Manage ICC profiles to improve Photoshop CS performance

Jan 23, '04 10:09:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Simple as that really.

I'm a long-time professional Photoshop user and I've been having problems with the speed of CS over 7.01. I don't mean filter application times or resizing times (10secs or 15secs, who cares), but general responsiveness on 150-400Mb layered files when panning around, screen redrawing, brush strokes on layer masks, etc.

I can't find any agreement about whether this is actually an issue - the Adobe forum seems split between people who love the speed of CS and those who have the same problems as me. However, if it's plaguing you too, I found one small reference to a problem with some ICC profiles. The advice was, strip 'em down to the bare minimum. Keep only the Adobe defaults and any specific ones for your hardware devices. If your printer installed 20 profiles for different paper types, lose any you don't use. If your scanner driver put in 10 for all the scanners it supports, ditch the ones you don't own. (I strongly suggest keeping backups of any you remove, though.)

Look in:
/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
and possibly others. Check any linked or aliased folders in these folders too. Finally, use Profile First Aid in the ColorSync Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) to verify and repair the profiles you have left.

I'd be curious to see what people have to say about this hint. It certainly seemed to make a noticeable difference for me, but since it's nothing you can actually time or measure ... here's hoping for a swift upgrade to CSv8.01.

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