Digital BW, The Print

Martin writes:

> In this case though, Photoshop is still the limiting
> factor.

Photoshop still has the brain-dead memory management that it had under the
old Mac OS (out of necessity, back then).  Adobe is unwilling to fix it, and
it can become a serious problem with large images.

> I am running 2GB of RAM under Win 2000 and Photoshop
> will initially open say a 1.2GB file entirely in RAM
> but as soon as you try to do any adjustments or
> manipulations it starts spooling to the swap file
> and only uses a fraction of the available memory.

I have encountered a persistent bug in PS that causes it to give up all
memory when you try to save a large TIFF as a JPEG.  It goes from 1 GB down
to 46 MB or so, then gives up.  You have to close and reopen PS to do the
save.

> Adobe's insistence on using a separate swap file
> in addition to the Windows page file results in sub
> par memory performance.

Agreed, although Adobe refuses to recognize this.