Inspiring

Question

Photoshop CS4 - Not enough RAM to open a file???

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
December 7, 2009
6 replies
27203 views

I get this wonderful "Not Enough RAM" message, while trying to open a big TIF file (over 100 Mb). Till now it happened with big files that were saved in Windows. All other programs, including Photoshop CS3 opens the files just great. Resaving files in any other app helps, but this thing is a joke - I'm thinking going back to CS3... : (

Thanks.

This topic has been closed for replies.

M

macosmanasw

Participant

Here's your answer. I'm sorry that people use this forum to flame, criticize, or talk

about things they know nothing about.

Have you checked the byte order on your image? I just recreated the same problem. I did a scan, which by default created an IBM byte order Tiff. It would open fine using Adobe Photoshop Elements, but then I take it to TWO fully loaded Macs with lots of RAM, dedicated scratch disks, blah blah blah (i've been an Apple Reseller for 20 years, so I kindof know my way around) and Voila! "Cannot open file because not enough memory".

Now if you believe everything your read, you would go buy more RAM. But if common sense is applied, you can say "I have plenty of RAM, there must be another problem". If you have a 150mb file, and 2GB's for RAM, you're fine. Want to know if you have enough? Create a new file in Photoshop, and make it bigger than the file you're trying to open. Save it and reopen. Does it open? If it does, then you have plenty of RAM.

Check your TIFF setting as you're scanning, or scan as a JPEG to test. Can you place the image in another program? can you view it in preview? These are indicators that file is fine, but you just need to save the byte order from "IBM" to Macintosh.

I hope this helps.

Pete

S

soom1976Author

Inspiring

Hi. Thanks for the answer! Its most simple and yet comprehensive answer - I's surely not a RAM problem.

Unfortunately I cannot set a byte order for TIFFs in ACDSee32 (thats where I scan). I'll try the JPG option next time - I don't scan anything big right now.

Thanks, D

A

AvantiPress

Participant

Hello,

We are experiencing this issue as well.

We had no issue opening large TIFF files in Photoshop CS3; but PhotoShop CS4 users on a variety of Mac machines are unable to open them in CS4, they get the "Out of Memory" error.

Even on Mac Pros with 8 cores, 8 gigs of memory and a 250 GB scratch disk.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Erik

A

Anonymous

When I saved out of CS3 I had to change the tif options (the second window when you do a "Save As" for a tif file) I'll include a screen shot to show you what I mean;

After saving this way I have consistently been able to open my files in CS4. I do not have a Windows version of photoshop to test on so I'm not sure how this effects anyone having this same issue on a Windows machine, but, I'm sending files to adobe as soon as I get contact info so they can look at them and hopefully figure this out. BTW, the amount of available RAM for most of these images holds little bearing on being able to open and work on them. I have been able to open and work on (albeit slowly) much larger images on far older machines with small amounts of RAM without problem. Also remember that due to still being 32 bit on the mac photoshop can only access a maximum of 3GB of RAM anyways. If I heard right, we will have the opportunity to access more RAM when we have CS5 running on Snow Leopard as that is supposed to allow a 64 bit version, I think/hope.

Hope some of this helps you out.

A

Anonymous

I've had this same problem with a layered tif file saved out of CS3 and sent to a client who was using CS4. We were all using recent Macs with lot's of ram to spare and on both sides multiple machines were involved. Opening the MUCH larger original psd file was no problem but opening the layered tif generated the "not enough memory" error. Fortunately, I also use CS4 and tried to open the file which generated the same error on my end, so I was able to do some detective work. I found that when I saved the tif with the byte order set to IBM PC it would not open, when I re-saved out of CS3 with the byte order set to Macintosh it opened just fine in CS4. I'm not sure that this will apply to all the other post's I've read here, but it does seem to be a smoking gun pointing to a bug on Adobe's part. Good luck all on finding your own workarounds.

Chris Cox

Legend

The only thing I can think of for that case is a bug in the metadata written by CS3 that can't be read by CS4 or CS5 (because the metadata is corrupt).

It's rare, but can happen.

Email the file to ccox@adobe.com and I'll take a look. We only found the problem recently, and are investigating a way to avoid it in the metadata reading code.

A

Anonymous

Chris,

The files in question are 200-300 MB zipped, plus they belong to my client so I'm not really at liberty to send them to anyone. However, I have had this happen before in CS4, that's one of the reasons I usually default to using CS3, it has never given me this problem. I usually try to save my files to be as Windows friendly as possible, that is why I have chosen the PC byte order as a default for many years without a problem (Macs haven't cared about this setting in the past, they just opened the files). As this doesn't happen consistently I'll try to keep my eye's open for a file I can send you, but more than likely it will be too big to email, is there somewhere I can upload to?

Thanks.

R

r.nihiline

Participant

My CS4 is doing the same things with a 20MB TIFF file. After reading this thread I actually took the time to create an account so I could reply and hopefully add to the hunt of this problem. Tonight I just have to work around it with CS3, thank God I still have it installed. I have 8GB of Ram and CS4 is the only thing open. There is 138GB open on my new scratch drive. I have allocated all the memory PhotoShop will take in the preferences and still it wont open a 20MB TIFF!! WTF If it helps, these TIFFs are comming out of Maya 8 on a Mac.

Good luck everyone...

I'm glad this Forum is here.

Chris Cox

Legend

Send me a copy of that 20 Meg TIFF file that won't open in CS4.

ccox @ adobe.com

R

r.nihiline

Participant

Wow that's cool of you thanks. I'm curious about what you find in there.

http://www.jessehigman.com/heart/Logo_Higman_Bright.tif.zip

Jesse

J

jadco32

Participant

I have the same problem. A 120 MB TIFF file created by my scanner - Photoshop CS4 (Mac version) can't open it because of not enough memory. I tried opening it with Photoshop Elements 6.0 on the same computer and it opened fine. I used Elements to save the file as a PSD. Then Photoshop had no trouble opening, even though the PSD file had grown to 302 MB. Photoshop crashed shortly after this, but then when restarted was able to edit the 302MB file.

P

pabloinla

Participating Frequently

Goes to show that Adobe should work a bit on opening all types of .tif files so we don't have to try workaround methods. Your file was large, mine was tiny! Same issue!

J

jadco32

Participant

It¹s ironic that they supposedly ³manage² the TIF format. Even more ironic

that they¹re slightly stripped version of Photoshop could open my file

easily. Anyway, Photoshop is a very complex program, not only to use, but I

imagine also to program, so you¹re always going to see things like this. All

the best.

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

What are Your Photoshop – Preferences – Performance-settings?

Are other files open which (with their History) could be a drag on Your RAM?

S

soom1976Author

Inspiring

My memory prefs are default (60% RAM, 4 cache levels)

History states 60

I have NO open documents whatsoever. My MACs RAM is 4GB. Every other program, even Photoshop CS3 opens those files even with many files open and many apps running, including Photoshop CS4! Yet, the same file is opened by CS3, but not by CS4.

This looks like a bug to me.

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

What about Scratch Discs?

You might try raising the Memory Usage to 95%.

Is OpenGL enabled?

What are the settings in CS3?

And as a side-note: 60 History Steps seems a bit wasteful to me.

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