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Adobe Photoshop CS5

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DougDolde

Guest
I dunno but one thing for sure, I won't be paying these jerks $199 just to upgrade.
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
Does anyone know how much RAM adobe photoshop CS5 will use when running on a MAC?
Almost as much as you throw at it, it has much better capability to utilize memory.
If your question is minimum, I don't know.
The upgrade is very significant for the large file user.
-bob
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Well, I for one will be upgrading, no question. Only question is do I upgrade to the regular, or the extended, or just buy the whole darn suite!
 

LJL

New member
Felix,
Not sure anybody yet knows how CS5 will be optimally configured to run on a Mac in its newer version. In the past, because PS for the Mac was multi-processor blind, and was not configured for 64-bit throughputs, etc., one built a machine that stressed disk speeds and RAM. But it really depended upon what you were doing. If you were doing lots of layers and small adjustments to images, you could get by with less RAM if you had a separate fast scratch disk for the file swapping. Or, you could beef up the RAM to handle that swapping. As files got bigger, but the processing did not change, fast drives for swapping became more and more important.

Now, with true multiprocessor and multithread awareness, plus the ability to better utilize GPUs, and not just CPUs, the configuration needs could be changed again. With the advent of the faster bus in the newer Macs, and their fine-tuning, stuff may be able to move into and out of processor and RAM a lot faster, so huge amounts of RAM may not be quite as important. Handling large files is still a horsepower issue, so faster an more CPU power is the name of that game, plus having the right amount of RAM to support those throughputs.

I discovered something quite interesting today using a new 15" MBP with 2.66GHz i7 core chips and only 4GB of stock RAM. I ran a huge file set through Aperture (yes, that is NOT PS CS5) in a batch process to resize RAW and PSD files ranging in size from 17MB to 250MB in size, convert them to sRGB and apply a watermark. During that process, my CPUs were at 90% or more the entire time. However, I never maxed out the 4GB of RAM, and had few page outs, plus the swap files were never very large. That really surprised me, as it suggested that even that heavy load was well within "stock specs" of the machine, and adding more RAM probably would not make much difference, and neither would a faster HD, since I was pulling stuff from a RAID5 storage, and placing the finished stuff onto an external FW800 drive, so the internal drive did almost no work once the app got loaded. Quite a surprise about what may NOT be needed. Bigger file handling will probably benefit from a bit more RAM for most things, but it may be worth waiting to see just how things run before tweaking the machine more than it may need.

While some folks have been talking about CS5, and it is coming very soon, there does not seem to be much data or tests over its performance on different Macs at this point. I am sure just running it in 64-bit on Snow Leopard with a normal 7200rpm HDD and 4GB of RAM will probably work quite nicely. Sorry not to have more concrete data, but just suggesting we may have to start rethinking things and figuring out what apps are more drive intensive or RAM intensive, or that can truly take advantage of both, as not all can or do, and how things pass into and out of the CPU will matter also.

LJ
 

LJL

New member
Bob,
I had a very similar reaction as yours to Doug's comment, but you beat me to the reply.....and then you retracted it!! LOL

LJ
 

TRSmith

Subscriber Member
I've been a loyal fan and immediate upgrader of all the various iterations of the Creative Suite. I use InDesign and Illustrator at least as much (if not more) than PS. The one drawback to immediate upgrades to the suite is that not everyone I work with makes the transition as soon as the new suites are available. Not a huge deal, but somewhat annoying if I forget to send a copy of the file to a commercial printer saved as a ".inx" formatted file. That's not an issue for PS.

As a Beta tester for PS5, I learned to really like some of the new features and feel that the upgrade is worth it. However, since some of my clients and vendors are still using CS3, I'll probably wait for a few months (or until I can't stand it anymore) to make the upgrade to the full suite.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
CS5 i will upgrade to but Indesign 5 i will wait also since I have to deal with press houses. They always seem to be at least one generation behind. CS5 is 64 bit that alone is worth it.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
200 dollars is nothing to upgrade and have no issue to do that. My one bitch with Adobe is there upgrade structure when you have 3 qualifying products to get into a Suite package. Cs5, Indesign and Acrobat Pro 9 only count as one unit so upgrading to a Creative suite makes it a little tough. I wish they actually counted 3 products instead of one. Now maybe things changed and need to check but I would rather upgrade to a suite and be done with it. If anyone has any idea's how I can do that let me know. I just may have to call them and see what can be done.
 

Terry

New member
Guy - That looks like the Design Standard Suite is what you need - which is what I think I'm going to get. I am taking class at the right time (yeah) and can qualify for the student teacher version. So, my straight Photoshop upgrade would be $199 or the educational price for the Design Standard Suite of PS/ID/Acrobat is $299.

In design is a very useful alternative (to their Booksmart software) in working with Blurb for books as you can use it to make your book for upload.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Yea was looking at Indesign and looks to be able to do mobile devices as well so would like to have it. I got 849 to a suite but maybe doing something wrong. Have to figure this out later.

Being a workshop owner does not seem to qualify for educational. Bummer
 

docmoore

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Guy,

$849 is correct....and I have In Design and PS CS4.

Just started the download now....2.4 gb :eek:

Bob
 

billbunton

Subscriber Member
Downloaded the master suite and the PremierePro content disk images (plus a couple other with goodies). Just those two is over 9GB :)
 

Terry

New member
Guy,

$849 is correct....and I have In Design and PS CS4.

Just started the download now....2.4 gb :eek:

Bob
I guess that is the part that I don't really understand. Is there no way that Adobe will roll individual product licenses into a suite upgrade?

Design Standard is PS/ID/Acrobat - the upgrade for Design Standard 4 to 5 is $499 it is just that the website assumes you either have the suite already or only one product and there isn't a price if you already own two or three of the products. I guess unless I'm totally out in left field or naive I would call Adobe Customer Support before paying the $849.
 

JimCollum

Member
i just loaded 3 betterlight pano's, and photoshop used 9Gb of phys. memory. much better than the 3.7 it used to use. of course this means i'm going to have to spend money and get more memory
 

Jonathon Delacour

Subscriber Member
While some folks have been talking about CS5, and it is coming very soon, there does not seem to be much data or tests over its performance on different Macs at this point. I am sure just running it in 64-bit on Snow Leopard with a normal 7200rpm HDD and 4GB of RAM will probably work quite nicely. Sorry not to have more concrete data, but just suggesting we may have to start rethinking things and figuring out what apps are more drive intensive or RAM intensive, or that can truly take advantage of both, as not all can or do, and how things pass into and out of the CPU will matter also.

LJ
The Optimizing Photoshop CS5 section that Lloyd Chambers (diglloyd) has just added to his Mac Performance Guide has graphs of memory usage on different Macintosh models. Well worth reading for anyone wondering about whether to upgrade. (Warning: you may need to factor in the price of extra RAM to take full advantage of the upgrade.)
 
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