Does "2d acceleration" exist?

[CURaven]

I want to know if there is a way to increase the speed Windows displays a large photo. Or do I need to find a different program/computer (a Mac?) than the one I use? I only mention Macs because I hope to get an honest answer. I am (reluctantly) open to this possibility. As for my system (Vista Ultimate/Q6600/3GB Ram/Nvidia 512MB 8800GTS), I’m using two raptors, and would think they are fine for the work I am doing.
Here is my problem. I have a lot of digital photos collected (~20,000). I want to organize them into folders. I want to be able to screen them individually. I have MS Digital Image Suite 2006 (MS DIS 2006). This program has all the features I need. Except its slow. The speed it displays (going back and forth) each picture makes the editing process very tedious. I have a lot of large pictures (>1MB) and it’s slow going. I have tried Picasa 3.0 recently and although it displays pictures very quickly, it lacks some of the organizational features I use in MS DIS 2006; such as moving a picture from one folder to another or deleting extra copies of a file.

My hope is that someone knows of a tweak or something I haven’t heard of. Perhaps something in the registry or a driver? An upgrade of some sort perhaps? Almost all my "2-d acceleration" google search results are for linux users.

Thanks in advance!


FYI System specs are available upon request.

[drg]

The software you are using may be the first 'bottleneck' depending upon the size and format of the photos you have stored. Large resolution, low quality/file size JPEG files will usually display rather rapidly. Uncompressed layered TIFF files may take seconds apiece to render.

The Nvidia card may actually be getting in the way, especially with Picasa as it may not have the correct driver or an optimized one available. If video processor card is not configured optimally, it very well may be causing problems all by itself.

Those two software packages do have some limitations. What they were built to do, they do fine, but beyond a certain image size (example: lengthXwidth of image) they may have to go through many extra steps to handle an image properly or at all. They are somewhat built for the casual/home user.

You say you want to screen them individually? Do you mean like using the filmstrip viewer in Windows or something else?

With a large or increasing number of digital photographs there are several options from ADOBE in their Photoshop line of products to work with bigger files and large quantities.

An interesting and low cost/free test is to download a program such as IRFANview (google it ) and see how quickly by comparison it loads your files into a display.

I hope this is a start and Welcome to Photography Review.

[SmartWombat]

If Picassa displays them fast enough - then it's not the computer, it's the software.

The headline on Microsot Digital Imaging Home page says "Microsoft has discontinued its line of Digital Image Suite products" seems your experience may not be the only negative one.

Software like Lightroom, ACDSee, Thumbs+ all have better organisation tools.
They also have free download trial versions - so you can see if they meet your needs before spending more money.

[WildlifeNate]

It's definitely a software issue. My desktop has a similar hardware setup, except I'm running Vista Home Premium 64-bit, 4GB RAM, and the 8800GT 512MB. I've got it hooked to a 28" widescreen full HD monitor, too, and I don't have any trouble.

I use Picasa.

Even my laptop (AMD Turion x64, 3GB RAM, and only 64mb dedicated video RAM) handles my images with Picasa just fine.

Dump the MS software for something else...anything else.

[Singletracklovr]

Welcome Raven, Exellent topic.
I bookmarked this thread hoping someone will post up a list of computer setting that will optimize the computer for running digital photo editing software.

Items like Control panel>System>Advanced>Performance options>Visual Effects
Is it better to select: Let windows choose or Sellect Best Performance?

Items like Control panel>System>Advanced>Performance options>Advanced>Processor schedule. Should I select Program or Background?

Items like Control panel>System>Advanced>Performance options>Advanced>Memory Usage. Should I select Program or system cashe?

VM ? Should I let the system manage the size or enter something larger or smaller?

Are there other areas (preferences) to tweak?

Would running faster HD's help? What about RAID stripped 0?

What about background programs running in the OS? Are there some we could turn off?

[CURaven]

Hello Bob, I'm very happy to meet another Denverite in this space. I also want to thank you for the additional questions. They're all on the mark. I have some feedback from a video card forum that suggests that the problem is all on the MS Digital Image Suite program since using Picasa works great. I just have to go to windows to do file organization. What are you using?

[Singletracklovr]

Hello Bob, I'm very happy to meet another Denverite in this space. I also want to thank you for the additional questions. They're all on the mark. I have some feedback from a video card forum that suggests that the problem is all on the MS Digital Image Suite program since using Picasa works great. I just have to go to windows to do file organization.

Glad to me you as well. Denver/ front range is an awesome place for photography, you will never run out of subjects.
I've only been a member if this site for a couple months and I have found these guys/gals really know their stuff.

What are you using?

Hardware:
Docked IBM T30, Pentium4, 2gHz perfs; 22" monitor, 2gB ram, 60gB HD, WD Rock 1tB USB2 for all image storage.
nikon d80 camera shooting in RAW or .nef

Software in order:
Nikon Picture Projects, to down load from the camera and catalog the images into folders.
Nikon View [free from nikon .com] to take a quick look and maybe tweak the EV and or white balance.
Then Photoshop 7 for post processing. Croping, saturation, unsharpen mask, etc.

You didn't say what file format your 20K images are in. jpeg, tiff, gif ?

Is this your first year at CU? Great school by the way.
-Bob

[CURaven]

You didn't say what file format your 20K images are in. jpeg, tiff, gif ?

Is this your first year at CU? Great school by the way.
-Bob

The majority are in .jpeg. I'm really just a point and shoot person with a large collection.
I'm done with CU though. I'm an EE wasting time when I should beworking. Grrr!

[Singletracklovr]

The majority are in .jpeg. I'm really just a point and shoot person with a large collection.
I'm done with CU though. I'm an EE wasting time when I should beworking. Grrr!

LOL, me too...ME 28years. Retiring in 3 months.

jpegs should load the fastest over tiff, raw, gif.
As for cataloging jpegs I know Sony, Olympus and nikon [probably more] offer cataloging/basic editing software free from there websites.
Give them a try. I have used all 3 for jpegs and liked the Sony software the best.
Now that I am shoot RAW the nikon + PS software works best for me now.

-Bob

PS- I wonder what time it is in the UK? SmartWombat [PAul] will know how to optimize a PC for editing.

[SmartWombat]

Items like Control panel>System>Advanced>Performance options>Visual Effects
Is it better to select: Let windows choose or Select Best Performance?

Yes, either
Windows will choose based on how fast it thinks your computer is, hardware and software.
If you choose Best Performance, you may not notice it go any faster if your video card is not heavily used and your CPU is barely ticking over.

[QUOTE]Items like Control panel>System>Advanced>Performance options>Advanced>Processor schedule. Should I select Program or Background?/QUOTE]
Definitely Program.

Items like Control panel>System>Advanced>Performance options>Advanced>Memory Usage. Should I select Program or system cashe?

It depends.
Probably Program.
It's better to have a fast disk so that you don't need to use cache.

VM ? Should I let the system manage the size or enter something larger or smaller?

Yes.
Letting the system manage it will not cause problems.
If you try to manage it yourself, it's easy to set it up so that programs think there is plenty of memory and then it runs slow because it's going to disk instead.

Would running faster HD's help? What about RAID stripped 0?

It depends what your problems are.
If it's with the speed of displaying images, no.
If it's with the speed of reading them off the disk, yes.
If it's with the speed of converting them from RAW or TIFF, no.
You really need software to investigate the performance of the computer, and help in interpreting the results.

What about background programs running in the OS? Are there some we could turn off?

Depends what you have installed. There is no good answer to this.
You can't just turn off background programs until it breaks
On a low performance computer, you don't want other programs running.
So it's best to start out with just the OS and then install only what you want.

Are there other areas (preferences) to tweak?

Too many to think of them all.

One thing to do is consult the manual and help files to turn off Microsoft's Indexing.
It runs in the background and if you're putting image files in folders named sensibly, you don't need indexing. If you're using software that keeps it own catalogue like Lightroom, Thumbs+, or ACDSee, you don't need indexing.

[Singletracklovr]

Thank Paul. That is a good starting point for me.
-Bob