Participant

Question

Graphics PC using 64GB RAM and 3-M.2 drives with over 1.5TB of scratch disk space Out of Memory

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
August 27, 2021
5 replies
1410 views

Our Graphics designer uses very large files, sometimes up to 15-20gb and multiple layers that are necessary due to our processing and use of the layer files but even on the smaller 2gb files she is running out of memory and I am wondering if it has to do with the files or her saved textures within PS.

Im in IT so I dont know much about PS so please help guide me through finding out why it crashes during saving and/or other processing of these files as she has lost lots of work hours because of this and I cant imagine how frustrating it must be for her!

All the settings seem fine and recommended, 70% of the 79gb (with cache) of DDR4 -3200 RAM is allocated for PS and then the scratch disks (m.2 SSDs) are set up with the C: drive being lowest and last to be used in the i7-8700k PC. Also the NVidia RTX 2080(updated drivers) is set to be used in the settings. No configuration changes that we have attempted to change are making a difference and at some point during her day it will crash. This seemed to start 3-4 months ago and we have been limping along ever since.

Any help would be appreciated so let me know if you need more info!

Thank you in advance!

Windows

This topic has been closed for replies.

PECourtejoie

Community Expert

Hi, I second the remarks about the scratch size.

I'm surprised about the 5GB TIFFs, I thought they were limited to 4GB. I guess you need tiff to import in other software. PSB is another option, but has only a bearing at save time, AFAIK.

You state 64GB of RAM, then 79 with cache... Is it a cache on the SSD? Did you ever try to disable it? There could be competing memory management.

Did you already peruse this document?
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html

Having tons of loaded presets can also eat in the memory...

A good thing to avoid memory fragmentation is to use CTRL+J instead of CTRL+C/V as it used PS's memory and not the operating system's.

K

KMI-KWagenknightAuthor

Participant

You are correct, that is my mistake in translation. Anything over a certain size is in a .psb file format but most of them we use are tif.

Thats a good point about the page file cache, I will turn that off and see if that helps.

I will ask her about the presets but I know she said there are a ton of brushes and other things she has saved, is that what you mean by presets as that was a worry of hers when we started troubleshooting?

I will also let her know about CTRL + J which Im not sure she uses but will pass it along, thank you!

PECourtejoie

Community Expert

@KMI-KWagenknight when did her problem happen?

Which exact version of Photoshop is she using?

There's been some changes in the foundations of Photoshop that might cause some issues, but this very problem seems different than most others reported, so it might not be related...

Hence users are told to verify if checking "Deactivate Native Canvas" in Edit/Preferences/Technology Preview made a difference, it might be worth cheching.

I think that you are part of the IT staff, so I do not think that telling you to make only one change at a time, restarting is warranted, but might be a good reminder for others.

Other troubleshooting documents you might have found: https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/photoshop/kb/basic-troubleshooting.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-slow-lags.html

Earth Oliver

Legend

She needs to turn off the auto-save option in the preferences and if she's using embedded smart objects, she'll need to switch to using Linked SOs.

D Fosse

Community Expert

That shouldn't be necessary if you have enough disk space. That's what we keep returning to.

When working with massive files like this, you really need to make sure there's enough machine resources to handle it. You can't blame Photoshop.

Derek Cross

Community Expert

Are you certain you need to produce such large files? Often people producing, for example, posters create them at a much higher resolution than is needed.

Earth Oliver

Legend

That's really not very helpful.

Derek Cross

Community Expert

Why?

L

Lumigraphics

Legend

What troubleshooting have you done? Have you tried a new clean user account on the same computer?

Kevin Stohlmeyer

Community Expert

Is the file 15-20 GB compressed when saved? What file size is Photoshop showing when it is opened?

How much HD space is allocated in the Scratch Disk preferences?

K

KMI-KWagenknightAuthor

Participant

Thanks for responding! After talking with Sandi, she tells me that the file (tiff) is say 5GB compressed on the drive then when she is working with that file, it is around 22GB.

We have 3 scratch disks set up which are Samsung Pro 970/980 500GB with her C:(OS Drive) being 3rd on the list with around 500gb of free space on the first 2 scratchdisk's before even getting to the 3rd C:Drive.

D Fosse

Community Expert

with around 500gb of free space on the first 2 scratchdisk's before even getting to the 3rd C:Drive.

By @KMI-KWagenknight

Not enough. With those file sizes, scratch can easily hit 1TB.

Most people underestimate the disk space needed for scratch. This gets really big really fast. Every history state potentially adds the full uncompressed file size, plus overhead. If there are smart objects, it can explode. And Photoshop reserves scratch space based on anticipated need. It doesn't grow as you go.

At least reduce the number of history states to 10-20, down from the default 50.

Personally, I'm never comfortable with anything less than 1TB scratch space (I actually have more).

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded