Cannot open .PSB file

[bryanua]

For the past 2 days I've attempted to open a couple of .psb files without any success, the "Reading Large Document Format" status bar has been crawling for the past few hours and is now practically stuck at about 90%. Any idea what I can do to get this file open?

[bryanua]

Yesterday my MacBook Pro sounded like an airplane about to take off and was locking up most operations. I quit all other applications and today tried again after increasing the RAM allowance for Photoshop. My MacBook Pro is pretty silent today, but i'm still unable to get this file to open. There are no warnings or errors, just Photoshop looking like it's attempting to open the file.

[Michael Bullo]

A few questions/suggestions…

1. Are these PSB files something you created on your computer at some point or have you sourced them from somewhere else?
2. What version of Photoshop are you using? Try updating to the latest version. If you already have, try an earlier version of Photoshop. From the CC app you can easily have multiple versions of Photoshop simultaneously installed.
3. Have you tried resetting the Photoshop preferences?

[bryanua]

Hi Michael,

Thank you for your reply.

1. Are these PSB files something you created on your computer at some point or have you sourced them from somewhere else? They were created on my computer.
2. What version of Photoshop are you using? Try updating to the latest version. If you already have, try an earlier version of Photoshop. From the CC app you can easily have multiple versions of Photoshop simultaneously installed. I am using the latest version, which is CC 2019 20.0.5 on a MacBook Pro running the latest version of macOS Mojave 10.14.6. I have not tried another version of Photoshop, I will but truly hope that this isn't the solution; read, more disk space taken, running an older version may remove features/open back up vulnerabilities that were corrected in the latest version.
3. Have you tried resetting the Photoshop preferences? Yes, just deleted the settings by holding Shift+Option+Command on startup. No change.

[Nancy OShea]

• Just how big are the PSB files that won't open?
• Do the PSB files in question reside on your primary hard drive?
• And how much free Scratch Disk space do you have?

[bryanua]

• Just how big are the PSB files that won't open? The initial one was 2.81 GB, once it finally opened, I did a Save As and then removed a bunch of layers making the new file 2.25 GB.
• Do the PSB files in question reside on your primary hard drive? Yes they do, I only have a secondary hard drive for backing up my data.
• And how much free Scratch Disk space do you have? 156.86GB

[D Fosse]

If you can get it to open, disable compression and save again. Compressing/decompressing is what takes up most of the time and CPU when saving PSBs. File size will grow, but saving time should normally be 10% or less.

If you can't open it, try to transport it to a different machine and save it uncompressed there.

[bryanua]

Thanks for the suggestion. How would I disable compression?

[bryanua]

Oh, I found the option in Preferences > File Handling. I'll give it a shot. Thank you.

[andreab64533357]

I have this same problem.  A psd file somehow converted itself to psb.

File is 97.7 MB

Working on Macbook Air

macos high sierra version 10.13.6

17.61 GB available of 121.12 GB

Just updated photoshop. to 20.0.6 release

restarted my computer

"Reading large document format" for 10 minutes.

Help please.