There is no denying that majority of web development professionals and graphic designers depend on Adobe Photoshop for creating quality graphics for web use. This versatile and power packed image editing application also boasts of web design features that can aid professional web designers.
With Photoshop, it is possible to optimize and slice images for use in web pages. The application also offers powerful photo effects that can help designers create stunning web graphics. However, with each release, Adobe has packed in a huge number of features that can bring down even powerful CPUs to their knees if users do not know optimization tricks. To get the most out of Photoshop, users need to have the right kind of hardware and they also have to tweak the internal settings of Photoshop.
- From version CS4 onwards, Photoshop has included the support for 3D. Even though it is not a standalone 3D content creation tool, designers can easily create stunning 3D graphics with Photoshop. They no longer need to use third party 3D content creation tools. However, the latest version of Photoshop, CS5.5, is pretty resource hungry. To run smoothly, the app needs powerful hardware components.
- Web designers and graphic artists working with the latest version of Photoshop either need to upgrade their PC components, or buy a powerful new computer to run it smoothly. It would be good to invest in a 64 bit OS and 64 bit version of Photoshop. The 64 bit OSes can support more than 3GB of RAM and this will give a noticeable performance boost to the workflow. The PC running Photoshop needs to have 4 to 6GB of RAM for optimum performance.
- The web designers working with Photoshop need to tweak the memory allocation settings in the application. There is no hard and fast rule about how much of system memory should be allocated to Photoshop. It depends on the need of the designers, the configuration of his PC, as well as his need for multitasking. To tweak memory allocation to Photoshop, designers will need to select ‘Preference’ section under ‘Edit Menu’. With a 64 Bit OS and a 64 bit Photoshop version, designers can allocate more than 60% of system memory to the application.
- To make sure that Photoshop runs smoothly, designers can disable Adobe Bridge. This image organizer is a nifty application but hogs some amount of precious system memory. The settings can be changed so that this app does not launch when system starts.
- Web designers can also invest in a powerful discrete GPU to get the most out of Photoshop. This can be useful for those design professionals who need to use large and high resolution images frequently. The onboard GPU may suffice for regular tasks, but coping with Photoshop Filters on large images or applying 3D filters, can tax it severely. The option to choose hardware acceleration should be enabled in the preference section of Photoshop. This will result in faster performance.
Adobe Photoshop is quite demanding on system resources. This is why a web designer needs to upgrade the hardware in their PC and tweak Photoshop settings for getting better performance.
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