Small psd needing to be saved as a PSB

Hi Alexia - I don't know if you're still having the problem or not but I have been frustrated by the same thing. What I experienced was trying to save a 400mp old psd file after adding a single curves adjustment layer and Photoshop 2025 changed the 400mb file to a 2.4gb file requiring saving as psb file. What I found was that if I did the edit in Photoshop 2021 adding the curves layer added essentially nothing to file size and I was able to save the file as a psd, no problem.  What appears to be happening is that files originally edited on legacy versions of Photoshop jump tremendously in size when saving on more current versions (perhaps Photoshop somehow replicates the file in each succeeding version before saving in the current version?? Who knows). Try saving your file in an older version of Photoshop and see if that solves your problem, it worked for me. 

Craig

We tried to establish if there was excessive photoshop:DocumentAncestors metadata earlier in the thread, and this did not appear to be the case. For this specific metadata bloat issue, many methods are covered in my blogpost on the topic:

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

I have never heard of any other specific metadata issue, however, if this is the case then a different script or method would be required to target the unknown metadata.

The easiest way is to select all layers and then use Layer > Duplicate to duplicate the layers to a new file (don't duplicate the image). This is easy enough to do manually, however, a scripted version of this can be found here:

https://github.com/MarshySwamp/Remove-All-Metadata-Retain-Layers/blob/main/Remove%20All%20Metadata%20%26%20Retain%20Layers.jsx

Thanks so much for this! This sounds interesting... (Most of the time, something's wrong with the metadata, and the capacity is ridiculously large, but it's solved by using a script to erase the metadata). Can you kindly instruct me on how to get hold / how to use a script to erase metadata, please?  Many thanks in advance. 

Thank you, Stephen, for offering to inspect a document directly. However, I've uninstalled the software and installed an older version of Photoshop (link supplied by an agent). It is now running on 21.0.0 and hopefully, the error at the saving point will not appear again. But if it does, then I will surely paste here a link to a problematic document. Thanks for now. 

It might be a little far from the question, but... Sometimes the capacity of a PSD file becomes ridiculously large. It is usually called a "broken PSD" by workers. Most of the time, something's wrong with the metadata, and the capacity is ridiculously large, but it's solved by using a script to erase the metadata, or by moving all layers neatly to a new document (in serious cases, if a 2mb file fails, it's over 700mb). 1000px-1000px small image)...

Hi

As I posted previously, can you please post a link to a problem file and we can take a look and see if there is anything unusual.

Dave

@alexia23646504vzp6 

Many people have tried to help the best that they can without having access to the problem files. Only so much can be done, so it may be time to share the smallest file size example that you can.

I'd suggest a free service such as wetransfer dot com - and post the link in the forum or private message me.

Thanks for your reply Dave, 

but...May I kindly stress that this problem is happening even if am using simple screenshots or a few layers of images that do not exceed 200kb each... This issue is occurring with each and every document irrespective of the image size... 

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for getting back.

• With regards to: "Preferences > File Handling - Is "Disable Compression of PSD and PSB Files" ticked?"

No it is unchecked. Shall I check it?

• With regards to the "one layer is unexpectedly addng to the file size more than expected...":

May I kindly stress that the problem is not in the images I'm using as the saving issue occurs even if am using simple screenshots or a few layers of images that do not exceed 200kb... This issue is occurring with each and every document irrespective of the image size... 

Preferences > File Handling - Is "Disable Compression of PSD and PSB Files" ticked?

If you CMD/CTRL T to transform on each layer, does the layer bounding box indicate that a layer has unexpected content outside of the canvas?

Working on a duped file, delete 1 layer, then save and inspect file size. Repeat again delete the duped file and duplicate the original again, deleting a different layer and saving. Keep repeating and checking saved file size. Perhaps you will find that one layer is unexpectedly addng to the file size more than expected...