers:

 

[Tea]

.In my experience, scanner drivers suck universally in ways that nothing else does.

Clearly, you have never used a Hewlett-Crapard all-in-one.
:eekers:

 

[Tea]

.In my experience, scanner drivers suck universally in ways that nothing else does.

Clearly, you have never used a Hewlett-Crapard all-in-one, mercutio. :eekers:

But then, being a sensible man, you'd have more sense to do anything with a HewlettCrapard all-in-one other than vomit on it as you pass.

 

[Tea]

.In my experience, scanner drivers suck universally in ways that nothing else does.

Clearly, you have never used a Hewlett-Crapard all-in-one, mercutio. :eekers:

But then, being a sensible man, you'd have more sense to do anything with a HewlettCrapard all-in-one other than vomit on it as you pass.

 

[Mercutio]

I reserve bile for Lexmark all-in-ones. I fully expect that all of those have "666" somewhere in their serial numbers.

But, OK, all in ones have drivers as bad as scanners. Very possibly worse. Of course, the law of crappy scanner-ness + Mercutio's Inkjet Trashheap Axiom = a singularity of wretchedness that surpasses any attempt to categorize or define it.

 

[Explorer]

...Sadly my current (crappy) HP scanner works best with the built in XP scanning utility. (no HP drivers installed, XP default) I noticed a large improvement in scanning over the HP driver/utility.

One can write a crappy program, or one can write a decent or good or phenomenal program. If you write a very simple scanning program (a TWAIN applet or possibly a Photoshop plug-in applet) that essentially "works" -- and that's about it -- it's because they likely wrote an applet with barebones capability. Worse, the scanning applet could be ported from a different operating system (Win9x, Win3.1, MacOS) and rely on runtime libraries.

Based on Sir Discfarm's comments, you could (possibly) narrow down the culprit using sysinternal's Process explorer. This might give you an idea if any other process is consuming more CPU time.

This also reminds me that there is some bearing on the data channel being used: USB has high overhead compared to SCSI, with Firewire being a little bit better than USB2.

Clearly, you have never used a Hewlett-Crapard all-in-one, mercutio.

But then, being a sensible man, you'd have more sense to do anything with a HewlettCrapard all-in-one other than vomit on it as you pass.

2141 posts and counting, Tea...

2142 posts and counting, Tea...

2143 posts and counting, Tea...

2144 posts and counting, Tea...

 

[e_dawg]

Tea,

Have you tried IrfanView for basic photo editing (cropping/resizing, brightness/gamma, contrast, sharpening, colour balance)?

Forget the fact that the executable only takes up something like 500 KB of space. Forget the fact that it is Freeware. Forget the fact that it uses a high quality Lanczos filter and a resampling routine for resizing. It is a ridiculously quick, efficient, and well-designed program period. I use it for all my basic photo editing, relegating Photoshop to the odd time when I need to do some heavy duty retouching using masking, zooming, pixel-by-pixel stuff.

Along with myIE2, the must-have best-of-breed IE browser replacement, IrfanView represents the best freeware on the planet. (all IMO, of course)

 

[e_dawg]

Forum error?

Was Tea's posting orgy due to this?

General Error

Failed sending email ::

DEBUG MODE

Line : 225
File : /home/handruin/public_html/forum/includes/emailer.php

That's what I get.

 

[Handruin]

The server is having SMTP troubles. Because of this, the error you posted is being generator in topics that (as I assume) have e-mail notification enabled for certain users.

Hopefully this will be fixed soon. While this continues to happen, please ignore the error...your post will have gone through.

 

[Tea]

What'z an orgy?

 

[Tea]

I know what posting iz, but I'm a bit vague on the "orgy" side of things.

 

[Tea]

OMG! I juzt realised what you said, Mercutio! You mean Lexmark make those all-in-one thingz? :eekers: That's a thought too horrible to contemplate. I won't even touch a Lexmark printer if I can help it .... if anyone brings me a Lexmark all-in-one, I'll .... er .... I'll ..... no, that won't work ... Tannin is too old a dog to let me palm it off on him .... Kristi? Nope, she's too savvy in the workshop? Mutiah? The Soup Nazi? Sol?

Nope. They wouldn't touch it either. Sol postively froths at the mouth when you mention the word "Lexmark", possibly because of a never-to-be-forgotten little incident involving a Lexmark alleged printer, a perfectly ordinary little 2-macjine Windows network, and about three nights worth of lost sleep.

There iz nothing for it. There iz a 2000 Volt distribution transformer just down the road ... hooking it up to that for half an hour ought to kill it.

"Zorry Zir, your all-in-one device zeems to need servicing. We can't do it here, of course, it's a factory job. I suggest you pack yourself up in a strong cardboard box and send yourself to China. Or pozzibly Mars."

 

[.Nut]

What'z an orgy?

Going ape with orgyans.

 

[Tea]

Tannin iz always scratching his orgyans. Iz that the same thing?

 

[Mercutio]

Only if he doesn't wash his hands before posting..

 

[flagreen]

Tannin iz always scratching his orgyans. Iz that the same thing?

Bet that doesn't take long. :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

Dammit Bill I just spurted tea out my nose (yes, I am fully aware of the irony of that remark).

 

[Tea]

OK. I don't get it.