Photoshop action filling up scratch disk quickly, when I have 200gb free

[Scott_imagic]

Windows 10/ Photoshop 2021/ no plugins

This isn't a bug, per se, because I believe they are doing this for optimization reasons, but the use case for my scenerio is out of the normal range. I have an action that works on a folder of thousands of images, one at a time. While the action is running it has to perform many copy and pastes to the clipboard and each of these are held in memory on the scratch disk. This, I imagine, is so you might need clip board data in between two different files you open sequentially. However, the clip board data that I use, need not be persistant, but it is exponentially filling up the scratch disk, and I am starting out with over 200GB of free space. I even unchecked the "Export Clipboard" in preferences and I incorporated the >Edit >Purge >Cache All  function within the action but neither helped. The only way it releases the memory is if I close down the Photoshop application, which means I am doing this every 50th image or so, not good if I am processing thousands. Our only solution right now is we went back to an older version of Photoshop that doesnt hold onto this cached clipboard data. 

To test: Find a folder for a test with numerous images of a large size (like 500mb files), make a duplicate of that folder so you don't damage any good work, make an action that opens a file, Select All Ctrl-A, Copy to clipboard numerous times, try 10 times, do something non-destructive like make a blank layer and flatten, so it will save out the file again. Now run the action as a batch on your test duplicated test folder from above. Watch your memory usage in resmon.exe climb through the roof with every tile it attempts to run the action on. 

[Jeffrey Tranberry]

Hi @Scott_imagic If you hold the Option (macOS)/Alt (Windows) key while selecting About Photoshop, or hold the Option (macOS)/Alt (Windows) key and select Edit > Purge > All – do you see the RAM released by Photoshop?

[Kukurykus]

Temp File increasing in Size over time and Filling up C Drive

[Scott_imagic]

Neither of those suggestions seem to release the memory, looking at it using resmon.exe  If I look at my properties on my scratch disk, I see the memory available getting depleted with every copy to the system clipboard and those suggestions don't bring them back either. It only gets released if I close the Photoshop application, then the memory comes back in full rapidly.

Older versions of Photoshop did not have this issue. I am not oppossed to Photoshop holding onto the clipboard in memory, but you should really limit it to one level, meaning if you copy something again, it maintains the new clipboard contents and purges the old. 

[Kukurykus]

Excelent idea to add prefrence option to keep in cache only content of currently used item 😄

We could also put the number to the box (like it's with history states) how many it remembers.

[D Fosse]

What I don't understand here is why the clipboard should use Photoshop memory? That's system memory.

Of course, it still uses physical memory and disk whichever way, but for troubleshooting purposes it might be useful to know which one it is. I assume resmon.exe is the Windows resource monitor, do you have screenshots that show where that memory goes? Task manager should show per process.

All that said, I still think 200GB free disk space is dangerously little for an I/O-intensive task like this. I usually put the recommended lower limit at 500GB, but more if you can.