RAM is typically measured in GBs, just like other digital storage devices.

Pc Or For Photoshop Pro Or An

If you use a DSLR, either as a pro or an enthusiast, theres a good chance that Photoshop is the most used application you have.

Because of this, it pays to have a computer that wont slow you down when youre blasting through the heavy edits.

Pc Or For Photoshop Upgrade Your Current

But what kind of hardware do you really need Whether youre looking to buy a new machine, upgrade your current set-up, or just evaluate what you have right now, this article will clear the mists around what computer specs you need for Photoshop.

Its the little chip at the heart of everything that does the heavy lifting for almost every application you use, and Photoshop is no exception.

Its also one of the more expensive components in a machine, but these days they really are a bargain.

There are two specs to a CPU that you need to know the clock speed, and the number of cores.

Clock speed, measured in GHz, is how many computations a core in the CPU can perform every second.

The number of cores is how many independent computation devices there are so the more cores there are, the better a computer is at multitasking (or breaking up complex operations).

Adobe recommends that you use a 2 GHz or faster CPU, but if you can afford better, its worth it.

Photoshop uses the CPU for the majority of its tasks, so aim for 3 GHz or higher for best results.

I found 2.6 GHz in a Macbook to be great for most things, but it slowed down when applying complex filters and using large brushes.

However, the 3.5 GHz processor in my iMac has yet to meet its match.

Unfortunately, the number of cores is inversely proportional to the clock speed, so youre going to have to make some sacrifices in your specs.

Luckily for us, Photoshop makes this decision easy by failing to use multiple cores very effectively.

This is pretty standard for desktops, though for laptops, you might have to make due with a dual core machine.

One thing to look for is hyper-threading if you go for dual cores.

This effectively makes your processor act like it has twice as many cores though theyre virtual rather than physical.

Photoshop doesnt actually make use of hyper-threading much, but if you only have two physical cores, it will make a difference.

I ran some tests in Photoshop with a massive 96-megapixel image (1.2 GB), and with my quad-core iMac with hyper-threading to eight cores, the four virtual cores were very rarely used, and the four physical cores were never even pushed to their max.

So dont worry about grabbing an 18-core monster machine aim for four and youll be fine.

RAM (or Random Access Memory) is the storage space that files are loaded into when youre working on them.

Its much faster than the storage space on hard drives or even SSDs, so it allows you to make changes very quickly without having to save and reload every time you do anything.

As you can probably imagine, Photoshop uses this quite a bit as you adjust your images.

Pc Or Mac For Photoshop