CS3 Camera Raw question

Strav

New to using it, and I keep getting an exclamation point in the top right of my image when I initially open a file. It then disappears after a few seconds. Anyone know what this exclamation mark is telling me? I proceed on to editing my image and it never comes back again - the exclamation point that is.

Assuming the program is telling me I have a memory problem?

tia.

colourbox

Because raw files are by definition unprocessed, when you open it, it has to render the raw data into RGB from scratch through the current settings and load it in memory. Until then, you see a low-res approximation. When the image is fully ready, the icon goes away, and you should notice full detail from the image. As long as you stay in the dialog box it shouldn't have to rebuild it from scratch, but if you close it and re-open the raw, you'll probably have the initial wait again.

dogwood

Exactly what colorbox said-- I get that all the time and I'm running 4 GB RAM on a dual core overclocked processor with a decent graphics card too. So it's definitely not a memory problem.

colourbox

The two things (I guess) that would affect the speed are how fast it can get the raw data off the disk (disk sustained throughput rate) and how fast the CPU(s) can demosaic them into RGB.

I'm not sure how much the graphics card matters; Photoshop depends more on 2D memory size rather than 3D performance from what I have read. Once you have enough RAM to run your monitor resolution and bit depth, something else is the bottleneck.

dogwood

colourbox wrote:

Once you have enough RAM to run your monitor resolution and bit depth, something else is the bottleneck.

Makes sense-- for me it's probably the HD where the OS is located. It's an older one (five years old) and I very much need to move everything over to a faster drive. The data (and OS itself) is backed up... just gotta clone the darn thing to another drive. Someday...