i7 8GB Dedicated Photoshop machine & photoshop lag

[TabletBuyer2]

Hello All,

I have been browsing these threads daily for over a month and decided it was time to sign in.

I am considering the i7 8GB model for a dedicated photoshop device...
I already have a MBA which I use for media consumption.

Many of the threads I have seen focus on photoshop with chrome tabs,social media etc open at the same time. My preferred use would be to work on one large format (300ppi 3'x9') photoshop project at a time, with no other programs open. In regards to layers... I'm not quite sure how many because I am new to photoshop.... let's assume 50 layers?

To summarize, with no other programs open beside photoshop, do you think I would still run into ram issues with the 8gb?

Also, i have seen a few reviews showing severe photoshop lag when painting at full pen pressure. has anyone else see this issue?

Thank you very much

 

[onlysublime]

You're new to Photoshop but want to work on 300 dpi 3'x9' projects with 50 layers? What kind of project is this???

 

[TabletBuyer2]

Haha. I thought you might ask. It is for large print media. I want to create banner art that can be viewed close up. I have done it with traditional media and I want to have the ability to do it in photoshop. I would likely start with 3'?'3' in the beginning

 

[BaritoneGuy]

I suspect it should run just fine as it has all the latest versions of the hardware. I say try it and if it doesn't work out you have 30 days to return it.

 

[TabletBuyer2]

Thanks for the Input. I suspect it might take me longer than 30 days to create my finished project. However maybe if I just did a test with 50 layers flooded with random paint colors that should be a good test.

 

[onlysublime]

For print media, you really should be working with vector primarily with occasional bitmaps. This is more along the line of Illustrator and InDesign. Photoshop can be used but it's really inappropriate and unwieldly because it will create documents of enormous size. For example, a document that might be 400 KB in Illustrator will be 8 MB for the equivalent document in Photoshop.

I had a friend create a trifold brochure in Photoshop and it came out to be 26 MB. I was shocked why he used Photoshop when the exact document in InDesign would be less than 2 MB. It looked exactly the same but because he was not converting the vector to bitmap (such as with text), he was helping save space and resources. Plus, vector art can scale and look exactly the same.

Trust me, you will develop skills for all Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop if you want to do any significant amount of work. Luckily, they designed the software so that skills in one program can apply to other Adobe software.

 

[TabletBuyer2]

+onlysublime Thank you for the very detailed information. I sincerely appreciate it.

My only worry about vector is that I would like to scan photos at 300dpi to put into the project.... I'm not sure how well that would play but I will definitely give it a shot...

What do you you think in regards to the 8g vs 16gb if i were to use illustrator?

Thanks

 

[onlysublime]

You can still do a mix of bitmap and vector in a program like InDesign which is a desktop publishing program. What you don't want to do is render everything as a bitmap. It's a waste of resources that doesn't net you much benefit.

If you are going to be doing huge projects like you mentioned, 16 GB will be what you need. 8GB will be good for things like retractable banners, car magnets, big posters, etc.

The thing is you're going to be running Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign all at the same time. Because each are good at certain things. InDesign is for the layout. Photoshop is for bitmaps. Illustrator is for the vector art.

Here's a quote I grabbed from an Adobe forum: "I'm running an i7-930, 18GB ram, RAID0 X25-M 80GB SSDs, GTX570 on Windows 8, and CS6 Illustrator runs just fine for me. I've run Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign together for 2hours straight with with high resolution graphics (12"x60" at 300DPI) and it has never maxed more than 12GB ram total on me."

 

[TabletBuyer2]

That is exactly what I needed. Thank you VERY much