Faster saving of large multi-layer Photoshop files

I was surprised to learn (I followed the report from Rob Galbraith site) of a new Photoshop feature that dramatically reduces the time required to save large, multi-layer, 16-bit PSD and PDB files.

This link is to the discussion of the development on the Mac Performance Guide site:

http://macperformanceguide.com/PhotoshopCS5-performance-DisallowFlateCompressedPSD.html

Evidently, normally, when saving such files, Photoshop uses "flate" compression to minimize the size of the resulting file. But, especially on single-core platforms, this requires considerable time.

With the new functionality, the user can apparently elect to not have the files compressed, resulting in larger file sizes but potentially dramatically-decreased time to save. One test reported showed a time to save with the normal compression in effect of 130.0 s, but only 8.0 s with compression disabled.

In one case, the saved file size with compression in effect was 1.88 GB, and with compression not in effect (faster save) 2.88 GB.

The new functionality is applied to Mac versions of Photoshop CS5 via a plug-in, and to Windows versions via a set of registry entries. The installation files for both situations are available from Adobe, here:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/902/cpsid_90248.html

Best regards,

Doug

Thanks for that, Doug. When I last looked, it was only available for Mac.

Regards,
Murray