PS causing RAM problems? SLOW.

MacBookPro 4, 1.
2 GB.

This tends to only happen when i've been running PhotoShop. i usually create large projects. i get the beach ball quite often, especially in safari and PS. my key problem at the moment is trying to save a project as a high quality jpeg. it tells me that there is not enough RAM to do so. this puzzles me. i ran S.M.A.R.T. and even deleted about 500 photos. what could be the problem?

when viewing my "macintosh HD" it says my volume is 186gb with 113gb free.
i'm not sure what all this means. any help would be greatly appreciated. thank you.

I think you're confusing hard drive storage space with RAM. See my explanation of RAM here. http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/ap...compaq-laptop-g4-ibook-1-2-a.html#post1178925

ok i see now. i'm still having this problem though. i have itunes, iphoto, and PS open. i still can't save the large jpeg.

well i managed to get passed that issue... some how.
when i'm using PS my computer will go super slow, especially safari. i hear noise to the left of my track pad. it sounds like a coffee percolator.

rubberghost said:

......it sounds like a coffee percolator.

Click to expand...

HAHA love the analogy

Why not up the RAM as its so cheap these days. OWC ~ Your Mac RAM and in the LINK provided you can go up to 3GB for as little as $36 and 4GB for $70 which will give you the max of 6GB for your machine.
2GB just doesnt cut it IMO for any machine running these days especially a MBP and SL. Even running Leopard 2GB is a little low. I up mine in my 1st White Book i owned to 4GB. Yes i know things run well but as you have seen its just not enough.
1 tip i can give is open Activity Monitor and see what Safari is using. Im all the time upping over 1GB and i quit it all my tabs reopen and im right to go again. It can be a huge hog at times. It might give you back some precious space for you PS work. Just a thought

Cheers

ok cool. i'll look into it. thanks for the info.

rubberghost said:

well i managed to get passed that issue... some how.
when i'm using PS my computer will go super slow, especially safari. i hear noise to the left of my track pad. it sounds like a coffee percolator.

Click to expand...

Photoshop can be a huge RAM hog. Unless you have lots of RAM it's best not to have any other application opened when using Photoshop. In general if you don't have lots of RAM you shouldn't be multitasking because that uses up RAM quickly.

Your two solutions would be to either use Photoshop by itself or buy more RAM. If you work on large files often then buying more RAM is probably your best solution because 2GB might not even be enough. When I had 4GB RAM that was just barely good enough for what I do in Photoshop so now I have 8GB but it really depends on what you do in Photoshop because not everyone needs lots of RAM. If a person is working on small files and doing simple edits then they most likely won't need more RAM.

As mentioned open up Activity Monitor and see how much memory you are using. If you routinely don't have enough RAM left then you definitely have to buy more RAM if you want better performance.

ok cool. i always work with large files so that may be the best thing to do. thanks.