Scratch disk for Photoshop CS4

[Bynx]

I dont mean to criticize having both. Ive only been using Photoshop since it was Photoshop 1.0 so Ive only learned that program. Elements is just something that grew from it with less features and less to learn. As for the 10 GB figure, personally I wouldnt use any more than 5 GB. I cant imagine any project that would come anywhere near even that. Can you imagine having 5 GB of RAM?

[July]

Bynx, no offense taken. I have seen a number of your posts, and posts of other members, and I appreciate the wealth of goodwill at Steve's.

I started with a cheap point-and-shoot - and Ulead, which came free with a ClickArt package. Soon I graduated to PaintShop; Elements was not yet available. I acquired Elements partially because it seemed the way to go when helping friends, and partially as a lead-in for the full Photoshop. I'm having a blast learning new skills, and hope that my eye becomes more discerning as I go along.

5GB of RAM - why unimaginable?

[Bynx]

5 GB RAM unimaginable?? Well when I got my first Mac it had a 40 MB hard drive and used 4 MB of RAM. Each MB of RAM cost $1,000. You can see where Im coming from? I notice now that every new major upgrade of software requires the purchase of a new computer.

[July]

Yes, Bynx, I can see the past (when $1,000 still walloped a fair bit of purchasing power) and can imagine the future. We do get tempted to upgrade, don't we? And at times forced to do so by hardware failure. Perhaps in photography we will some day achieve the "XP syndrome" - when what we have is good enough, and improvements are so marginal that we can hardly perceive the differences with our woefully limited human input unit (eyes). Oh well, then we would just concentrate on taking good pictures .

[Lin Evans]

Hi,

Elements is a "cheap" way to upgrade your RAW converter between expensive upgrades of Photoshop. Originally, Adobe made the RAW converter a stand-alone option for $99. They then decided to bundle it with Photoshop and dropped the stand-alone version leaving those of us who purchased it without a reasonably priced upgrade path except to purchase Elements. Many do not upgrade every time Adobe comes out with a new Photoshop version. I've used Photoshop since it became available but I stopped upgrading every version at 5.0. I jumped from 5 to 7 to CS and still use CS but am considering CS4 Extended only for the 3D capabilities. In the mean time I use Elements as my upgrade path for RAW converters with my numerous digital SLR's from variously Canon, Sigma, Nikon, Sony and Olympus. Of course each manufacturer has their own RAW converter, but sometimes without all the bells and whistles of the Adobe version.l

To get the Adobe RAW converter otherwise than via Elements, I would be spending way too much for different iterations of PS.

As for RAM, though it might seem that 5 gigabytes is a tremendous amount of RAM, some do indeed use considerably more and with good reasons. If you've ever tried to stitch a panorama which results in over a one gigabyte file the additional RAM is absolutely necessary. Of course that begs the question of why such a huge panorama, but some of us also like to tinker with deep zooms and panorama's up to 20 gigabytes in file size have been created.

Best regards,

Lin

Originally Posted by Bynx

Why do you have Photoshop and Elements. Photohop is enough for any job. Elements is a junior version for those unwilling to go all out and get Photoshop. Your scratch disk is your virtual memory. Photoshop only needs 2 GB, however, its recommended to use more. Personally, I think 10 GB is way more than you will ever use no matter how big a project you are working on. Remember, your scratch disk is not necessarily where you end up saving the file. Its only for memory.

[July]

This newbie surely agrees on all points, Lin. Nevertheless, it might be interesting for you to see the upgraded RAW capabilities in CS4. They make my head spin.