New user! need help with saving Raw in PE6

[Mora]

Hi, new to site and new to forums altogether...so here gos..
Have been shooting in Raw to give full flexibility with image. Have a Vaio with a C and D drive, my C drive is almost full so have been saving the Raw files on D drive, downloading the images through a usb card reader. If I open the Editor, work on the image then save to same location in Jpeg format, even though this has all been saved onto the D drive...mysteriously the space left on the C drive as well as the D drive, gos down. It means that I cannot play with any of the images as I keep getting "your hard drive nearly full" messages. Please help!!
Thanks
Mora

[dj_paige]

It is entirely possible that it is your catalog that is growing larger on your C: drive. That happens when you add or edit photos.

If you C: drive is so totally cramped, then I would suggest moving the catalog to your D: drive (and probably you'd want to move other things not related to PSE off your C: drive as well, but as Alton Brown says, "That's another show")

I don't know how to do this in PSE6, since I don't have PSE6. I'm sure someone will show up and provide the instructions on how to do this.

[TonyW]

Another thought is that in the RAW editor you have the option of saving the edits in the Camera Raw database or as xmp files. xmp files go with the files but I've no idea where the Camera Raw database is or how much it changes when you edit a file - but I'm sure it will be on your C drive.

If your C drive is really bunged up and you can't move stuff off it I'm assuming that it's just a partition of one physical drive rather than two separate drives. If it is a partition then you can reallocate the space (move space from D to C) and there are utilitilities available that will do it. It's not something I've ever done so I don't have any recommendations and of course back-up everything before you do that sort of thing. But as I understand it, it's a fairly straightforward process.

Tony

[sennir]

Also I've found that PSE likes to put stuff in the temp dir and not always clean it up (I've found tens of gigabytes of stuff in there).

Try running the "Disk Cleanup" tool, found in the start menu, probably by going:

Start> Programs> Accessories> System Tools> Disk Cleanup.

HTH :)

[Mora]

Hi,
Thanks for the suggestions, I hadn't thought about where the catalog saves to, so that may be the problem. I did the disk clean-up a few days ago but that didn't create too much extra space. I can't even run the de-fragment in the C drive as it needs 15% of free space to work!
Will be getting a desk-top soon with a lot more memory than my current lap-top....and an external hard drive for backing up! Could probably do with a short course in photoshop, as although not new to photography am totally new to the realms of digital..very exciting though :)
Cheers
Mora

[Codebreaker]

Mora.....

Photoshop needs a certain amount of disk space just for itself to play with when Editing images - a scratch file. You can specify on which disk this scratch file resides. In PSE 4 it's an option under Edit > Preferences > Plug-ins and Scratch Disks.

If you specify D as your first scratch disk this may free up some room on C. Although scratch files tend to be temporary and should - in theory be closed when Photoshop closes.

Colin