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Jp_508
Jp_508
Inspiring
July 31, 2025
Answered

Is my PSD File To Large?

  • July 31, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 1271 views

I created a PSD for real estate photos & marketing that I reuse over and over again. Just recently started having an issue upon opening. The 'Adjustment' panel at the top right does not populate, then after a few seconds the PSD shuts down & crashes. It keeps doing this over & over when trying to open. However, when I open again, same response, the 'Adjustment' panel is not populating, but if I put my mouse pointer over 'Adjustment' & click once it will populate after a few seconds & I'm able to use the PSD.

 

I do real estate photography & built my photo editing pc. Everything is up to date, Windows 11, Lr & Ps, etc...The pc operates great no other issues just with Ps. I've created a PSD for real estate that happens to be a bit large, 775MB's. The PSD has many grouped items that overlay on top of other layers for advertising's, banners, headers, post cards, mailings, RE symbols, informational windows, etc... The bottom group is labeled 'Images' & I have approx 20 large RE photos (3000x2000, approx 7mb's ea.) so if someone contacts me for price changes, mailings, or postcards at a click I can shift from selection to another, deselect the image I last saved & select the new image. I usually have 10 images but recently its grown to 20. 

 

I've also disabled my plug-ins, Lumenzia & TK Luminosity MasK, still crashes. As for my 'C' Drive, I have 670GB free of 930GB. My PC specs: ASUS B660i, i7-12700k, EVGA GTX 1650 Super (Studio Driver), Windows 11 Home, Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 (2x32) 64GB 5200MHz, Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD ('C' Drive), Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD ('D' Drive) Internal, Corsair H100i Elite AIO, Corsair PSU SF750

 

So my back to my question, is my PSD to large of a file to open, is there a limit size & that's why its crashing? 

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks for reading my post.

Correct answer Stephen Marsh

If you constantly reuse a template file, removing and placing or pasting in new images, you may find that photoshop:DocumentAncestors metadata builds up to excessive levels, bloating the file size.

 

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/06/metadata-bloat-photoshopdocumentancestors.html

3 replies

Glenn 8675309
Glenn 8675309
Legend
July 31, 2025

PSD files are limited to 2GB in size.  Why?  Compatibililty with other programs.   This is also the figure given when talking about the pixel dimension of 30,000 x 30,000.

PSB files are limited to 300,000 x 300,000 pixel dimension and 4.2 Billion Gigabytes ( 4 exabytes ).   My personal feeling about psb files is that if you are using them you simply are doing something wrong.  

I have a monopoly game board I have been working on and off with forr the past 4 years.   345 layers, and only about 103MB in size, it's nothing special but it opens up pretty quickly.

I glanced at you specs of your computer, and I think I know what your issue is:   Your video card.  It only has 4 GB of ram- you have great system ram, but computationally that 4 GB  of ram on your video card is could turn out to be a bottleneck. 

Check out your graphics settings in your preference file---Every once in  while after an update it seems that some things in the preference file get reset to their default values- it doesn't happen that much but it does happen. 

A killer: really no reason to go above 300 ppi- unless you are making poster sized graphics. 
For a poster you can drop it down to even 150 ppi and it will look great- why?   A person doesn't view a poster from 1 foot away.   Typical billboards along a highway?  Only about 60 ppi- which is fine because the billboard is viewed from a distance.


Jp_508
Jp_508Author
Inspiring
August 1, 2025

I think you may be onto something-bottleneck! That never crossed my mind since I've never had any issues with blending multiple images for RE photos. I'll have to give that a closer look. Thanks for your thoughts. 

 

Wow, 345 layers for a Monopoly Game board, that's gotta be something to see!

Glenn 8675309
Glenn 8675309
Legend
August 1, 2025

It's military related.   Army guys will get it.   Trying to get it all done by OCT 1st to get it set up for christmas sales.



Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Stephen MarshCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
July 31, 2025

If you constantly reuse a template file, removing and placing or pasting in new images, you may find that photoshop:DocumentAncestors metadata builds up to excessive levels, bloating the file size.

 

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/06/metadata-bloat-photoshopdocumentancestors.html

    Jp_508
    Jp_508Author
    Inspiring
    August 1, 2025

    Thanks for your input. I created a 'copy template' to experiment with. I have changed some settings in 'Preferences' and so far so good. I checked out your link & its a deep dive. All suggestions say 'Use at your own risk' this is scary. I'm technical to a point but this may go deeper then I feel comfortable doing at this time. If I mess something up I run the risk of losing all my 'Actions' that I've created, Ps not working properly, & possibly having to re-install & create everything again. What I've done up to this point seems to work, so I think I'll run with that until the problem returns. Thanks again for your response.  

    Stephen Marsh
    Community Expert
    Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 2, 2025
    quote

    I checked out your link & its a deep dive. All suggestions say 'Use at your own risk' this is scary.


    By @Jp_508

     

    Not really scary, it's a standard disclaimer.

     

    quote

    If I mess something up I run the risk of losing all my 'Actions' that I've created, Ps not working properly, & possibly having to re-install & create everything again.


    By @Jp_508

     

    Why so?

    ThioJoe
    Community Expert
    ThioJoeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 31, 2025

    PSD Files do have a size limit, but it's about 2GB if I recall, so that shouldn't be it. Even still, there is an alternative ".psb" format that removes this limit that you could try. Just do File > Save As > Large Document Format (*.PSB). From my understanding it's effectively the same as PSD but just allows bigger file sizes.

     

     

    It's possible that could help if you're running into some kind of other limit to the PSD file format not related to file size, and also assuming the PSB format is better to handle such a limit (if that's even the case). So I'm not sure if it will help but it's the first thing I'd try.

     

    Next I'd look through this article about performance: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html

     

    Or this one specifically about some performance preferences which might be easy to test changing first: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/performance-preferences.html

     

    For example I'd probably take a look at the cache levels setting first:

    Cache levels

    For finer control, specify cache levels manually; the default value is 4.

    • If you use relatively small files—roughly 1 megapixel or 1280 by 1024 pixels—and many layers (50 or more), set Cache Levels to 1 or 2. Setting Cache Levels to 1 disables image caching; only the current screen image is cached.
    • If you use files with larger pixel dimensions—say, 50 megapixels or larger—set Cache Levels higher than 4. Higher cache levels speed up redrawing.



    Jp_508
    Jp_508Author
    Inspiring
    July 31, 2025

    Thanks for the response, I did select the Large Document Format. Early on it said file was to large & had to go bigger. I just made a copy of the PSD file & deleted half the images. Now it opens and the Adjustment panel populates. Tried it about 3-4 times making sure it wasn't just a one time thing, seems to have done the trick, however I will look into it further because I have to be able to keep those images in play and not have to delete them after each use. I will look at the other suggestions you mentioned tomorrow when I have the time. Thanks for responding. jp 

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