How many photos before PS Elements begins to slow down?

[Thronsen]

Hi there-

Im just curious how many photos people have tried to load into PSE 7, and at what point it begins to slow down. I have about 12k photos in mine, and Im pretty sure it is getting slower (XP, Core2 Duo, 4 Gig ram, 512m Nvidia Vram). Are there breaking points where it starts getting slower faster? Does the size of the photos matter? Does having stacks matter? Video?

Any experiences would be really helpful.

Just counting the days till Windows 7 comes out and I can treat myself to a new desktop.

[Helen]

I have PS Elements 6 and the only time I really find it is slow is on loading. After that it is not too bad. I have just over 22K of photos, no video (in a different catalogue). The photos are all various sizes including some 'RAW'. I am running XP Pro with Core 2 Quad CPU Q660 @ 2.40 GHz, 2.40GHz 2.00 GB of RAM. I think it has got slower after I started adding 'Raw' image files.

Hope this helps a little. I am not 100% sure of how to write the specs down.

[Thronsen]

Thanks for your reply Helen.

A few months ago, I also started taking pictures in RAW. And I love the change. But it has been in the last few months that I have started to notice a slowing.

I dont mean to necessarily blame it on RAW. I also basically went from taking 50 pictures a month to 500 (partially because having a RAW and .jpg of every file obviously increases things).

Im also curious how much video slows it down, especially as it searchs to produce a thumbnail.

I really have no idea. But as we all wait for Win 7 so we can get screaming new boxes, I would like to minimize the problem.

[Helen]

I was blaming the slowness on the 'Raw' images as well. Also, I find I can't import all my 'Raw' images into the catalogue in one go either. I have to do a couple at a time. I haven't had time to check this problem out more, but I think it is the size of the raw.
How are you going with the editing of the 'raw' images? I have read that you can do so much with 'raw', but I am still coming to grips with that side of things.