Two Questions!

[Nam]

Alright... so I'm running photoshop 7.0. I'm having trouble with crashing lately (program not responding), namely with certain brushes (it seems haphazard in its nature) that are more complex than just your hard or soft edged brushes. This happens more I think with dual brushes, color jitter settings on, texture, etc. Can anyone tell me why this happens?

Also, what are some general ways to speed up photoshop? Sorry if this question is redundant.... and how does the 'scratch disk' function? Is it better to use the C drive or 'startup'?

[Skrunchey]

My best guess would be that with all of those setting running for your brushes, your computer can't keep up with all of the calculations to perform and give a result.

Scratch disk ~ is a partition on your drive that is designated solely to photoshop use. You can designate any drive as a scratch disk, but my suggestion is that if you can, have a drive (external possibly) dedicated solely as a scratch disk. The more room you give it to put it's temporary files in the smoother it will run. DO NOT MESS WITH THE START UP DRIVE!!

[vardoburrito]

'allo.

In dot point answer.

*The more settings/options a brush has, the more calculation
your CPU has to do to make it happen.
Select your brush, and turn 'on' and 'off' certain custom settings to
see its effect on your system. See if one particular setting causes the crash.

*Scratchdisk (harddisk) is what photoshop uses as a secondary location
when working with your photoshop files.
The more RAM that your system has (RAM is faster than Scratchdisk/Harddrive)
the faster Photoshop is able to work with the file.

*In terms if 'Startup' and 'C:' drive.
I believe 'Startup' refers to the program location, where Photoshop is installed.
If your Photoshop is installed in C: drive. Then there'd be no difference.


Note:
I prefer to have my scratch disks on a different 'harddrive'.
Not a partition, but an actual separate harddrive for the purpose of wear and tear.
I use the same hard drive (40Gig) to cache/scratch with Photoshop and Premiere.
My reason being that, caching/scratching is a constant read and write. Why stress
one harddrive to read/load the program files while at the same time cache/scratch for intensive
programs like Photoshop/Premiere.
Plus it's usually how studios do it. If you can contain risks/errors from happening, then do it.


I use an old Western Digital to cache/scratch.
I first used a Maxtor brand, which broke down a year after the purchase.
I've had this Western Digital for more than 6 years now. Still reading/writing away with the same
amount of buzz/noise. I think :)

[Nam]

Thankyou both of you for your responses. I played with some of the brushes that were killing photoshop and they haven't repeated that symptom yet since modification. I'll also look into more ram and another HD.

Peace.