"could not use the spot healing brush because there's not enough memory"

[bartonlew]

I got this message when trying to use the spot healing brush.  I made my main layer a Smart Object, then created a blank layer above it, selected the Spot Healing Brush and Sample All Layers.  I am trying to paint in a very tiny sliver of the frame at the top (shown below) and I get this message.  The image is on my external hard drive which is a 2 TB hard drive with about 650 GB of used space.  My PC has about 620 GB used space with 65 GB free space.  Does anyone know why I could be getting this message?  Thanks.

[barbara_a]

Try resetting the preferences file. Preferences in Photoshop

[bartonlew]

Thanks.  I tried to find the Preferences file by having my PC search for "prefs.psp," but it did not find it.  Is this unusual, do you know?  I wanted to follow the instructions for manually restoring the default.

[barbara_a · Accepted solution]

Sometimes the file is difficult to find. Alternatively, you can rest your fingers on Ctrl, Alt, and Shift. Do not press down yet, just get your fingers ready. Launch Photoshop. IMMEDIATELY after launching, press down those 3 keys. If the timing is right, you should get a message "Delete the Photoshop Settings file?" Click Yes. That will reset preferences.

[bartonlew]

Thanks.  Since I read that doing this will reset all preferences (for example for Workspace as well) I will resort to doing this if strange behavior continues.  In the document I was referencing, I got the tools to work elsewhere on the page, although I continued to have problems in places.  I definitely will reset to default if I continue to have problems.

[bartonlew]

I finally had to reset the preferences as you described because I kept getting strange behavior with the spot healing brush, clone/tamp tools.  Now, everything seems to be running very smoothly.  Thank you.

[barbara_a]

I'm glad that resetting preferences worked for you. 

[bartonlew]

Just out of curiosity, what is going on with the software that requires the resetting of preferences to resume normal, smooth behavior with these tools?

[barbara_a]

Could be any number of things causing the preferences file to become corrupt. Photoshop used to be the most stable of Adobe applications and in the "old days" I never had to reset preferences, but with new releases of CC coming out so often, bugs seem to be creeping in.

[bartonlew]

Got it, thanks again!

[jbm007]

Open up task manager and select process. See what your memory usage is.

You may have to add more memory and increase your pagefile.sys

[bartonlew]

Thank you.  I am on a PC.  Are these instructions for a PC?

I opened Task Manager, which shows what programs are currently running.  My only option at this point (I believe) is to right click on a program, which simply gives me options for stopping the program or switching to another one.  I don't see anything for checking memory usage.

[jbm007]

under task manager go to performance tab, select memory.

Watch your memory usage if things get slow or you get the out of memory

message

[bartonlew]

Thank you.  I found it.  Would you mind briefly explaining to me the significance of the numbers in the 1st 2 columns - for example, does 75% in Memory mean I have 75% memory free, or used?  What are the values I should be looking at (the column headings or specifically for the Photoshop row) and what should they be ideally?

[ridpnich]

im having this issue on my ipad pro is there a solution for that?