Kachoozie Stock Images

by Heather Shimmin

If you are working on a particularly large file, or multiple files, you’ll notice a dramatic slow down in the speed at which Photoshop can process a task. You may even come across an error message from Photoshop saying that it cannot perform that action because it doesn’t have enough memory. When you get this message, a crash is just around the corner.

There are a few things you can do to free up some space and make Photoshop run faster.

SOLUTION 1: CLOSE UNUSED FILES

Close any files you don’t need open. If you’ve got ten files open and you’re only working on two, close the other eight.

SOLUTION 2: PURGE THE CLIPBOARD

Next, you can try to purge the clipboard. Start with clearing out the clipboard by going to Edit > Purge > Clipboard.

SOLUTION 3: PURGE THE HISTORY

Next, erase your history. You won’t be able to go but and undo this, and so make sure you don’t need to undo anything. Your undo history will start over from this point. Go to Edit > Purge > History.

SOLUTION 4: PURGE THE RAM

If neither of those things help, you can also try to remove everything Photoshop has stored in RAM. Go to Edit > Purge > All.

SOLUTION 5: UPDATE PHOTOSHOP

Install the latest update of Photoshop.

SOLUTION 6: MINIMIZE PALETTE PREVIEWS

These thumbnail previews in the layers and action palettes eat up a lot of memory. To minimize these previews, click on Palette Option Menu then Palette Options. Choose the smallest size or none for the thumbnail size and then click OK.

SOLUTION 7: ALLOCATE MORE MEMORY TO PHOTOSHOP

You can also allocate more memory to Photoshop while it’s running. Go to Edit (Photoshop for Mac) > Preferences > Performance. This dialog box shows the amount of RAM allotted to Photoshop, the number of actions you can undo in the history palette, and the number of cache levels.

SOLUTION 8: NO FONT PREVIEW

Previewing fonts also uses a lot of memory. Edit > Preferences > Type > uncheck box for Font Preview Size.

SOLUTION 9: TURN OFF VERSION CUE

Edit > Preferences > File Handling > uncheck box for Enable Version Cue.

SOLUTION 10: MOVE FONTS TO DESKTOP

This solution allows you to check for damaged fonts. When you move the system fonts from the Fonts folder to the desktop, your operating system reinstalls undamaged versions of system fonts. When you add the fonts back into the Fonts folder you see a warning if there is a damaged font. You can then reinstall a clean version of any damaged font.

1.create a new folder on your desktop called Moved Fonts
2.go to My Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Windows folder > Fonts folder
3.Open the fonts folder and select all (control/command + a)
4.Go to the new folder you created on the desktop (Moved Fonts) and double click on that folder to open it.
5.Drag the Windows Fonts folder to the desktop. If asked it you want to move the fonts, say yes.
6.Now do the reverse. Select all fonts from the desktop, and drag them back to the windows Font folder
7.Delete the Moved Fonts folder and whatever contents are in it
8.Restart Windows and open Photoshop. If you disabled Font Preview in Type Preferences, as outlined in Solution 8, re-enable it.

SOLUTION 11: REMOVE PALETTE TOOL PREVIEW

Remove preview on palette tools when you roll your mouse over them. Do one of the following:

– Click on either the Navigator or History tab to bring one of these palettes to the front.

– Drag the Info palette tab into the palette well.

– Choose Window and click Info to deselect the Info palette if it is selected.

SOLUTION 12: UPGRADE RAM IF LESS THAN 125 MB

For optimum performance in Photoshop, use a video card with more than 128 MG of RAM.

SOLUTION 13: UPDATE VIDEO CARD DRIVER

Older or outdated video cards can cause a huge slow down in performance. Download the latest video card driver from the manufacturer’s website. To determine the manufacturer of a video card, view the card’s properties in Device Manager (windows). To determine the manufacturer on a mac, view the card’s properties under the Apple Menu > About this Mac > More Info.

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by Heather Shimmin

Photoshop batching is a fantastic tool: it saves you lots of time and the tedium of doing repetitive tasks, such as saving files for the web or adding a watermark.

CREATE AN ACTION

First of all, you’ll want to create an action. To do this, you’re going to record the steps you want photoshop to remember which you’ll apply to other images later. Let’s say you want to turn your color photographs into old-looking sepia-toned ones.

1.Open an image.
2.In the ACTIONS palette, choose Create New Action (icon to the left of the trash can).
3.A window pops up and asks you to name your action. Name it something which will make sense to you in the future, such as Sepia Tone. You can also assign key strokes to actions, color codes, and save them under a menu other than Default, if you wish.

RECORD AN ACTION

1.When you hit okay, your actions are being recorded.

STEPS TO MAKING A SEPIA-TONED IMAGE

There are many ways to create a sepia-toned image. Here is one of them.

1.Convert the image to black and white (Image > Mode > Grayscale)
2.Concert the image to RBG (for web use) or CMYK (for print) (Image > Mode > RBG or CYMK)
3.Adjust contrast, brightness, and levels to your liking
4.Create a new layer (Layers > New > Layer)
5.Fill the layer with the color you want (Edit > Fill)
6.Change the blending mode (layers palette) in order to get your desired effect. I usually use Multiply.
7.Adjust the opacity to increase or decrease the intensity of the color
8.Flatten the image

SAVE AS

When you’re satisfied with how your image looks, choose File > Save As. This is very important because you don’t want to save over your original file. Choose the image’s destination, how you’d like the image to be saved (TIFF, JPG, etc. )and rename the file.

CLOSE THE IMAGE

Close the image. If asked if you want to save changes to image, say NO, because, again, you don’t want to save over the original file.

STOP THE ACTION

At the bottom of the Actions Palette, hit stop (square on the left). All of this work has now been saved as the Sepia Tone Action (or whatever you chose to call it) and you can now summon its powers in the future.

APPLY THE ACTION TO OTHER IMAGES

You can do this several ways. You can apply the action to an image(s) which is already open, or to an entire folder of images.

1.Choose File > Automate > Batch
2.A window comes up with several important options. They are all rather self explanatory, but a very cool feature is that you have the ability to rename the files and add an extension.
3.Hit OK and Viola! your computer does the work for you.

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