File Browser in PS

wxwax · October 24, 2004

For the first time, I used File Browser in Photoshop CS to look at my RAW files.

It's not bad. But I noticed a huge slowdown in everything I tried to do on Photoshop. Vaguely remembering something I'd heard, I purged the File Browser cache. And voila, instant change: my speed in Photoshop was back to normal.

This experience makes me leery of using PS file browser. I have Canon's Digital Photo Professional, and I may use that more or less exclusively from now on.

Andy · October 24, 2004

purge $
been using ps cs browser for a long time :bash and thank you sid, for this little tip

i take back everything i ever said about you

wxwax wrote:

For the first time, I used File Browser in Photoshop CS to look at my RAW files.

It's not bad. But I noticed a huge slowdown in everything I tried to do on Photoshop. Vaguely remembering something I'd heard, I purged the File Browser cache. And voila, instant change: my speed in Photoshop was back to normal.

This experience makes me leery of using PS file browser. I have Canon's Digital Photo Professional, and I may use that more or less exclusively from now on.

wxwax · October 24, 2004

andy wrote:

been using ps cs browser for a long time :bash and thank you sid, for this little tip i take back everything i ever said about you

You're welcome!

I think.

tmlphoto · October 24, 2004

wxwax wrote:

You're welcome!

I think.

Is there a down side to purging your cache? I have also been using the file browser for a while and I am pretty happy with it. I with the preview image was bigger so I could delete the crappy images without opening first tho.

Andy · October 24, 2004

tmlphoto wrote:

Is there a down side to purging your cache? I have also been using the file browser for a while and I am pretty happy with it. I with the preview image was bigger so I could delete the crappy images without opening first tho.

you can create custom thumbnail sizes. give it a twirl

wxwax · October 24, 2004

tmlphoto wrote:

Is there a down side to purging your cache? I have also been using the file browser for a while and I am pretty happy with it. I with the preview image was bigger so I could delete the crappy images without opening first tho.

Here's Adobe's page on it. Sounds like you lose any mark you may have put on a photo to distinguish it from the others. Also, deleting the cache will slow down recalling the photo.

Neither one's a big deal, and neither would matter much to me after an editing session.

The slowdown in PS performance was remarkable and painful, so deleting the cache was well worth it to me.

patch29 · October 24, 2004

Does it speed it up if you export cache? That way you save any editing info you may have created. I don't use it very often. I use the browser in C1 Pro most often.

pathfinder · October 24, 2004

tmlphoto wrote:

Is there a down side to purging your cache? I have also been using the file browser for a while and I am pretty happy with it. I with the preview image was bigger so I could delete the crappy images without opening first tho.

NO NEED TO OPEN BEFORE DELETING MAGES!! Thomas - you can have the preview images in the PSCS File browser any size you want - Click on View in the File Browser in the uppper left menu of the File browser and click on custom Thumbnail size. You can have a lightbox with as many or as few images as you desire - I use 300 pixels for sorting - and you can save this configuaration to use it later by going to the command line in PS itself and clicking on Window - Workspace - save Workspace.. You can have as many different configurations of the browser saved as you need. One for sorting images with larger preview images 300-500 pixels and NO META DATA or file structure, OR you can have a smaller light table and a very large image inspection panel on the left and save this also. The File Browserr can be configured many different ways and each way called up as needed.

pathfinder · October 24, 2004

wxwax wrote:

For the first time, I used File Browser in Photoshop CS to look at my RAW files.

It's not bad. But I noticed a huge slowdown in everything I tried to do on Photoshop. Vaguely remembering something I'd heard, I purged the File Browser cache. And voila, instant change: my speed in Photoshop was back to normal.

This experience makes me leery of using PS file browser. I have Canon's Digital Photo Professional, and I may use that more or less exclusively from now on.

Waxy, I have not experienced this - you're saying everything you do in Photoshop is slower if you have a lot of images in the File Browser cache?

I open hundreds in the file browser and do not notice that the processing is slow - even doing filters in 16 bit. I tried to use Digital Photo Professional today and it is very fast at batch processing ( almost instantaneous), but did not seem to me to give nearly as intimate control over the process of RAW conversion as the PS RAW convertor. I thought I would need Digital Photo Professional to process 20D RAW files, but the Adobe PS RAW convertor handled them just like 1D raw files without even coughing.

tmlphoto · October 24, 2004

pathfinder wrote:

NO NEED TO OPEN BEFORE DELETING MAGES!! Thomas - you can have the preview images in the PSCS File browser any size you want - Click on View in the File Browser in the uppper left menu of the File browser and click on custom Thumbnail size. You can have a lightbox with as many or as few images as you desire - I use 300 pixels for sorting - and you can save this configuaration to use it later by going to the command line in PS itself and clicking on Window - Workspace - save Workspace.. You can have as many different configurations of the browser saved as you need. One for sorting images with larger preview images 300-500 pixels and NO META DATA or file structure, OR you can have a smaller light table and a very large image inspection panel on the left and save this also. The File Browserr can be configured many different ways and each way called up as needed.

Thanks Path & Andy. I upped my thumbs to 350. Enough to decide to trash or convert. Path you alluded to a way to make the preview window bigger. How do you do this. I think I might like the small thumbs with a larger preview better. TIA

Andy · October 24, 2004

preview window

tmlphoto wrote:

Thanks Path & Andy. I upped my thumbs to 350. Enough to decide to trash or convert. Path you alluded to a way to make the preview window bigger. How do you do this. I think I might like the small thumbs with a larger preview better. TIA

just click and drag it to the right to make bigger...

tmlphoto · October 24, 2004

andy wrote:

just click and drag it to the right to make bigger...

Thanks, I was trying to make it too complicated. (menus, submenus, sub-submenus...)

pathfinder · October 24, 2004

tmlphoto wrote:

Thanks Path & Andy. I upped my thumbs to 350. Enough to decide to trash or convert. Path you alluded to a way to make the preview window bigger. How do you do this. I think I might like the small thumbs with a larger preview better. TIA

Open your File Browser and you can move the vertical dimension between the file icons and the preview image by putting your mouse over it and clicking and dragging it right or left. Drag it to the right so you can see two columns of image icons - then double click on the Folders and Metadata tabs and they will shrink to the upper and lower borders of the File Browser window. Now you have a really big preview image. NOW>>>> click on Window in the PS command line - then click on Workspace - then on Save Workspace and give it a name. Then can get that version of the Browser configuration back again without having to click and drag and everything. So now you can have a File Browser configured to be a light table or a preveiw image viewer. Why didn't Adobe do this for us huh??!!
The chapters on the File Browser are so dull to read, but it really is a very useful gadget once you get the hang of it. Like I said earlier, I used Digital Photo Pro 1.1 from Canon earlier today, but, for me, I am an Adobe guy all the way!

pathfinder · October 24, 2004

andy wrote:

just click and drag it to the right to make bigger...

Hah!!! What Andy said

wxwax · October 27, 2004

pathfinder wrote:

Waxy, I have not experienced this - you're saying everything you do in Photoshop is slower if you have a lot of images in the File Browser cache?

I open hundreds in the file browser and do not notice that the processing is slow - even doing filters in 16 bit. I tried to use Digital Photo Professional today and it is very fast at batch processing ( almost instantaneous), but did not seem to me to give nearly as intimate control over the process of RAW conversion as the PS RAW convertor. I thought I would need Digital Photo Professional to process 20D RAW files, but the Adobe PS RAW convertor handled them just like 1D raw files without even coughing.

Sorry, I missed this. I've only used File Browser once or twice. My thumbs are very large - I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

All I can say is that my machine slowed down significantly when I double clicked on a thumb and started playing with it. And when I had a non-RAW image open, and was doing regular editing, everything was painfully slow. This was with File Browser *closed.* When I cleaned out the cache, life was back to normal.

I have a Pentium processor, I think it's 1.6. And 1gb of memory. I do notice that my Photoshop is a *lot* slower with 16-bit, 8 megapixel images from the mkII than it is with 16-bit 4mp images from the 1D.

File Browser in PS

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