Is it computer up-grade time

[chauncey]

I tried out the stacking tool that Adobe finally got working but it runs slow. The stack of 80, 22 MP
images done yesterday, took over an hour, I do not multitask while running PS.
I do have the performance almost maxed-out in Preferences. Am using a HP Pavilion with a intel i7-920
Processor with 23 of RAM and 64 bit Windows 7 OS.

Would appreciate any and all suggestions directed toward increasing performance as much as reasonable,
including computer up-grades.

[dabhand]

Do you use SSDs (Solid State Disks) at all - I've no knowledge of the stacking tool but for all my work I have one SSD which holds the images and another which is for the swap / cache etc leaving the actual s/ware on a hybrid ssd/hdd - gives really good throughput.

steve

[rpcrowe]

I have a fairly fast computer but, adding additional RAM up to its maximum capacity as well as switching to a more efficient video card made my computer run like a brand new machine...

[chauncey]

The machine is rather dated...no SS Drives or video card upgrades.
Am looking at this link...http://robertoblake.com/blog/2014/01...computer-2014/

[Kodiak]

Would appreciate any and all suggestions directed toward increasing performance as much as reasonable, including computer up-grades.

There are, as I see it, two differences between your tools and mine that spare
me such inconveniences:
• My Macs are all fine tuned to support CPUs performance and SSDs are not yet
part of my strategy… this is not the first place to put you money. I presume this
can be done with PCs but I know nothing about those.
• Though I recognize the multiple talents of the Master Collection CS6 (PS6 & Co.)
I certainly will not use any of the software within to perform my stacking nor my
stitching tasks. These require specialists that drive all their performance in the
chosen direction.

[John 2]

The machine is rather dated...no SS Drives or video card upgrades.
Am looking at this link...http://robertoblake.com/blog/2014/01...computer-2014/

Wm. do you mean 23 of RAM? Doesn't usually come in odd numbers. On the assumption you mean 24 GB of RAM and a Quad Core processor (running at 2.6GHZ?), even with standard HD's, you have a fairly capable machine. I suspect your real problem is the 80x22MP images. That's a hell of a load for any machine but the one area of weakness that might exist as Richard has suggested, is your graphics card. When I upgraded from CS5 to CS6, I suddenly found some of the functions ran very slowly. Apparently, CS6 relies heavily on the Graphics processor for some of its functionality and my old 500Mhz 1GB card couldn't hack it. Swapping it for a 1Ghz 2GB card (plug and play so not too difficult) made all the difference. I bought a relatively inexpensive passively cooled (quiet) card and the machine now goes like a train even though I only have 16GB of memory.

[pnodrog]

Go press "Ctrl+Alt+Del" select task manager then processes tab to see how many you have running and close any non essential process. There is also a performance tab which may help.

Before investing in a new computer make sure your current one is optimised and it's resources are not being clogged up with unneeded background applications.

[ajohnw]

The chances are that the bulk of stacking goes on in memory so things like video card and ssd discs will make no difference at all.

What you need to do is find out if windows is swapping - using disks as ram. Not sure how to do that on windows but there is bound to be some sort of utility about that will tell you. You can help on this score by not running anything else or fitting more ram if it is swapping.

Think an hour is bad - I visited some one that was stacking a couple of hundred shots some time ago using stacking software, fast machine and lots of ram. It didn't finish in the 3-4 hours I was there.

One thing I have done is reduced the sizes before stacking. That can make a big big difference.

John
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[dabhand]

Richard and John picked up the bit I missed earlier and John's suggestion is spot on.

A big problem though is in ensuring whatever system you build is that all the parts, especially the motherboard and memory, are actually in balance. I would strongly suggest you contact a reputable system building company, explain your requirements and ask them to specify a couple of systems re-using as much of your existing gear as possible. It would probably save you money in the longer term.

steve

[xpatUSA]

Go press "Ctrl+Alt+Del" select task manager then processes tab to see how many you have running and close any non essential process. There is also a performance tab which may help.

Before investing in a new computer make sure your current one is optimised and it's resources are not being clogged up with unneeded background applications.

+1 to that.

[proseak]

8- or 16-bit?

[John 2]

Wm, a couple of links to sites that I found useful when I built my own system.

http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/20....html#more-714

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/b...p-cs6-pc/19985

Not suggesting you do the same but they do provide detail of recommended system requirements and as many have suggested as a first step, how to tune your system. You don't say which version of PS you use. With focus stacking, I had assumed CS5 or 6. The first link above is for CS6 but there a link for the equivalent CS5 process given on the linked sight. What they suggest is that performance is linked to three main factors namely Memory, Video card compatibility and performance and if indeed you are short of memory, the use of a scratch disk. You seem to have plenty of memory and your 64 bit system can use it. The sites provide a link to a list of compatible cards however, you don't mention whether you have set up a dedicated scratch disk and if swapping is taking place and you haven't, PS will by default use your system drive and that could be part of the problem. This is where the additional speed of an SSD will help both for the system disk and for a dedicated scratch disk. However having said all that, it's my best guess that it's the 80x22GB load that is the problem. You don't mention any running out of memory messages and it sounds like the problem is just the time its taking to work through the load and tuning your system should help that to a degree. After all what I think that translates to is 80x22GB layers and for TIFF files at least, my system creaks at around 10-15 depending on what I am trying to do. Hope this helps.

[ajohnw]

Go press "Ctrl+Alt+Del" select task manager then processes tab to see how many you have running and close any non essential process. There is also a performance tab which may help.

Before investing in a new computer make sure your current one is optimised and it's resources are not being clogged up with unneeded background applications.

The number of odd things that can sometimes be found running in windows and all of the googling to see if they are legitimate and HP drivers and certain other things digging themselves so deep into the OS to such and extent that they slow things down and can't be uninstalled is one of the reasons I became very very fed up with windows. Their updates always slow machines down as well.

Going to a "professional" to check if things are optomised sounds like a good way to get ripped off unless it's a case of stripping out clutter and you can't do it yourself. Hardware wise other than "clocking" the machine nothing will make much difference even if the ram timings can be set faster in the bios. Intel's cheaper processors will often take higher clock speeds after they have been out for a while but if you give them plenty of cpu work to do and the processor overheats it will reboot itself or on the newer processors slow down it's clocking speed so it makes sense to make sure that the heat sinks are all nice and clean and even fitting one that blows through rather than down onto it.

Lap tops are very good at throttling the cpu clock frequency when it's given lots of work to do. There should be some utilities about that work the processor as hard as it can be worked while noticing if the clock speed is being reduced. I have one for Linux but not for windows. It runs all 8 cores flat out and monitors the temperature and any slowing down. They are worth having about.

It's well worth fitting one of these types of heat sink or having some one fit it for you

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Arctic-Coo...item19e68b47b1

One of the nice things about these is that it's easy to unclip the fan and brush out any dust - eventually - the last one I used didn't need cleaning for many years. Dust blows through rather than on. A similar type is fitted to my HP workstation but the heatsink is cowled in which will make it very difficult to clean when it needs it. Nearly 2 years now. Dust and fluff collects due to air flow into the box but no signs of throttling.

John
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[ajohnw]

I used to build my own but it's turned into a higher cost option. This time I bought an ex demo HP Z420 workstation that still had 28 month of on site warantee left on it. They are often listed on ebay in the UK. I bought and fitted more memory from Mr Memory as the HP prices are insane. Added a flash drive that just carries software and is never written to and then added a couple of extra disks in a raid formation. Nothing writes to disc other than when something is being saved so the gains from writing to the flash drive would be negligible, Applications load very quickly from flash and it only gets written to when I add one or upgrade it.

A machine like this will also come with 2 sets of windoze discs - 32 and 64bit pro. Not that this aspect is of any use to me. Mine came with 7 but they probably come with 8 now. These machines are fitted with Xeon processors - optimised for data flow. That and a very solid case, easy parts installation and a few other things like USB3, firewire and a card reader are some of the advantages of buying a machine like this.

John
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[loosecanon]

I assume you have specified that Photoshop can have access to a large chunk of the RAM - it could be on the default in which case it will page to the hard drive more.

Building your own does mean you can specify all the components - and its not hard. Getting the right graphic card with as much memory on it helps, and I believe Photoshop can use some of the features of newer Nvidea cards.

[IzzieK]

Go press "Ctrl+Alt+Del" select task manager then processes tab to see how many you have running and close any non essential process. There is also a performance tab which may help.

Before investing in a new computer make sure your current one is optimised and it's resources are not being clogged up with unneeded background applications.

Can also right click on the taskbar at the bottom of the window and select Start Task Bar then go to Processes...

[TonyW]

I would suggest starting up Task Manager and checking how much of the memory is being used and how much page swapping there is. 80 files of 22MP would be around 2.4 GB.

[John 2]

I'm not at all sure that this is memory problem. 20+GB is a lot of memory. If you think about what is happening, each image is being compared to every other image - probabley several times - in order to determine which bits are sharp. For 80x22MB, thats a lot of processing.

[pnodrog]

I'm not at all sure that this is memory problem. 20+GB is a lot of memory. If you think about what is happening, each image is being compared to every other image - probabley several times - in order to determine which bits are sharp. For 80x22MB, thats a lot of processing.

Yes I suspect for every image there will be a mask layer used to map the sharpest area and that is then compared it in turn with every other image in the stack to eventually map all the sharpest areas. A fair bit of processing.

At a guess 20GBytes is sufficient but 22MBit image * (48bits(6bytes)/pixel +8bits for mask) * 80 images + processing memory all starts to add up to both sizeable RAM and processing requirements.... Note: Assuming 16bits/channel


P.S. 22MB*7bytes*80 = 22M*560 = 12,320Mbytes or 12.32GBytes plus memory for operating system, progamme and processing. (of course I am just speculating on how it is done and my maths is not what it used to be)

[HaseebM]

Get a Z77 UDH motherboard with i7-3770K processor, 2GB 560 ti or higher Nvidia graphic card, 16 GB 1333 mhz or higher RAM with a 120 GB SSD, plus normal HD to allocate space under 'Preferences > Performance" and your PS will run through that stack. I am curious as to the 80 images stack? Extreme macro or what?