Scratch Disk Full - can't crop - far more room than needed

[GulfGirl62]

I have over 26GB free space on my hard drive, and I'm trying to edit an image that is 1.5MB -- 851 pixels x 638 pixels.  It is definitely pixels, not inches or meters!   Every time I try to crop the image, I get the message that the Scratch Disk is full.  I've purged, reloaded PhotoShop CC, rebooted my MacBook Pro (High Sierra).  Any ideas?

[RoundRobin]

I take it you've been through your preferences tab.  I suppose you could try adding an external HD to test but I don't think it's recommended.

Not sure if you go down to the performance tab and lower things like the history states and cache levels it might help.  From what I read Limiting History states can reduce the load PS puts on its scratch disk.

just in case the route is:
Edit > Preferences > Performance

This is where I got that from.  I really hope this helps.

Optimize performance Photoshop CC

[GulfGirl62]

Thank you for your answer.

I lowered History States to 10 with no success. What's weird is I've done far more complex things without a hitch.  This is one image with a single layer. I freed up another 10 GB, so I have 36 GB free. This must be a glitch.

When I go to Scratch Disks, the only option is the C Drive. I have a USB drive and a media card, both with large amounts of free space, but I see no way to add these.  I can't imagine they would be better than my SSD anyway.

Frustrating!

But thanks so much for your help.

[Test Screen Name · Accepted solution]

You need to buy an external hard drive or SSD. That's not enough Free space.

[GulfGirl62]

36 GB (I freed up more) is not enough to edit a 1.5 MB photo? That makes no sense.  That's about 24,000 times the size of the photo.  what is the minimum free space necessary for PhotoShop?

[Ronald Keller]

While I agree with some answers that 39 GB of free space is not adequate enough for general Photoshop use it's more than enough on such a very small image.

Are you sure that the dimensions in the crop tool are not set to inches or with an abnormal high resolution?

[Test Screen Name]

Yes, not enough. You can check this by waiting for the "scratch disks are full" message, LEAVING IT ON SCREEN and checking your disk. Is it full? We've yet to hear of a case where Photoshop put this message out falsely (though there may be reasons it needs more than expected; or even bugs: what is your exact verison - and please don't say "latest").

It's also not enough to run a system anyway. You're asking for terrible performance.

[GulfGirl62]

From Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop Version: 19.1.6 20180808.r.398 2018/08/08: 1185588  x64

Operating System: Mac OS 10.13.6

System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:61, Stepping:4 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX2, HyperThreading

Physical processor count: 2

Logical processor count: 4

Processor speed: 2700 MHz

Built-in memory: 8192 MB

Free memory: 4178 MB

Memory available to Photoshop: 6287 MB

Memory used by Photoshop: 70 %

Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled

Scratch volume(s):

  Startup, 233.6G, 24.6G free

And my system runs fine otherwise.  I can't figure out where the 10 GB I freed up yesterday went. Log files?  II went to look and PhotoShop seems to be logging something. I deleted a few more things, rebooted again, tried again, and it cropped with no errors -- with less free disk space than yesterday, at least according to PhotoShop.  (Yesterday, I had 25+ GB free according to it.)

The disk space available now according to Finder is different from what Photoshop reports:

I guess I'll just hope it keeps working. Not really solved, just not happening at the moment!

[D Fosse]

I know it's not what you want to hear, but your disk really is filled up and you need to do something about it. It's not just Photoshop, pretty soon you will have much bigger problems.

The problem is in your user account, which is normally a hidden folder. That's where all the junk fills up. Get something like Disk Inventory to see for yourself. All your programs store settings, caches, previews etc here, and over time it grows and grows. Nothing is ever removed from here, not even by uninstalling a program.

As an immediate emergency measure, delete all the Bridge Cache folders you can find in your user account. There will be one for each version you have ever had installed, and each can be 10-30 GB. It will get rebuilt as needed. If you use Premiere Pro or After Effects do those too.

[Jeff Arola]

macOS reports storage capacity using the decimal system.

Photoshop reports storage capacity using the binary system (base 2) so that's the main reason for the difference.

How iOS and macOS report storage capacity - Apple Support

[Test Screen Name]

The difference between 39GB in Finder and 24GB in Photoshop is huge, but easy to explain. By the time you can get a Photoshop report, Photoshop has ALREADY grabbed a bare minimum scratch disk space (presumably, about 15GB). It will grab more as it needs it. Check in Finder once Photoshop has started and I'd hope the numbers match.