Photoshop suprisingly fast...

Hello all,
I've been playing with a trial version of Photoshop CS2 and it runs suprising well for such an outdated processor. In fact, I've been running various filters, etc. with the Activity Monitor running to see how hard everything is running. Here is what I have discovered. Can't get the processor up over 98%, the RAM use NEVER exceeds about 500 MB (shows a GB free), and virtual memory averages 3.09GB but occationally jumps to 3.11GB. Is photoshop that streamlined for a Mac? Any photoshop apps that will offer a good representation of my Mac's true capabilty? I'm just dabbling before school starts so I know what to expect.
Thanks for all the advice,
Chris
P.S. I should add that I don't have any of my BIG images (35mm color transparency, scanned at 4000dpi, approx. 35 MB). Right now I'm messing with images in the 4-5MB range in RAW format that are "borrowed" from Adobe. I know this makes a huge difference but it still seems pretty fast.

Hi
I believe Photoshop is heavily optimised for the PowerPC and filters do make extensive use of the G4's AltiVec. In the good old days 'bake offs' were performed at the Expos, where a PC and Mac would run the same Photoshop script consisting of a number of image manipulations and filter applications etc. The Mac would invariably complete the process in half the time, despite the PC having a higher clocked processor.

Similar Messages

FAQ: How do I make Photoshop run faster, or How do I increase performance?

Why doesn't Photoshop run faster?
There are many factors that contribute to the responsiveness of Photoshop. From hardware to software, there a nearly an infinite number of combinations that can boost or hinder Photoshop as it tries to work. Considering factors like how much RAM you have only begins to scratch the surface. Then you have to look at how fast the RAM is and how fast the motherboard will be in supporting it. A computer can only run as fast as its slowest components. Additionally, the hardware resources must be split between all of the running applications. And while you may only be running a web browser at the same time as Photoshop, what about all of the applications running in the background? Security software such as antivirus remains hidden, operating behind the scenes, but it still takes up CPU cycles and RAM. And what about the files you are working with? What are their pixel dimensions? File size on disk? Number of layers, smart objects, styles, and adjustments?
To start, though, you must make sure you meet or exceed the minimum system requirements:
Tech specs
What can I do to make Photoshop run more efficiently?
There are many factors to take into consideration and may steps that can be taken. Here are a list of resources that go into great detail.
Optimize performance | Photoshop CS4, CS5, CS6
How to tune Photoshop CS6 for peak performance
Photoshop CS6: The Need for Speed
What about Photoshop taking advantage of the power of my video card?
With each new release of Photoshop, it will take more advantage of you GPU (Graphic Processing Unit), which can process display information much faster than your CPU. You video card also has its own separate RAM (known as VRAM) for storing this information. However, not all video cards are equal, even if they have the same amount of VRAM. There are different display processing technologies that all video cards do not have access to. These include technologies like OpenGL, OpenCL, and Shader Model. And these technologies have different versions that your video card may or may not have.
For more information on Photoshop's use of GPU, please review:
Photoshop CS6 GPU FAQ
FAQ: What features use the GPU and how do I troubleshoot GPU issues?
What other performance boosts has Photoshop gained recently?
While Photoshop tends to gain overall performance upgrades by cleaning up the code to make things run more smoothly with each release, there are a couple new technologies that Photoshop has taken advantage of:
Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine
64-bit OS benefits, limitations | Photoshop CS4, CS5, CS6

Good day!
Please read this:
Optimize performance | Photoshop CS4, CS5, CS6, CC
If you have follow-up questions please read this (specifically »Supply pertinent information for quicker answers«):
http://forums.adobe.com/docs/DOC-2325
Regards,
Pfaffenbichler
(edited)

Are the brushes in Photoshop CC faster than CS6 - still need to use CS5 for large files

Hey,
Are the brushes in Photoshop CC any faster than Photoshop CS6.
Here's my standard large file, which makes the CS6 brushes crawl:
iPad 3 size - 2048 x 1536
About 20-100 layers
A combination of vector and bitmap layers
Many of the layers use layer styles
On a file like this there is a hesitation to every brush stroke in CS6. Even a basic round brush has the same hesitation, it doesn't have to be a brush as elaborate as a mixer brush.
This hesitation happens on both the mac and pc, on systems with 16 gb of ram. Many of my coworkers have the same issue.
So, for a complicated file, such as a map with many parts, I ask my coworkers to please work in CS5. If they work in CS6 I ask them to not use any CS6 only features, such as group layer styles. The only reason why one of them might want to use CS6 is because they're working on only a small portion of the map, such as a building. The rest of the layers are flattened in their file.
Just wondering if there has ever been a resolution to this problem...or this is just the way it is.
Thanks for your help!

BOILERPLATE TEXT:
Note that this is boilerplate text.
If you give complete and detailed information about your setup and the issue at hand,
such as your platform (Mac or Win),
exact versions of your OS, of Photoshop (not just "CS6", but something like CS6v.13.0.6) and of Bridge,
your settings in Photoshop > Preference > Performance
the type of file you were working on,
machine specs, such as total installed RAM, scratch file HDs, total available HD space, video card specs, including total VRAM installed,
what troubleshooting steps you have taken so far,
what error message(s) you receive,
if having issues opening raw files also the exact camera make and model that generated them,
if you're having printing issues, indicate the exact make and model of your printer, paper size, image dimensions in pixels (so many pixels wide by so many pixels high). if going through a RIP, specify that too.
etc.,
someone may be able to help you (not necessarily this poster, who is not a Windows user).
a screen shot of your settings or of the image could be very helpful too.
Please read this FAQ for advice on how to ask your questions correctly for quicker and better answers:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419981?tstart=0
Thanks!

Photoshop 7 faster than CS 3 on Mac Intel .....

How come Photoshop 7 running on a MacIntel so via Rosetta emulation mode is really really quite faster than the CS 3 which is native !!
It clearly shows the lack oof optimisation of adobe softwares and that after each update they are becoming more and more gaz factories !!
It is clear that softwares with competitors are really better than others, the flagrant exemple of Lightroom vs Aperture !
Plus the prices ...
CS 3 Standard Edition is in Europe 2032 vs 1199 $ in Northern America reported in US $ 2985 $ vs 1199 $ !!! European customers have to pay 2,5 the price for the same crap !!
It is clearly that you take your customers for pigeons !!
Thank you i tried CS 3 the slowlyness and the few more feature will not justify to pay 2,5 more !!

But its it faster than CS3 on an Intel Mac with Leopard.
You also have clearly confused the people here on the forums (OTHER USERS) with Adobe.
Also instead of getting mad at Adobe in America Maybe you should be asking why Adobe distributers in your part of the world see the need to jack the price up. I have a feeling it has more to greed on your end than our end.
>i tried CS 3 the slowlyness and the few more feature will not justify to pay 2,5 more !!
Well if you really do own Photoshop 7 instead of just a pirate copy you might want to upgrade now as Adobe's policy world wide is 3 versions back. As soon CS4 is released you will no longer be eligible for upgrade pricing.

MBP 2012 as Photoshop workstation: fast external drive solutions?

I'm a heavy Photoshop and Lightroom user. I have a current 2.6 ghz i7 MBP w/ a 750gb 7200 rpm internal hard drive, which I hook up to a 30" monitor and Wacom tablet.
If it were a desktop I'd have an internal dedicated scratch drive and RAID. What are my external oprions, and is it viable w/ USB 3 components, assuming they'd be less expensive than Thunderbolt?

Stupid me for not reading the "2012"... anyway... here's what I would do.
Install a 480-512GB SSD in your internal drive slot. With a $400 SSD with your system, applications, working files, etc., you'll have plenty of space to use as a scratch disk and Photoshop will fly. Get a good FW800 4GB RAID for under $300, or a good 4GB Thunderbolt RAID for about $600 for storage. Most of these RAIDS will be configured as RAID 0, which is fine. You can get a G-Technology 4GB RAID for under $300 on Amazon - see here. The G-Drives get mixed reviews - I've three of them now and have had no problems, but perhaps someone else can suggest alternatives - LaCie maybe? So...
...worry first about a fast internal drive solution - and get a SSD for scratch, systems, apps, working files, etc. It's going to be your fastest option. And get a 4TB (at least) RAID 0 for storage - Thunderbolt if you can afford it or Firewire 800 for half the price. You can but an enclosure from OWC for your 750GB internal and use it as a Time Machine backup for your internal drive (not optimum space, but it will work - I have a 2TB G-Drive for my Time Machine backups for my 512GB internal just now).
Hope this helps,
Clinton

How to make photoshop go faster, faster!?

Right now I'm using a Mac G5 dual 1.8hz PowerPC with 2GB RAM, PS 7.0. My typical files are 400 - 500mb and can have as many as 500-600 layers. Pixel dimension is 5400 x 3150 pixels and after opening my lower left shows 64.9m/1.42 G. It takes a long time to open one of these files- about 3-4 minutes and even longer to save, about 4-5 minutes. Also while the file is open zooming and panning can be choppy and slow, with the monitor lagging behind with the refresh. I can even hear the hard drive going when zooming sometimes. Question is how can I speed up the opening, zooming, saving? I have on order a new Mac Pro 2.93 quad core with 16gb RAM, PS CS4. What else should I put into this to speed everything up? Thanks!

this is very helpful thank you.
I'm putting in the maximum ram possible for this machine- 16GB. I don't know how to improve that.
I see it is also important to have a dedicated scratch disc, with nothing else on it. Adobe even recommends using a RAID array for this, so you are really talking about at least 2 drives just for the scratch disc. I was wondering if you could use an SSD for the scratch disc, like an Intel X25-M 80GB? These drives have very fast read speeds, although the write speed is not as good.

Does anyone know if running Photoshop thru a external SSD (using firewire) as a scratch disk, on a imac early 2008- make photoshop any faster doing tasks?

Has anyone tried this and if so, was there a noticable difference in photoshop doing its various tasks? Again, its a imac early 2008, and I looking to use a firewire to attach a Solid State Drive to use as the scratch disk. I am maxed out a 6gb ram.
Thanks

CanadianBear
KiltedTim's right of course. You seem to have adequate RAM.
I would ask you if this sluggishness is NEW? If so, what has changed that you can identify? Updates or upgrades? New software etc?
What kind of tasks? Any operation on a big image is processor heavy, but you have the RAM so scratch disk is the right direction. What is your 'History' preference in PShop? Keep that as small as you can afford to. Save often. Keep as few images open as possible - each image has its own History. Save often.
For scratch info on an image, choose that from the 'triangle' pop menu at the bottom of the document window. That seems a good way to tell if scratch disks are even at fault.
Happy Shopping
CCC

Tips to make Photoshop CS5 a lot faster?

I have been having a lot of issues with my PS CS5, it is behaving very slowly and I really have no idea why, I always thought that CS5 would be running a lot faster (because of 64bit) than CS4...CS4 was much slower than CS3 which I had really no problem with. So with photoshop CS5 even really basic operations are extremely slow, loike moving inside a document, selecting brushes, lapse of time for the brushes to appear...very basic stuff and that happens on double layer files (1400x900), so on very small files
At first I thought it was because it wasn't detecting my video card (which I found was because of my secondary 24" 1920x1200 monitor).
Here is my hardware:
Macbook pro 3,1
2.2GHz Core 2 Duo 4mb l2 cache
2GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM (2x1GB)
120GB 5400rpm HDD (set up as 2nd Scratch disk)
WD 1 TB 7200RPM (2 partitions) FireWire800 hard drive (1 partition as 1st scratch disk)
1248mb Memory usage for PS
History states:100
Cache Level:4
Cache Tile size: 128k
Also When designing the only other applications that are open are iTunes (to listen to music, an absolute must when designing! ) and Mail.
So my problem is I bought CS5 and I swear in front of my computer because it is so slow! I understand my computer isn't the most recent one but the operation I ask it t do aren't all that bad...moving a document shouldn't make PS lag and take forever...
By the way I do use some of the most recent PS CS5 features so I can't go back to CS3 even if it worked much better...
What can I do? Please help me!
P.S: Thank you Chris for your answer in my other discussion, it did answer my question!

Not for nothing, but when I hear people complaining about how slow the current Photoshop is on recent hardware, I have to laugh...my fist big iron machine was a Daystar Genesis which had 4 processors. I put a whopping 512MB of ram in the machine that cost $17,000 (yes, 17K) but that was mitigated by putting in a second 512MB for only $7,500 (the price had dropped...
In the old days, Photoshop performance was a matter of hours/days not minutes/seconds...when you worked on a big file in Photoshop 2.5, you did a lot of work to optimize Photoshop and minimize the processor clicks lost to other processors. Launch Activity Monitor and see how many processes are running under OS X. A ton...many unneeded and unwanted for running Photoshop. Are you running ONLY Photoshop? Or do you have ram/processor hogs like iTunes or Safari running at the same time? How many images do you open and work with at a single time? Open 2 images and Photoshop's ram debt doubles...open up 4 images and it more than quadruples...
There are three basic bottlenecks in Photoshop and if you want to speed them up, you need to address each and every one. First and foremost is processor speed (and multi-processors up to a point where you get diminishing returns) but even with the fastest CPU's if you starve the processor of ram when you open a bigger image, you still slow down. The last one is pretty important if you are hitting your scratch disk and that's disk I/O...
So, the basics of speeding Photoshop are; fast processor, lots of ram and a separate fast drive for scratch disk...then make sure you are only running Photoshop and not a bunch of other crap in the background and open only as many images as you absolutely need. If your machine is bogging down the odds are one or more of the above needs to be addressed. It's possible that some 3rd party software (plug-ins or drivers like a tablet) is bringing down your overall performance...it's advisable to have everything on your system as up to date as possible (after leaving a week or two for "other people" to flush out the problems).
If you are in doubt about your ram (and 2 gigs is literally nothing these days) launch Activity Monitor and watch the free ram graphic. If you are routinely dropping below 100 MBs of free ram (not allocated by any other process) the odds are real good you are seeing slowdowns and SBODs because you are forcing the system to page data which slows things down a lot-particularly if your boot drive is also your Photoshop scratch drive because you have two things competing for the same drive. It's optimal to have a fast second drive just for Photoshop scratch disks.
If you have less that all the ram your computer can hold, that's prolly the cheapest and most cost efficient place to spend money to speed Photoshop short of getting an all new system, ram and tons of fast hard drives...

Can i make Aperture run faster ?

To help those struggling to understand why their computer is running Aperture slowly, let me add a few thoughts to help out. I've been using the application since 1.0, bought a G5 quad to run it (launched on same day) with the stock video card. My Photographic interest was Landscape and macro work in film (hobby) and been using digital since 94 and now turned Pro adding Portrats and Weddings to my interest.
How do i run Aperture at a decent speed ?
1. Invest in good hardware. In any of Apple's product line max-out the graphics card option (except perhaps expensive Quadro fx4500), max out CPU option then the RAM. Invest as much as possible in the non-upgradeable components. Over time you can add more ram, but don't underestimate the importance of RAM in OSX. Keep your boot/application and data drives below 70% capacity as above this they start to slow down.
2. Use the vaults and backup the library (don't forget any referenced images).
3. When editing images, don't whang the sliders freely left to right. Be a crafstman, use the number adjustment arrows, with the modifier keys for fine tunng SHIFT and ALT. This is faster.
4. If an image has a lot of spot'n'patches, do this first before any other adjustments (or untick their box in the HUD). Similarly for strighten, do this before H&S or exposure mods.
5. Switch off previews, for marginal improvements.
6. Don't use full-screen mode, its lovely, but with my awful graphic card it kills it when adjusting. Remove the projects window W and control bar D. Toggle the adjustments with I. Real estate is arranged better with the browser on LHS.
7. Try culling the rejects with the viewer off V and maximise the thumbnail size. Suprisingly fast and effective when only going for rejects.
8. After culling use the auto stack feature to reduce the number of images your viewing into 'like' shots. Helps when choosing your story for output.
9. Setup some presets for varying degrees of edge sharpen and White balance as this helps get you get in the vacinity of where you want the adjustment. eg. I have five increasing degrees of edge sharpening intensity and six white balance settings (daylight, cloudy, shade, flash, tungsten, flourescent) which gets me closer to a good WB faster than playing with multiple sliders.
10. Learn the keyboard shortcut.
11. Use Aperture feedback. If your unsatisfied with anything then tell apple as well as the forums. So far we have seen big improvements in Aperture, some were really alpha/beta issues but it is clear Apple is serious about investing in this young Application. I hope they invest in the pixel-pushing, local editing, masks and layers abilities, but do it true to an intuitave workflow platform that Aperture has become.
12. RTFM as well as buy a book - invest in your skills, become better, faster and ultimately more productive.
13. Don't believe in bad luck !
The reason for Aperture running sluggish when using specific adjustments is because i need to upgrade my video card. Fortunately, i can, but might invest in a MP for more storage.

If You go to the Aperture site page for basic requirements needed to run it, It will state a Powerbook in fairly basic design will run the Application.
And before I purchased Aperture, and as you can see I updated my RAM to 2 GB.
I ordered this laptop with the top line of all hardware possible.
So I could run also run a 20" screen.
And no, I didn't pack the 20" in my suitcase.
It's amazing how far you have to make sure people don't take one word and run with it.
Not ONLY Aperture, but DDP (Digital Photo Professional), as I hate when people only use abbreviations for everything, and the person trying to learn something is slammed out the door for even looking.
But both applications run pig azz slow. So much so, and I also use the Activity Monitor to keep watch over things in realtime.
When things run this slow to the point you can't see a live change in the view,
You don't learn much, and you can't complete a simple project.
Like one person suggested earlier, just tweak the image one mark at a time.
Well hey, we don't have 6 hours to make one adjustment.
The processor is running at 100% and never backs off till you kill the application.
Making the move from Canon G5, to a Canon 30D and a few thou in lenses, is about the biggest joke while in Europe. Yea, drag all this stuff you don't see to Europe, with 2 portable hard drives to keep the Mac hard drive happy.
It all adds up to roughly a $7000 dollar mistake.
The ads are a total farce. Get this, and do stuff beyond the norm.
Yea Right, like your going to bring a G5 tower in a suitcase.
Oh sure, I'll struggle with the software till get through with 20 images, and
what if you have 300?
Now, one question... Who's next , as far as an application that runs RAW images with no lag. With out all the BS.
Power Book G4-1.67-2GB, Bluetooth Mouse & Keys Mac OS X (10.4.8) 20" screen for dual view.

Photoshop CC font preview had to be set to none after OSX 10.8.3 update.

Hi,
I own a Macbook Pro with retina display. When I last updated it I experienced problems in Photoshop CC with the color wheel spinning often for no apparent reason. I had never had this happen so I saw in the troubleshoot Photoshop article in Adobe help to set the preview size to none. Why do I have to suddenly disable parts of Photoshop on such a capable machine as this? I am glad the color wheel stopped spinning but I'm not glad that I have to find a way around having no font previews in Photoshop CC.
This is something I think should be fixed.
Sincerely,
Harold Williams

@Noel
I did those steps and step 4 and 5. They tested good. I think step 6 did the trick but not immediately. I could not do step 7 for some reason. I did not stop to figure it all out. I just kept going to step 8. This is where I began to see Photoshop become much more responsive. I moved all fonts that start with the letter A from ~/Library/Fonts to my Desktop and now Photoshop is faster than I've seen in a while. No spinning color wheel, yet. Now I have to find out which ones of those A fonts are bad by replacing them one at a time.
Thanks for pointing me back to that article. I guess I just got upset.
Sincerly,
Harold Williams

Very slow Lightroom 4.4 to Photoshop CS6 in Windows 8

I have a problem with my Windows 8 computer. Please notice that on this computer I did not change any of the default settings in the operating system, it is a clean install of Windows 8. I have also installed the latest version of Photoshop and Lightroom directly from my Adobe Application Manager software (I am a Creative Cloud member).
What happens is that I have to wait 30-50 seconds after I give, in Lightroom, the command "Modify in -> Photoshop CS6" (I have the software in Italian and I hope that this translation is correct. Here is the command that I am using:
The very strange thing that happens is that Photoshop opens fast (5 seconds, I have an SSD) and Lightroom is very fast too.
Here is the strange thing. Photoshop opens after I launch the command.
Then nothing seems to happen for 30-50 seconds (sometimes also more time). After this “long” period of time this error appears in Lightroom:
It says: "you can't modify this file because Photoshop CS6 can't be started". However, this is not true! Photoshop is running correctly, and it was running! This happens if Photoshop was started from Lightroom and if Photoshop was running before Lightroom command "Modify in -> Photoshop CS".
Another strange thing is that, after I press "OK" to this error message, the file immediately opens in Photoshop!
Please notice that this behavior happens also with a series of file. If, for example, I export 10 files from Lighroom, then, after about one minute, I get 10 error messages in Lightroom, and, when I press OK, the files will open in Photoshop (for each "OK" that I press a file opens, so I have to press 10 times OK to open my 10 files!).
This very strange behavior is eating my time and I am very disappointed! It is very difficult to get in touch with Adobe support and I decided to use this forum to get some help. After you pay monthly for the Cloud software you wish that a good support came included with what you pay, but it seems that this is not true!
Please help me if you can!

Vittorio,
1. At this point my suggestion would be first to check are you the Admin of your system or not.
2. Try uninstall and Photoshop first and make sure you select the option Remove Preferences when you doing an uninstall.
3. After that try a fresh install of Photoshop.
4. If that doesnt help try uninstall and reinstall or LR & PS too by same way.
-Mandhir

Why does Photoshop make my MacPro run extremely slow

I use actions for my photograpy images. I use CS6 PS and LR3 side by side and it continously freeze my brand new mac and also did the same to my old PC.
A computer annaylist friend said it may be the way i use PS - I cant see that to be honest as all I do is open the raw image - run an action and then save it back to LR. But then saying that after speaking with other photog friends - they tell me they dont have a problem when they do the same.
HAs anyone got nay ideas because Im about to loose it with it all. My Mac freezes so much its a joke.
Many Thanks
Louise

The answer to your question may depend on several aspects. In order to help you it would be useful to know the answers to the questions listed here: FAQ: What information should I provide when posting, or What do you need to know to solve my issue? Also check this FAQ: How do I make Photoshop run faster, or How do I increase performance?

Photoshop CS5 running VERY slow

Hi,
My Photoshop CS5 started running very slowly. I followed some suggestions and removed a bunch of programs and services from the start up menu. I also disabled Windows Search Host Protocol as I was getting frequent performance warnings from it while using Photoshop.
Now Photoshop runs faster, but it takes incredibly long time to save files. The computer goes into hybernation mode waiting for Photoshop to finish saving.
I imagine this was caused by disabling one of the services in the start up menu or by disabling of Windows Search Host Protocol.
Does anyone know what programs and services need to be included in the start up menu for efficient working of Photoshop. And whether disabling of Windows Search Host effects the running speed of Photoshop?
Thank you,
Margrarita

Margrarita,
Disabling Windows services that may be essential to normal functioning of your operating system itself is not something that is recommended.
First and foremost, we need to review Photoshop's behavior on your computer to be able to advice further.
Can you go to Help > System Info from Photoshop, copy & paste that data here for us to analyse, thereby give you further suggestions?
-ST

Photoshop CS very slow startup

I'm running CS on a XP Pro SP2 PC, and have been running it since 2004 with no problems until last fall.
For no reason I can figure out it stopped starting up. No new software, no viruses, I checked. I would get just a grey window with no credits and eventually I'd hit ctrl+alt+del and see that the program wasn't responding.
I've uninstalled it completely, having to reactivate it upon re-install. I've removed my preferences. I've manually uninstalled it and re-installed it.
Now it runs, but after clicking the icon it takes over 2min 15 sec before I even see the credits window. then several seconds later it's up and running.
Illustrator CS2 starts up completely as normal.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
David

I had the exact same problem with a network printer. I had slow load times with photoshop, slow photo opening, slow printer access. It would print, but it took minutes at times to get to the next screen.
Well I was able to fix this issue by removing my network printer and then adding it as a local printer over a tcp/ip port. To do this, I simply added a the printer as a local printer, do not find it automatically, instead configure manually, add a new port and select TCP/IP then type in the IP of the printer. I then jumped selected the defaults on the next couple screens. This was set as my default printer. It is a night and day difference in speed. Photoshop opens faster, photo's load faster, and print screen comes up almost instantanously.
I also noticed windows was more responsive, particularly opening the control panel, so it looks like it may be an XP problem that is exagerrated by photoshop. Note, I could print before making this change, but now it works much, much faster.
Let me know if this works, I searched google for hours for a solution, and did not find anything. Good Luck

Using an iMac for Photoshop editing

Hi. I'm a photographer and have been using a 17" MacBook Pro for the last 5 years and doing all my Photoshop editing on it. The MacBook has served me well but has developed a hardware issue and requires a new logic board. Rather than sink $500 or so into the repair I am considering spending a little more and upgrading to a slightly newer used 21.5" iMac. It's a mid 2010 model. Are there any Photoshop users out there that have been using iMacs and are happy (or unhappy) w/ the performance of their machines in regard to image editing? I'm particularly concerned about image quality as displayed on the iMac screen. Thanks for any feedback anyone cares to offer.
Here are some of the specs on the iMac I'm considering:
Dual core 3.06 GHz processor
8 GB Ram
500 GB 7200 RPM HD
256 MB VRAM

I use PS CS3 on a 2009, 27 inch iMac with the same CPU and GPU specs and I am not having any issues.
I have a 1 TB HD installed, though.
If you purchase this iMac, I would increase the RAM to the max. 16 GBs of RAM.
Correct and reliable Mac RAM can be purchased from online Mac RAM sources Crucial memory or OWC (macsales.com).
Photoshop likes fast CPU, lots of RAM and lots of hard drive space for scratch disk areas.
The GPU while not that impressive, but serviceable for 3D and video work, will be more than fine for 2D Photoshop work.

Photoshop suprisingly fast...

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