P: Remove Tool and RAM usage

@D Fosse with a Mac - there is no reason we should be getting out of memory errors with a tool in Photoshop. This is a new issue - we have a dept with over 100 Macs and this has never been an issue before the Remove tool. Even on a M1/M2 Mac I can max out my RAM forcing me to quit PS with 64 GB installed. The releasing of RAM may not be a new issue, but the rate at which it uses the available RAM is explosive.

Oh, ok thank got it

@Daniel Berube 

Knowing that it's not a generaly occurring issue is a valuable data point.

Then you need to look closer at what might be special on your system. If you really do have a memory leak, two common causes are 1. third-party plugins, and 2. dual graphics where the integrated GPU uses shared system memory. In the latter case, the integrated GPU can consume huge amounts, and that memory consumption tends to increase steadily over time.

It is also necessary to first rule out normal behavior. Few people realize how memory-intensive raster image editing really is. It is entirely expected for RAM to be saturated up to the limit very quickly, and the scratch file growing to 100 GB or more. This tends to freak people out, but it's perfectly normal and as designed.

What is not normal is when Photoshop claims more RAM than you have allocated in Preferences. But it's necessary to break it down, and separate what Photoshop uses from what other processes use. Photoshop plugins, even ACR, run outside PS's address space and require their own memory. So don't set it too high (70% is usually optimal).

Another thing that freaks people out is when memory is not released when you close files. Again, this is by design. The memory is reused and recycled. It is released when the application closes - and the operating system can also reclaim if needed.

If you post Help > System Info, there might be clues there. Also, the memory graph from Task manager can be useful to see how it's used over time. Set update speed to low, which will capture 4 minutes.

@Daniel Berube Community experts are not Adobe employees. We are simply volunteers who use the application day in day out and try and help people to resolve issues, or try and replicate bugs on our own systems to help Adobe narrow them down. We do not make official statements. 

Dave

@D Fosse  If this is an official statement from Adobe, I guess I'll need to stick to the v25 version or move to another tool

 Honestly, I hope they will fix the problem instead of what I felt from your communication,,,, waived it

We may not have the same configuration but like I told you, this is a new problem that wasn't there in v25 and appeared within the 2 last updates. 

They may have problems reproducing. I can't here.

I opened a 9504 x 6336 pixel image, grabbed a 450 pixel remove tool and systematically covered everything in the image at least twice. I was at it for four or five minutes. This was a complex image with lots of detail.

About halfway through, total memory leveled out below 80% and refused to increase any further. At this point I had a 20 GB scratch file.

All of this looks perfectly normal and expected to me.

Honestly, this feature has been working pretty well for a couple of weeks already 

Now, I seem to read that this is the expected behavior, I may mistaken sorry, English is not my native language. 

@D Fosse  Whether it's a memory leak or not the problem is still that this tool was working well up to v.25 and now it doesn't anymore. Has @Kapture benoit mention, the workaround is to uninstall the new version and reinstall the old one that seems to work pretty well for me, no memory problem and can work! 

Hope that adobe will fix it soon 

PC windows 11 pro , i9-13900KF , 64gb ram , NVIDIA RTX4080.  I had no choice to uninstall v25.2 and install v25 because of that behavior to eat way more RAM, at a point to freeze PS and a message saying not enough ram !!!! first time I experience that with ADOBE..... 

@Daniel Berube 

@Kevin Stohlmeyer 

"The remove tool increases RAM usage over time and does not release/reduce while the app is active.

Quitting the app releases the RAM."

That is and has always been the normal and as-designed behavior. Memory is not released while the application is open - it is recycled and reused. Requesting it over and over from the operating system is inefficient, e.g. in batch operations.

That is not a memory leak.

Now, the amount of memory claimed by this single operation is a different issue. I agree that it seems high. But again, once allocated, the memory stays until you exit the application.

@Daniel Berube how many history states (undo) are you set to? Default 50 or more?