FREE PHOTOSHOP TUTORIALS

Every professional owns quality tools to produce quality work. Why not do the same if you’re a graphic designer? In today’s tutorial I’ll show you how to increase the speed in which photoshop will run on your computer; because everyone knows… time = money!Option 1: Close all unnecessary applications. This may seem like an obvious option, but not many people do it. Every program will occupy virtual disk space, so the more programs running the less virtual disk space available for Adobe Photoshop = slow down.

Option 2: Now we are going to change some settings in Adobe Photoshop. Go Photoshop–>Preferences–>Performance. In here you have access to change the amount of  memory usage photoshop will take up. I usually run at 85%, but you will want to play around with it for your own system. Next to change is your cache level. The higher the level the faster your images will re-draw after things like zooming in and out, however it also means the longer it will initially take photoshop to open your project. The lower the cache level, the higher the quality image. I usually run this at a 5. You can choose between 1 & 8. Furthermore I run my history state at 15, out of 1000. Most of my work is done with layer masks, therefore I usually just make quick fixes. Lastly, you may want to change your scratch disk space. This is where Adobe Photoshop will temporarily store files while you’re working on a project. You may find a slight increase in performance by changing this to a free external drive, however I just keep it on my C: drive.

Tip: Under “General”  you may want to select “Zoom with Scroll Wheel”. This way you’ll never need to memorize “Control, Z” ever again!

How do you know if you’re running out of RAM? At the bottom left of your image in Adobe Photoshop you’ll see the dimensions or size of your project as default. If you click the small arrow next too it you’ll be able to see “Scratch Disk” or “Performance”. Scratch Disk will show you the RAM you’re using out of available, while Performance will always be at 100% unless you do run out of RAM.

Option 3: For professionals that know what they are doing, this website has a really handy plug-in that will disable unused Adobe Photoshop Plugins/Filters. It’s not recommended for Photoshop beginners.