Running like a slug

[Kenny Rohan]

When using photoshop 6.0 on my PC ... it runs like a slug. As soon as I click on something, the hour glass comes on. Any movement of the cursor causes the hour glass to come on. Is there some way to optimize PS 6.0 performance? Do I need to "defrag" my system? Help! thanks.

[audiyoda]

What are your system specs? (CPU, RAM, type/size/speed of HDD....)

-Craig

[DilLy]

Also you can set the amount of Ram that Photoshop will use in its preferences. i recommend letting it use a lot, more than half. I set mine to 80% so it runs fast and I can have files with tons of layers, and my desktop can still recover right away after I close PS. (btw i have 512mb Rdram, so you shouold adjust according to your amount of ram)

Audiyoda is right though, in asking that question. If you have a slow system you will not be able to accomplish much with PS (especially 6.0 or 7.0). But it sounds like something else is actually casuing your problem than a possible hardware bottleneck.

[aym]

Also, what programs do you have running in the background?

[Streams]

Do I need to "defrag" my system?

You should regularly Defrag your system.

[mairving]

If you are running W2K or XP and only have 256M of RAM, you will have these kind of problems. It helps to upgrade it Photoshop to 6.01 and to change the location of your scratch disk to a different partition. Other things can also slow it down, like accessing a large .psd file on a Network drive, etc.