Photoshop and Memory

In any Mac, Photoshop uses the two main data storage hardware components- RAM and hard disk

drives- to access temporary and permanent data. The data stored in RAM is accessed very quickly because
there are no moving parts- and it can read and write data at the same time in no particular order. It is the fast-
est part of a computer’s memory system. In contrast, data on the hard drive is accessed more slowly; it is lim-
ited by moving parts which have to travel to different physical locations to find or store the data.

Fortunately, Photoshop tries to do as much work as possible using the installed RAM in the computer-
rather than the hard drive. It thrives on RAM and putting more in your machine can make a big positive differ-
ence with performance.

Both Photoshop and the Mac OSX operating system use space on the hard drive to access permanent
data- in the form of application and image files, and temporary data- in the form of the Photoshop scratch disk
file and sometimes Mac OSX’s “virtual memory” swapfiles. The speed of hard drives has a substantial impact
on Photoshop performance.