Do You Have Enough RAM? Ask Photoshop

Not sure if you have enough RAM? Just ask Photoshop. Believe it or not, it can tell you. Here’s how: Open a document that’s indicative of the type of image you normally work on. Work on the image, doing typical stuff, for about 10 minutes. Along the bottom left-hand corner of your document window, just to the right of the current document magnification readout, is the status bar. By default, it’s set to display your document’s file size, but if you click-and-hold on the right-facing triangle to the right of it, a pop-up menu of options will appear. Choose Show, then Efficiency. If the percentage shown is 100%, you’re gold, baby! That means that Photoshop is running at peak efficiency, because 100% of the time your image manipulations are being handled in RAM. If the efficiency number shown is, say, 75%, this means that 25% of the time, Photoshop ran out of RAM and had to use free hard drive space to make up for it, which means Photoshop ran much slower 25% of the time. An efficiency of 75% is pretty much as low as you want it to go. If it shows anything less than 75%, it’s time to buy more RAM. Pronto!

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Photoshop Tutorials

Crumpled Paper

This crumpled paper effect starts with designing a piece of notebook paper and then applying a displacement map
Pirate Text

The steps for creating this pirate text effect start with converting a text layer into paths in order to reshape
Background Animation

In this tutorial, Corey creates an animated background using Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended.
Logo Design

Corey recreates a video game logo by building a grid background and circular target using the define pattern

Text Shape Layers
Converting text into shapes allows you to distort the text as you like while retaining straight, clean edges.
Borders Under a Minute
Create really cool borders in under a minute to use on virtually any one of your photos or even video for that matter.
Custom Coins
In this tutorial Corey creates a realistic-looking coin effect using the channels palette and the lighting effects filter.
Design Effects
Corey shows how to use the luminosity of an image to create a cool design effect and spice up your simple photos.

Create Stunning Black-and-White Images in Lightroom
There are many reasons why I thoroughly enjoy using Lightroom, and near the top of my list is creating black-and-white images.
Design Makeover
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Flash Buttons with Action Script 3
In this tutorial, RC covers how to create buttons that call to urls using Action Script 3.
Turn Down the Noise in Photoshop CS3
In this tutorial we’ll take a look at various techniques for dealing with noise.

Once You’re In CMYK Mode, Stay There

You’ve read some techniques in this chapter that require you to be in either RGB mode or Lab Color mode; however, if for any reason your image is already in CMYK mode, do not (I repeat, do not) convert to RGB or Lab mode for any reason. Once you’ve converted to CMYK mode, the data loss from the conversion has already occurred, and switching back to RGB mode won’t bring back those lost colors. What’s worse is, if you switch from CMYK to RGB (or Lab), when you convert back to CMYK mode, you’ll go through another CMYK conversion and damage your image even more. The moral of this story is-once you’re in CMYK mode, stay there.

Photoshop Tutorials, Tips, and News | Planet Photoshop

Do You Have Enough RAM? Ask Photoshop

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Photoshop Tutorials

Once You’re In CMYK Mode, Stay There