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Photoshop 24.3, using File - Scripts - Image Processor to batch convert 1000+ raw images in a folder on an external drive to JPGs. After 10-15 mins, the Force Quit Applications dialogue box pops up saying that I have run out of system memory. Photoshop is using +150GB of RAM, and keeps climbing after every image processed. Once Photoshop gets to 200GB of RAM used, system freezes and eventually crashes, Macbook restarts. Using a Macbook Pro 2021 M1 Max with 64GB RAM, Ventura 13.2.1. Other apps running are Chrome, Teams and Outlook. I've attached screen recording of the Activity Monitor details for Memory. This recorded test was with 100 items, it got up to 50GB RAM usage and when completed dropped back down to 3GB. If I convert a folder with 1000+ items it climbs to 200GB and crashes the laptop.
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Hi @Jeromey Shannon PS Does not release RAM when doing this process until it is finished. Running such a large batch will cause memory bloat depending on the size of the files.
I would split this up in to "digestible" chunks to prevent lock ups.
Are you running a script when processing?
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I'm using the default settings for JPG at 8 Quality. It would be great if PS released the RAM every 100 images or so. Would make more sense than me having to split the folders into smaller batches. If I could manually make a selection of files rather than only selecting a folder that would work to. There are other batch conversion methods out there as well so maybe Photoshop isn't the best option for us. This was the first method when I Googled how to easily batch convert images for proxy use.
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One possible solution could be to change History preferences from whatever to ONE before running Image Processor.
Be sure to return the History pref back to default or user selected number of histories.
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See https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/image-processor-causes-memory-to-run-... for what appears to be the same issue.
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Thanks everyone. Seems like this issue won't be going away any time soon. I will keep this in mind when processing raw photos. I'd like to keep this process in the Adobe ecosystem, Media Encoder might be a solution, but I like the fact that Image Processor will keep folder structures when batch converting. Maybe Lightroom does something similar, I'm not a photographer myself so I've never used it. I'll keep looking for other solutions. Maybe having 1TB of RAM in the future will be the fix. š
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@Jeromey Shannon ā ACR has a batch save feature, which is better suited to the task.
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And Lightroom Export even better.
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I just ran a test with Image Processor, from a folder of 300 PSDs saving to jpeg in a different folder. These are all files from Nikon D810, Sony a7r III, Sony a7r V. In other words, pretty big files.
There was no memory buildup, no excessive scratch disk usage.
Here's memory at the end of the process, at the same level as it had been throughout:
...and here's a very modest 4.5 GB scratch file, also at the end of the process:
It's clear that the whole process is one by one image, one closes, the next opens. So memory is reused and the requirement doesn't rise from what's needed for one image.
I can see two possible factors here: one, the the source images are on an external drive. Maybe it's necessary to cache everything before processing, I don't know (but I doubt that).
Two, this is MacOS specific.
For processing raw files to jpeg, I would never use Image Processor, I'd use Lightroom. And I know from experience that it will handle high volume exports without any issues, so there's no need to test that.