PBase

Is it the RAM that my computer has, and can I do anything about it?

Or is it the amount of gig's? Which I can get rid of some files.

I apprieciate any help on this subject.

Thank you

More information would help. What kind of machine, how much RAM, what kind of processor, etc. HD usage won't have anything to do with anything.

You could be experiencing a side effect of some program that has become corrupt and is causing interferrence with photoshop.I had a slow photoshop experience. It also would lock up and have to be closed and restarted frequently. I dumped Norton Internet Security because of other Norton related problems I had been experiencing. I did a search and found all Norton, Symantec, and live update files and removed them manually after using the add/remove programs feature in XP. My entire computer ran better and photoshop is as fast and stable now as the day in installed it.

I got rid of all the protection I had on my computer. I only use it for photography. No internet conection. Good idea though.

I will post more info about my computer.

I am sorry if I caused any confusion. I am not without protection on my computer. Although I dumped Norton Internet Security, I am currently using a free downloaded antivirus with automatic updates. In addition, there could be many other programs on one's computer that could be causing a conflict with photoshop or it could be something completely unrelated. Computers are funny (weird) and mine has often times had a mind of its own. I think it hears voices.

Oh No no no.....lol

Although Adobe says you need less, it is recommended by other photographers that you should have at least 2 GB of RAM.

Cheers
Sheila

PS uses a "scratch disk" which is basically a large empty disk area for temporary storage. The size required depends on the size of the image file, layers, etc. Set this to a second disk drive if you have one installed.

It's also best to keep your hard drive defragmented.

My computer has 480 MB of RAM. That must be why it's so slow with photoshop. Sheila say in her reply that I should have at least 2GB.

Can I increase the RAM. Or do I need to buy a new computer?

I'd really like to keep the one I have.

Thanks Sheila.

480MB is on the low side, although 2GB is great, increasing it to 1GB will make a very big difference. What is the processor & speed? Hard drives & amount of free space?

Thanks again.

I have a Sony VAIO.

Intel(R) ?

Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
2.39 GHZ, 480 MB of RAM

Windows XP Version 2002

Service Pack 2

Disk(C:) 16.00 GB Free 5.70
Disk(D:) 58.52 GB Free 21.07

Processor - x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 4 Genuinelintel ~2390 Mhz
Page File Space - 1.10 GB
Available Virtual Memory - 1.96 GB
Total Virtual Memory - 2.00 GB
Available Physical Memory 286.13
Total Physical Memory 512.00MB


Thanks for your help

Just take the motherboard (or laptop) to a computer service store and ask them to put in more memory. Before you do this, make sure that you have all your images burned to CD. I say this because when I did this a year or so ago, the computer store managed to destroy my hard drive and I lost around 300 shots. Luckily most of my images were on my second drive (and backed up to an external drive) which remained undamaged.

The two hard drives I have amount to around 200 GB and my Lacie external is 250 GB. You can never have too much space

Cheers
Sheila

I agree with Sheila, the biggest improvement will be with more RAM and it's inexpensive.

It appears you have a single drive with 2 partitions. You can still set the scratch disk to D:\, this might improve performance somewhat as the C:\ partition is small and this is the default for PS.

I aslo have an ACER PentiumM 2.0GHz with 1Gb or RAM and a ATI mobility Radeon x700 128Mb
I would suggest to see also the graphic card that you have on your laptop. It also plays an important role when dealing with graphics and a 128Mb will do the job.
If you'd have a desktop it would be easy to add a Memory to the comp but in case of a laptop i somehow don't want to mess and open the thing

Lots of good advice above with which I agree.

In order of priority:

1. add as much RAM as you can afford
2. turn of virtual memory if you can. with virtual memory turned on the machine is using the hard drive as RAM and the hard drive is the slow component in the equation
3. add a separate video card with its own RAM (VRAM)
4. make sure you allocate a lot memory to Photoshop
5. clean out old files/folders/programs
6. defragment the hard drive
7. virus protection software often checks every file as you use it, this slows things down. turn off protection when doing Photoshop work and when not connected to a network like the internet
8. laptops are always slower than desktops
9. play around in Photoshop turning the secondary scratch disk on and off to see if there is a speed improvement

Steve