[jasonN]

Hi I tried searching the archives but I didn't find the exact answers I'm looking for.
okay, I'm required to do an image that is 36 by 24 inches. (10800 by 7200 pixels) at 300dpi. Which is absolutely huge and kills my computer.
I have a P3 600 with 128megs of ram and a 32meg tnt2 m64.
I've decided to upgrade my ram with another 256 making it 384 in total.
What I'd like to know is if there's anyone that is working in similar sizes and what is your hardware setup? Also, how is the performance at those sizes?
I tried using the free transform function to stretch an image to the required size and it took almost 10 minutes to process....

I need to know if I add another 256 of ram, whether it will be sufficient or if I should order more.
My harddrive is really small too (only 8 gig) and I don't know if it has fast access speed or whatever. I remember Loki talking about having a fast harddrive but I think that's out of my price range at the moment.

[burn0ut]

well ram... is VERY CHEAP right now, i just saw an ad in the paper for 128mb pc-100 or pc-133 for 14bucks...

also a week ago like 512mb chip was 49$ i think...

anyways good luck...

[waylon]

Hi. I've got 392mb of ram, and there's no way I could do an image that big. You'll probably want to pick up a 512mb chip, or two 256s, if your computer can handle it. (www.pricewatch.com lists some good deals, though most computers can't handle the really super cheap ram.)

Also, what's this image for? Is it something that people are going to be getting really close up to and looking at, or are they going to be a few feet away? If the latter is the case, you could probably very easily cut the DPI in half, and save yourself a lot of trouble.

[Rinaldo]

well if your system is clean you might have a chance of getting throug it. but honestly. I was on pretty much the exact same setup a few months ago and there would have been all sorts of trouble. maybe if you resize it up only at the last minute to add the small details. or copy bits of it into a new document and then work on it, paste it back in to the big one.
but at that size (and even if you do max out your ram) there will still be problems (hard drive is a big factor as well if you don't have SCSI or RAID). things just freeze up or crash. filers or any commands like that take ages. saving takes ages.

I ahve been able to work on images that are like 6000 by 4000 on a machine like yours. things are slow. and you really need a clean system. but 10000? Idunno......good luck
just cloes down everything else. don't try any sort of multitasking.

for me, Brush response when working on images half that size was pretty bad, which effects your ability to work. especialy with any sort of large brush.

[Jim S]

jasoN - Right now I'm working on a pic that's about the size you mentioned, a little larger actually, and my setup is an AMD 900 Mhz with 512 mb ram and as long as I don't have too many layers, use large brushes or run filters everything works with pretty good performance. Resizing is a real bitch though, especially if you have many layers.
Adding more RAM to your system I think would help up the performance quite a bit. And as long as you have enough RAM the harddrive shouldn't be much of a problem.

/Jim

[Freddio]

yikes..

Why so big??

[jasonN]

Hi everyone, thanks for your replies.
Burnout: After reading what the others said, it looks like I'll have to get some more.
Waylon: yes I'm going to purchase another 256 defintely after what you said about your machine not being able to handle it. So that should make it 640 megs of ram. That is a ridiculous amount to me, but I guess it's necessary. The image is for a print/poster thing. To hang on peoples walls. So it can be viewed up close and from far away.

Rinaldo: Do you mean you've tried working on a system like mine with the added ram or without? Right now, my process is to work on the image and get it really complete at a smaller, more manageble size. Then I plan to use the image size function and make it the required size. Because there's a lot of blurryness when you resize, I plan mainly to refine it at the large size, so thus I shouldn't need many large brushes I hope.

Jim S: Thank you for your reply, it's a little reassuring I plan to only work on one layer, possibly two. I rarely use layers so that wont be a problem. As for resizing... well, I'll probably only use that function once, when I do I'll go and watch some tv or something
Hugh: I don't know why it has to be so big. The guy I'm doing them for wants to make prints that size and he said that the optimal resolution is 300dpi, he wants high quality prints. Oh well, I'll figure something out.

Thank you everyone for your help

[ July 19, 2001: Message edited by: jasonN ]

[jasonN]

oh fark... I just realised I have to get a CD burner to send him the PSD file.... there goes another few hundred dollars.

Also, what operating system do you guys work on? Another member here, n8, told me that windows 98 doesn't fully utilize above 256 megs of ram to it's full potential? Is this true? ahhhh this is a night mare!!
If this is true, why does anyone even bother buying above 256? Is there some secret operating system used by digital arists?? hehehe.

[burn0ut]

i wish there was....

[Jim S]

jansoN - I work on good ol' Win98. Have tried all the other windows OSs too and I found Windows 98 Second Edition too be the most stable one of them. Win2k fucked up my gfx card - a GeForce GTS. I only got about 60% of the framerate I get under win98, no matter what drivers I used. Well, nuff rambling.

All the Win OSs are handle your RAM memory poorly, more or less.
Win98 is, in it's original form, REALLY bad at handling your memory. And actually it starts doing weird stuff already if you add more than 128 mb ram. The only difference you should notice, if you have more memory than that, is a slight hit in performance when you don't use less than 128 mb RAM. But when you really need all RAM it's worth that inconsiderable performance hit.
Properly tweaked you can get win 98 to handle your ram rather well though. I think you should be able find much info on that matter over at Tweak3d.
I use a program called RAMIdle which is REALLY good, takes care of many of the glitches in the win98 memory subroutines and it allows you to free up RAM that is clogged from memory leaks. There's a function in it too that makes windows use ALL your ram before it starts to swap.
With a program like Cacheman you can setup your cache files properly. I *think* there's a tutorial over at Tweak3d about how to set it up properly.
That's about it. After some tweaking win 98 is really nice to work on, as opposed to what many peeps say. Good luck!

/Jim

[jasonN]

Jim S: Your info is much appreciated. But I'm even more confused too. So by having more than 128 of ram there isn't much of a performance boost unless you tweak it?
So do all the people that have more than 128 tweak their systems to make their purchase of ram more worth it? As you can tell I'm a beginner to all this.

I have windows 98 (not second edition) and I'm already out of money as it is, so I don't plan on changing operating systems.

I keep reading that the main things to upgrade for photoshop are RAM and harddrive. But now I'm starting to hear that it's not worth getting more ram because win 98 doesn't utilize it all. Ahhh!!! So what am I meant to do to get photoshop running efficienty?

People say that win 98 doesn't use the ram to it's potential, do they mean that it is not used because there are no programs that require such high amounts of ram (with the exception of photoshop)?

Surely if I am working on am image of size mentioned previously, photoshop will undoubtedly use it all.

Lets try to put things in perspective. Working in photoshop with my current 128 of ram will not be very different to working in photoshop with 640 megs of ram simply because win 98 doesn't handle it well??

Sorry, as you can tell I'm a little frustrated at stupid computers and how they work.

I'm thinking about purchasing a 20 gig harddrive at 7200 rpms which I heard will up the performance a LOT. Will that speed it up more than ram or not?
Also, the harddrive I will purchase will be ata100, how am I supposed to know whether my mother board will support it?
I have an intel 440BX AGPset. There's some other stuff on the cover of my manual that says "GA-6BXC"
My motherboard is about a year or two old. (which is ancient I assume)
It says here I have 'Ultra DMA/33 IDE ports'. Does that mean it can only take ATA33? I don't really know what I'm talking about as you can see.

Someone please help me. I am going insane.

PS: Jim S, where did you get cacheman and RAMIdle? From Tweak3d? Thanks for the site, I am looking over it now. Thanks again for your help

[Rinaldo]

I was working on a p3 600, with 384 ram. a 20 gig 7200 rpm HD. a ledteck TNT2 (probably a bit better than the TNT you are using).

I use Win2k.

I think your main concern is making sure there are no bottlencks in the system. so if you are using a crappy HD now it might be pointless to get more ram etc. it's like having a 1.4 Ghz machine with a TNT2 card. there is no point. so make sure that you have a good HD (7200 rmp will suffice) (they don't cost a whole lot these days).

the more ram you have the better things will be. and it plays a big part in how large you can go with files. but if you still have that old crappy HD in there you might not see the difference in performance (I'm no comp expert tho).

I still think that you are going to have problems with an image that size tho. If you can get past the point where it will crash all the time. it is up to how much slowdown and sluggishness you can work with (if you only use the smaller brushes for detailing at the later stages as you say you might be ok). if not=(

I would talk to whoever wants this image about exactly how and on what they are going to print this thing. do they really know what they are talking about?? is it really going to get printed at high quality. becuase honestly. that is a large image and not many people would work on something like that I'd imagine. it would have been very hard to do it at all only a few years ago.

[ July 19, 2001: Message edited by: Rinaldo ]

[jasonN]

Hi thanks rinaldo. I'm gradually putting the piece of the puzzle together and it's not looking good.
My harddrive most likely isn't 7200 rpms.
I was looking into upgrading to a new one, but all the new ones are ATA100 which means they transfer at a rate of 100meg per sec. The problem is, my motherboard only supports ATA33 because it's kinda old. And I absolutely REFUSE to fork out more money for a new motherboard.

I asked a friend who knows heaps about computers and he said there shouldn't be a bottleneck with the harddrive and ram. Although a fast harddrive will make things run faster, it shouldn't be a bottleneck if I have all that ram. Because windows only begins using the swapfile (harddrive) once it has used the ram. If I have a lot of ram, I hope to take stress off the harddrive.

But even still, I agree with you in that this is a monster image and I'll still have problems with it.

Does anyone know anything about prints and printing? I'm unsure if this guy knows a lot about printing. Maybe I can renegotiate a more reasonable size.

I'm having so much trouble with hardware at the moment so how did they do it in the past when they had crappier computers? What is the usual process for making prints and posters?

Still going insane....

[jasonN]

New developments....
I was reading an article on about.com and this is what I found:

"All this is said to help you understand why you would use an image resolution setting of 150 ppi in Photoshop in order to output an image with a printed resolution of 300 dpi. It's simple; your printer needs to use more than one dot to represent the color of a single pixel."

I think I've been confusing ppi with dpi. I've been setting my image to 300ppi thinking it was the same as dpi.
But if that statement is correct, my 300ppi setting effectively means that the print resolution will be 600dpi. Is this right?

By lowering my res in photoshop to 150 ppi for a 300 dpi print out, my machine should run faster right?

Am I right about all of this or just totally confused? Please explain!!

[Rinaldo]

I know a bit about printing.
if this guy doesn't know where it's going to be printed and on what. tell him to figure it out.
if he does know. go to the place he's getting it printed at and ask them what res to make it in.
That is if he's going to get it done professionaly? (it's not a desktop printer thing is it?)

I don't really know what you mean about ppi and dpi. I was under the impresion they equated to much the same thing.
just ask the printer. they have all those answers. ans they are always different depending on who you go to.
when working with PS it's all about pixels. that will determine how big a file is, and how much definition you have. if you need 10000 pixels of detail there's nothing you can do to change your file size


prints and posters are normaly done at a rather low res. you don't need the definition. just the size. back in the day of crap(er) puters it would have been a lower res file or they did it in vector (boring).
that or some very highclass hardware (for matt painting and compositing)
rmember that digital art where you have to move the brush around a huge file is pretty new. a lot of posters were photomanip and they are created with a mock up done in low res and then a very calculated final high res construction. look at some tutorial books on PS 3 and earlier, there was quite a bit of technique in getting to the final.


it sounds like you will need to stock up on ram if you want to make sure you never need the HD. go as much as you can. I remember hearing that you need 3 times the file size in ram to make everything work well (that might be totaly wrong).

[BooMSticK]

sounds like a bitch! I worked on a job some time ago. I had to do three posters at 60*80 cm at 300dpi. It had layers for photo, 3d and paint and the actual Photoshop filesize went over 500MB! It was a bitch I can tell you. At that time I was working on a 350MhzPII with 256MB RAm and a ATA33harddisk. Pretty lousy setup even at that time. But I got through it. It took a bit of patience and I guess it will for you too. My only advise would be to get as much ram as you could possible get your hands on. If you motherboard can take it fill it up with 512MB blocks. Ram is very the cheapest way of getting more performance right now. As a sidenote I would never consider Win98 stable enough to handle such a task. Not even sure about win2000. I would go for NT, but maybe thats just me....
,Boom

[Jim S]

jasoN - If you have more than 128 mb ram you'll notice a slight performance hit overall - hardly noticable unless you measure it with some benchmarking prog. I.e if you start a program it will start up just a tad slower. I think you could say that windows handles your RAM slower if you have more than 128 mb ram, but it *will* utilize it when needed. That is not completely true, because windows starts swapping way before your RAM is used up. There are workarounds for this though, in RAMIdle for example there's a function called "Make Windows use RAM as much as possilbe", which seems to work pretty well. You could edit the windows registry to achieve the same thing but that's way riskier than using a 3rd pary program, and I'm not completely sure what to edit either..

As for harddrives. As long as you have enough ram and have some kind of "use as much ram as possible" thing enabled, a faster harddrive won't make much of a difference, at least not when you've finally fired up Photoshop and started working. And transfer rates are just complete bogus. ATA100/UDMA100 whatever means that the *theoretical* transfer rate is 100mb/sec. But you will NEVER get anywhere near that. And the difference between 66mb/s transfer rate and 100/sec is subtle. There will be a noticable performance boost if you upgrade your motherboard and harddrive from 33 to 66 or 100 though. But as mentioned above - if you have enough RAM the harddrive isn't very imoportant.

Rinaldo (and jasoN too) - RAM and harddrive are'nt very dependant on eachother. So if you have a crappy hdd and 128 mb ram your computer will get sluggish when your 128 mb is used up and windows starts to swap. The difference another 128 mb ram will make is that it will take longer before your machine starts to slow down (swapping). I.e. your computer won't run *faster* with more ram, but it will take longer before it starts to swap, and it's when that happens you need a fast harddrive.

Running a ATA100 hdd with a ATA33 controller is like running a ATA33 hdd, so if I were you I would spend the money on RAM instead.
I don't really get that with ppi and dpi either. As far I know it exactly the same thing. If you have a square pic that is 300 pixels and it's set to 300 dpi/ppi it will be one inch when printed.
I think you could pretty safely make your picture at half the size and then increase the size for printing without loosing too much detail. I don't think it'll show unless you look real close or with a magnifying glass, if at all. And as Rinaldo says below, it depends much on the quality of the printer.

It's correct that you need about three times as much ram as your file size to make it work well in Photoshop. Sucky

BooMStick - I've never had any problems regarding stability in windows98.

I hope this helped. I could maybe slap together a RAM/HDD optimization tutorial thingy if there's interest in one.

/Jim

[Rinaldo]

cool info Jim S=) I see the logic now.


BooMSticK- ouch

[BooMSticK]

jim S - Well I guess it is possible to make win98 stable. But its no secret that win95/98 is the most unstable OS of the lot. Even in Microsofts own tests win98 losses with quite a margin to 2000/NT. But all of the other stuff you mention is right on! I would love to see how you would optimize your ram and harddrive using 3'rd party programs. Would be very interesting!

Another thing - having a dual processor setup is a no-no if you're running win98. Only NT and 2000 are geared for dual-cpu. Ofcause besides the OS itself only a handful of programs support dualprocessors... 3dsMax and photoshop to name a couple..
,Boom

[jasonN]

Thank you everyone! I need all the help I can get
Rinaldo: I'm pretty sure he's going to get it done professionally. I have asked him, but I'll have to wait for a reply. You're right, I think it'd be better if I dealt with the printing place in person, rather than through him.

As for your comments about prints and posters in lower res, that's what I thought. Thanks for the advice about older digital art. Hmmm. As for the 3 times the file size thing.. Well, if I get 640 megs of ram I should have almost 3 times the size. If I remember correctly, the file size came to something like 222megs, 3 times that is just a little over 640. So PS will start writing a swap file, even with all that ram, but I've read some things about creating a permanaent swap file which speeds up things. Thanks again

As for the PPI, DPI thing, here is another extract from an article I read:

"Most users (and many computer programs) use DPI to mean PPI, and assume that the dots being counted are pixels. In reality, printers often use a halftone screen and dither many small dots of ink in order to reproduce the tone of each pixel from the original image, so the PPI that is actually reproduced is lower than the DPI of the printer. This may sound like a technicality to a 3D artist, but it means that often you can get a good quality print by rendering an image as if it would be printed at a lower DPI, then scaling the file before printing. For example, many people would render an 8x10 print at 1200x1500, then scale the image size up to 8x10 at 300 DPI in Photoshop, and still produce an acceptably sharp print."

go here for the full story: http://www.3du.com/library/dpi.htm

My friend told me that basically, it's saying that you can do the picture in 150ppi and scale up to 300 ppi without loosing too much quality due to the printer printing at 300dpi I think? I'm not too sure, what do you guys make of it?

BooMStick: Wow that is huge! And considering the system you were on.... I'm surprised your computer didn't explode! Seeing that you got through that, I've a bit more hope in getting through this. I've got two more slots free and I'll be filling them with 256 memory sticks. The maximum allowable memory for my motherboard is 768 or something like that. 640 megs should be enough. Sheesh, I don't wanna change operating systems, so I'm just gonna hope win 98 doesn't crash on me!

Jim S: I have got cacheman, does that have a similar function as RAMIdle to make it use ram as much as possible? Or do I have to get RAMIdle as well?
Thank you for your advice on harddrives and ram, it's very reassuring. I'll just focus on getting ram.
A ram/hdd optimization tutorial would be great! There are a lot of people on sijun.com that have lots of ram on their workstations. But I guess it depends as some people on this board are techies who would already know all that stuff and then theres me

[Danny]

Jason,

no worries mate.. you'll be alright.
A few years back I painted a 10K x 7K image on a Pentium Pro 200 with 256MB Ram and 2Gb HD. Although it was an experience I wouldn't like to repeat nowadays on that machine, I was able to see it through to the end.
With a P3 600 running on 384MB you'll be okay. You'll just need to be patient from time to time when that hourglass icon pops up.
Few tips perhaps;

-Use PS 5 instead of 6 (or are you a painter man? rumour has it version 6 is a bit of a Ram hog.
-Flatten your layers as often as possible.
-Use Photoshop's Ram Purge option to clear clipboard and history states before you undertake cpu/ram intensive operations (like flip canvas, or tonal controls).
-Save in file formats that apply a lossless compression rather than uncompressed files. Will save you some HD space that you can put to use as Swapfile space.
-As soon as/whenever your composition allows for it(!), divide your canvas up into smaller sections and work on those, then comp them back into the fullsize canvas whenever is needed.
-Use Loki's great Brush spacing trick to speed up really large brushes.

good luck!

[ July 21, 2001: Message edited by: Danny ]

[dr . bang]

Jason, that size its just too impossible for a normal computer to run. Maybe SGI can handle it but its price is equivalent to a bmw. Anyway, can the picture you're doing be in vector shape? cause if it can, why not? When you do it, use Flash to draw cause they've got all the good tool.

Hope that helps.

Again, hollyshit 10800 by 7200 pixels! Biggar than most of Hollywood digital matte painting!

[jasonN]

Danny: Wow thank you for your tips and sharing your experience. That must have been hell. I'm using photoshop 5, I refused to upgrade because I knew that 6.0 would be too performance hungry.
Your tip about lossless compression? I'm a little confused. When I save my file I plan to save it as a PSD. Is that ok?
Also, about swapfiles, can you set them as large as you want? Or is there a recommended limit?

Dr Bang: Hahaha Hmmm. I don't think it will be possible to do in vector format. I gave that some thought, though. I also know nothing about illustrator or flash so that would be pretty hard also. Thanks for your suggestion though

[dr . bang]

jason, flash EASY! the only tool you need to use is the paintbrush and eraser too. Thats it, give it a try to see if the picture can be done in vector

[]Aratex[]

www.newegg.com

They're practically giving RAM away right now.. I just bought 512 megs (2x 256) of Kingston PC133 RAM for like $74 and it's gone down ever more since then! Load up if you've got the cash. :-)

[BooMSticK]

danny - Yeah I remember that one. It was the Lara Croft pic you did as a present, right? Great tips. What have you been up to? long time since your last post... :/
,Boom

[Danny]

Jason; With lossless compression I mean file formats that do apply a compression algorithm but one that doesn't compromise the quality of your image. So yeah, PSD is fine, just don't resort to jpegs.
As for swapfiles, there's basically two. One for your Operating System that you can indeed set size limits for. There's also swapfile preferences you can set up in Photoshop. However that's only limited to setting up which of your HD's get's used for PS's own swapfile. Another thing, if PS crashes, do check your HD for swapfiles that get left behind.

Boom; that's the one yes. Currently painting dinosaurs for a company called FrameStore. It's for the follow-up series to Walking with Dinosaurs called Walking with Beasts. Then there's DinoTopia.. Haven't been posting in ages because of all this really. Hope do participate a bit more from now on.. We'll see..

[Dthind]

Sorry to join the party so late (but I brought whine).

I have been working on a game board (for a prospective, yet not paying to date client).

The image is 48x42 at 300 dpi. If you do the math it is a sh-ite load of pixels....

I created the background and the tiles for the game board. The background was done in PS6 and the tiles in Visio 2000.

The problem is I can not get the PSD or TIF image from PS6 into Visio. Or when I convert the Visor tiles (i.e. flow chart boxes) to a GIF and overlay them into PS6, I can't seem to get the image to print on multiple pages.

I MUST be able to test print this BEFORE taking to a printer (if I want the job, so to speak).

So to date, I have manipulated the DPI, the Image size and the image type so many times I don't know if I am coming or going.

The Question (finally)

HOW do you print this image on multiple pages (assuming you will tape them together).

HELP


Help


help....

[Dthind]

PS

I have an Epson 900, should it matter I use Win 98se and Win2k (dual partition)

[worthless_meat_sack]

I am running a G4 with 1 gig ram, macos 9.1 with dual 10000 SCSI drives for scratch.

I tried a dummy file of this size and added 5 layers and scaled a smaller pic to fill the canvas. In short, I really tried to simulate working on a painting of this size and doing the kind of things it sounds like you are doing. It did everything pretty much in real time, 2-3 seconds at the most.

This is what is scaring me. I hate macs. They crash and I don't like the interface and everything BUT photoshop runs like a dog, and very crash prone. i would love to go entirely PC.

BUT

It sounds like PC photoshop performance is sad. My dell dual 400 with NT and SCSI drives cannot handle even small files. A 60-80 MB file brings it to its knees. This is within the 3 times file to RAM size recommended.

The brave new world of that mac unix based OS throws a whole bunch of new variables into a question I have not been able to answer for a long time. And it looks like adobe is dragging its heels in porting PS. Yea!

Ah well, looks like dual platforms for me for the forseeable future.