Huge PSD files after editing photos

[Drew M.]

I'm editing 25mb NEF files shot on my Nikon D750. First from Bridge to Camera Raw, then in photoshop. I use the Nik software plugin in Photoshop.

When I save my work to a PSD, the files are huge. Like 300mb for a single photo.

I've been looking around and people are or were talking about the "DocumentAncestors" in the metadata. I can see the data in there.

I've tried one of the scripts I found to remove the DocumentAncestors, but to no avail.

1. Is the DA really the problem?

2. If so, how do I get that bloating crap out of my files?

3. If not, WTF?

I uninstalled Bridge and PS CC. Rebooted my Mac, then reinstalled Bridge and PS CC before Doing the experiment below.

I just now found a file I edited in Mar of 2019. The edited but uncropped PSD was 217.9mb. I had saved a 5x7 cropped version back then, and it was only 38mb, still big, but manageable. I just re-cropped the "original size" PSD to the "front Image" ratio and put 300 ppi and it saved at 125mb.

Now, I am thoroughly confused. 

Help?

Bridge Version 10.1.1.166

Photoshop CC version 21.2.3

Camera Raw - No idea, but Creative Cloud says it's up to date

MacBook Pro 2019

MacOS Catalina 10.15.6

[Conrad C]

There is nothing obviously wrong, because the file size of a 6016 x 4016 pixel image (Nikon D750 RGB) can be anywhere between roughly 27MB to over 150MB depending on what was done to it after converting from raw to RGB. In the examples you have, what are the:

• Pixel dimensions, especially when dpi was entered during a crop, since that usually forces a resample (changes the pixel width and height, changing the number of pixels)
• Bits per channel (bit depth)
• Number of layers, masks, and all channels
• If the document has one layer, is it named Background or something else like Layer 0?
• File format and compression used, if it isn’t Photoshop (PSD) format

Particularly for the 5 x 7 crop, what are the pixel dimensions and bit depth?

For example:

• If a 6016 x 4016 raw file was converted from Camera Raw to Photoshop as 8 bits per channel RGB with a Background layer, and saved as TIFF with ZIP compression it might be around 27MB. But in Photoshop format it might be around 72MB.
• If all that happened to the TIFF ZIP example was that Background layer was unlocked to become one Layer 0 (transparency added), it could become around 88MB, while the same change to the PSD version would make it around 145MB.
• If the above example was converted from Camera Raw to Photoshop at 16 bits per channel instead, the Layer 0 version would be about 154MB as a TIFF ZIP or over 240MB as a PSD.

If a Photoshop document was sent to a plug-in and it unlocked the Background layer or added layers, or saved an uncompressed TIFF, the file size could change dramatically.

All of the above is assuming Document Ancestors is not involved.

Hopefully a lot of this will be answered by looking at the file specs in that first list. By the way, the original raw files are 25MB because raw files are only one channel and often compressed, so file size only goes up from there (except for highly lossy formats such as JPEG). Once you convert to 3-channel RGB in any photo application and add bit depth, layers, transparency, upsampling, etc. the file size goes up.

[AxelMatt]

In my case, the files are even bigger. I'm shoot picture with a Canon EOS 5D Mk IV. The size of the RAW files is between 35 and 45 MB. The basic developments I done in Lightroom and the fine tuning will be done in Photoshop. There I use several layers and one or more plugins of the Nik Collection. The size of the resulting PSD files is 400 - 700MB

So I think your file size after saving in Photoshop is ok.

[Per Berntsen]

There's a similar thread here that you might find helpful.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/modphoto/m-p/11408651?page=1#M462228