Have you encounter a case where you wish to design a huge poster (for e.g. A0 size at 300DPI) and your Photoshop keeps crashing? I have been experiencing this for several times so decided to do up a simple list of methods to optimize Photoshop on our computer (applicable for Windows only).
Setting Up Scratch Disks
You can feel a great difference if this is done correctly. Photoshop scratch disk is similar to computer's virtual memory. The default scratch disk is often set to C Drive, and with all our other programs installed on this drive, made it left with little space as scratch disk. You should set the scratch disk to a defragmented hard disk that has plenty of unused space and fast read/write speeds. If you have more than one hard disk volume, you should specify additional scratch disks.
Go to Edit > Preference > Performance.
Adjusting Cache Levels
Photoshop uses image caching to redraw high-resolution images faster. The higher level you set for the cache, the faster Photoshop will perform. The default cache level is 6 and setting it to 1 disables image caching.
Go to Edit > Preference > Performance.
Minimizing Palette Preview Thumbnails
Photoshop requires additional memory to display preview thumbnails in the Layers, Channels, and Paths palette. Photoshop updates the preview thumbnails as you make changes to the image itself. The more preview thumbnails Photoshop displays and the larger the thumbnail you select, the more memory Photoshop requires to draw and update preview thumbnails.
Go to Layers/Channels/Paths Panel > Panel Options.
Allowing Photoshop to Use More RAM
Photoshop uses RAM to process image information. The more RAM available to Photoshop, the faster it can process image information. Other open applications and startup programs decrease the amount of memory potentially available to Photoshop. Quitting applications or startup items you are not using makes more memory available to Photoshop.
Go to Edit > Preference > Performance.
Reduce Number of History States
History is a great feature in Photoshop but having it set at a higher value (default is 20) will slow down the performance of Photoshop. You can reduce the number of history states to speed up things.
Go to Edit > Preference > Performance.
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