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John,

Thanks for getting back. It sounds like that should speed things up if the disk hardware I/O is the actual bottleneck.

1GB of RAM should be way more than enough! But if your processor is maxed out while scanning hi-res negs, it sounds like THAT'S the bottleneck -- not the disk paging scheme.

Oh well. Patience is a virtue.
 
Bob,
Sorry about the delay in replying but my computer has been in for repair of the horrific noises it was making. It seems OK now. I did enquire about a processor upgrade but by the time all the other changes which would be needed were added in, it was not worth it.
I reckon I shall just have to cultivate that virtue until I can afford a new computer!
 
Bob,
I have found that scanning a transparency at maximum resolution with 4x multi-s&ling and no digital ICE takes under five minutes to produce a file in excess of 200MB. With digital ICE applied, it takes 34 minutes so I reckon that ICE is the problem. Also with no ICE, the processor is only working at around 85% of capacity. ICE is obviously very useful but what a difference in scan times.
I am experimenting with a demo version of silverfast SE at the moment. This seems pretty fast but there is a lot to learn about it.
John
 
Bob,
I forgot to mention that I find using manual focus rather than auto focus also speeds things up. My under five minutes scan time was with manual focus. I think it is more accurate too.
John
 
John,

I've been using ICE, but no multi-s&ling, and the scan times are WAY below 30 minutes.

I'm getting file sizes in the 20MB range, too. Nowhere near 200! Hmmm.
 
Hi Bob,
Thanks for your reply. Sorry about the delay but my computer has definitely been having problems recently. It packed up, aparently due to faulty RAM. I am just about getting it back together.
I think that using the multi-s&ling must make a difference in speed. Are you scanning at 5400 to get 20MB files? It is at maximum resolution that I am getting these huge files.
Incidentally, the computer repair man told me that having a gig of memory was not good in Windows and put a strain on the motherboard resources. He said that Windows doesn't use much above 500MB and it is just a waste. He has left me with 512 installed and at the moment all is well...
Cheers,
John
 
Hi John,

it depends on the version you are using. The gig on the 500 MB is true if you are using Win 98, XP is doing well with 1 GB of memory - PS CS needs XP, after all.

Ciao, Wolfie
 
Your repair guy has no idea what he is talking about. A properly designed motherboard will have no problem with as much RAM as you can stuff onto it. In fact, not having enough RAM will put MORE strain on your system as Windows and Photoshop thrash on your much more failure prone hard disk(s) transferring data into and out of virtual memory. Photoshop loves RAM and if you have more you can safely bump up its memory usage without affecting Windows and your other applications. And even if you aren't using it directly in Photoshop, you can do more multitasking.

I only had 512MB when I first built my system, and upgrading to 1.5GB has definitely improved performance when working with large files. It may not improve your actual scanning time because you could be running into other bottlenecks, but it is definitely worth having.

Also you are correct, multi-s&ling will definitely increase your scanning times drastically (the scanner in effect has to perform several complete scans and then integrate the data into a single image).

-Jason
 
Thanks Wolfie and Jason. I have XP Home and Photoshop CS.
I did think it was strange what the repair chap said but he said that this something which not many people know. Your helpful comments make sense to me.
Cheers,
John
 
John,

To the best of my knowledge -- and I began working as a computer engineer on the big mainframes back in the early 70's -- there's no such thing as too much memory. Not sure which motherboard resources your repair guy was referring to. If your motherboard architecture can't address all the installed memory, some may go unused (wasted), but that won't impose any "strain."

Yes, 5,400 gives me approx. 20M files (w/ ICE, w/o multiscan).
 
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