Using an External SSD
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After upgrading to Photo Raw 2022, I am still seeing some performance slow-downs. These particularly occur when zooming, panning, and brushing. The slowness gets worse the more a photo is edited. I am therefore considering purchasing an external SSD to move the scratch and PBC folders. Before I take the plunge, is anybody able to confirm if using an SSD is likely to improve the performance of the three functions mentioned?
Thanks.
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Absolutely. I've written about this many times here, most recently last week. 😎
Please see https://on1help.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4407994198157-Advance-Search-is-very-slow-and-crashes and let me know if you have any more questions.
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Many thanks Brian. My SSD is on the way!
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You're welcome.
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Only the experiences reported by those who have done it.
Before I added mine, I would often experience stuttering while painting masks with my Wacom tablet. Especially as more and more layers of effects and adjustments were added to the stack. Every brush stroke has to be re-rendered up through the stack from whatever level you are working on at the time. After adding the scratch drive that was noticeably better.
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It's interesting that the discussion is focused on EXTERNAL SSDs.
Keep in mind that the connector used to attach the SSD has a huge impact on any potential performance benefit, whether it's internal or external. If you connect an external drive to a USB 1 or 2 port, you will likely experience performance worse than an internal physical hard drive. A USB 3.1 or higher connection is crucial to seeing improved throughput over an internal SATA3 connection. An internal SSD connected via PCI will offer better performance, but most drives are not connected this way. If your motherboard supports it, a free internal M.2 or NVMe connection will provide the best performance.
If you're technically oriented, this link offers a thorough dive into the details : https://www.quora.com/Is-SATA-3-cable-always-faster-than-USB-3
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That's true Carl. I tend to say external because I've been using systems that can't be upgraded internally for several years now and it's just my default mindset. I'm using a Thunderbolt 3 port with USB 3 on the SSD. You want to use the fastest connection your system will allow.
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I do have an external SSD as scratch disk (iMac 2019 72G RAM and ProVega48 GPU), connected through a thunderbolt3 port and, as mentioned initially, I've noticed that more you use retouch brush and heavy masking on many layers the slower it gets i.e. some stuttering while correcting a mask. But overall PR2022 seems faster.
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That is what the Performance sliders in Preferences > System are for. Sliding them to the left tells the program to spend less processor power on rendering and more on tracking the brush strokes.
Remember the Editing Pipeline, the order in which each individual layer (little l not a new Layer) get rendered. When you are brushing on a layer lower in the stack all those layers above the one you are working on have to re-render their edits to account for the changes being made to the mask. The lower in the stack, the more re-rendering needed for the layers above. This is especially true when something like Dynamic Contrast has been applied. That takes a lot of processing power. If you have DC on a layer above where you're working, turning it off while working on your mask will help.
The Editing Pipeline is discussed on page 68 of the 2022 User Guide.
Displaying the Presets panel on the left while editing will also impact performance as each one of those previews must also be re-rendered while you are editing. Keep it closed unless you are looking for one to apply.
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New guy stepping in here with a PC. How large does the SSD have to be to contain both the scratch folder and the perfect browse cache. I'm just tying to keep the cost down if possible
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Ashley:
I have a PBC of just under 65GB, with previews set to standard by default. I have around 350GB of images, but don't know if there is a direct correlation between the two figures.
I have a cheap 125GB SSD as my Scratch disc. The read/write speeds are quite slow, but Brian indicted to me that that doesn't matter. The photos themselves are on a fast Samsung T7 external SSD.
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Ray: Thanks. I'm just after the Scratch disc size really to get it off my OS SSD onto an external one.
I have over a Tb of images which are still stored on old school drives at present but will move them at a later date onto SSD .
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The Scratch space is empty when you are not editing. I haven't tried to find how much it gets used while editing.
The PerfectBrowseCache can get pretty large. As far as the size of the drive you need to move them there you'll have to see what you're currently using and work from there.
Here is an article on the PBC with a chart showing estimated sizes for different numbers of photos vs preview size.
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Brain: I have looked at that before. At present it's about 40gb but I've no idea how to tell now big it can go! I'm guessing it depends on the slider with moving to the max , but is that also controlled by the size of the drive?
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If I'm understanding it right, there are 2 parts involved here. One is the PBC itself. That is the one that can grow without limit. It stores the previews for your Cataloged folders. If you look in the chart you'll see sizes far above what you can set for the other part, the Browse Cache, which seems to hold only the most recently viewed previews to improve the Browser's performance.
When you browse to a folder the small jpeg previews for those photos are placed in the Browse Cache. I'm not sure where the program is getting them from or if it is having to render them.
"The Browse Cache stores small .jpg previews of photos you have previously viewed or cataloged. These make it faster to browse and preview the same photos again. You can adjust the amount of disk space used for previews of non-cataloged folders by adjusting the Cache Size. The default 5000mb (5gb) size is enough to store previews for about 5,000 photos (depending on screen size). When you reach the cap you have set, the oldest previews are removed. .Jpg previews of photos in Cataloged Folders are not removed and are not governed by the Cache Size slider."
The Browse Cache holds previews for both cataloged and non-cataloged folders, "Emptying the Browse cache removes all the previews for stored for frequently browsed photos; Previews from Cataloged Folders are maintained."
HTH
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OK I kind of get it now. Thanks
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