[Novalug] Running Photoshop CS6 Extended in a VM

Jay Hart jhart@kevla.org
Wed Oct 3 19:45:44 EDT 2012


Roger,

One question, one comment:

Question:  What do you mean by "snowed by features in PShop"?

Comment:  Wife wanted Photoshop, I told her when she came up with a grand, she
could purchase and install, otherwise we are using The Gimp?

Ok, last question:  Have you found photoshop to be head over heals better then
The Gimp?

Jay

> FWIW:
>
> I'm taking a Photoshop class so decided to run a trial version in a VM to see
> how it "fits." Like some others, I've been "snowed" by the features in PShop -
> they go way beyond The Gimp. And, a trial version is free for 30 days, enough
> time to use for the course.
>
> Hardware:
> Intel dual core I3, 2.9 GHz, with hyper-threading
> Graphics are on-board the I3 processor (at least that's the way I read it)
> Two Toshiba 2.5" HDs, 7200 rpm, SATA, with OS on a separate drive
> 4 GB ram, DDR3, 1333 MHz
> Ubuntu Linux 10/04.1 LTS
> Virtual Box with Win-7, with Service Pack 1 (req. for PShop)
>
> In a nutshell, PShop worked quite well in a VM. Here's the stats that I
> collected:
>
> Stats on RAM usage:
> What's Running Ram Utilization (GB)
>
> Ubuntu Linux +
> Gnome Monitor 0.200
> Add Virtual Box 0.227
> Win-7 1.4
>
> RAM utilization stayed the same upon opening PShop with Adobe Bridge,
> including during a moderately complex edit but with few layers
>
> Closing PShop and Win-7 reduced RAM utilization to 0.243 GB
> Swap space was never touched.
>
> CPU usage shot to 100% on one thread upon starting Win-7 and PShop. Other
> three threads varied 5 to 20% during activity and between 1 and 20% during
> idle times.
>
> I received a warning during my first start-up related to Adobe's caution that
> "Photoshop CS6 also employs the Graphics processor (GPU) more than previous
> versions to enhance the performance of more features. This increase in GPU use
> can cause performance issues when running Photoshop CS6 in a virtual
> environment. Virtual machines cannot access the GPU."
>
> I'm not sure what that means - maybe that video performance degrades? I didn't
> see obvious evidence of that.
>
> One other hitch: the download is 1 GB and took about 3 hours even though I
> have Verizon FIOS - maybe because I was downloading during prime time and/or
> Adobe's servers were slow.
>
> FWIW: PShop CS6 Extended retails for close to $1k! A student edition runs
> about $0.22k and you need more than a .edu address to qualify. So, I may just
> transfer my learning back to The Gimp and save some $$.
>
> --
> --
> Roger W. Broseus - Linux User
>      Email: RogerB@bronord.com
>      Web Site: www.bronord.com
>      Updated summer 2012 – pics from travels
>
> _______________________________________________
> Novalug mailing list
> Novalug@calypso.tux.org
> http://calypso.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/novalug
>





More information about the Novalug mailing list