Photoshop CC "Could not use the spot healing brush because there's not enough memory.

[tony00777]

Running Windows 10. Dell laptop purchased 3 months ago. 16 GB RAM

I am only trying to spot heal a small area about 6 pixels across in an image that is 100 pixels tall and wide.  This is not really a memory issue. I have 9.7 GB of free memory according to my task manager.

I tried increasing the memory usage, but it was already set at 10 Gigs of memory. (10069  MB)   This did not work.

I reset all preferences. No dice.  I reinstalled Photoshop from scratch. No dice.

Spot healing typically works fine even when I had very low system resources.  It worked fine earlier today.  This has nothing to do with the Memory Usage setting or Scratch Discs, which I can set to my C or D drive, both of which have plenty of gigabytes of memory. 

I found articles on adobe forum that discuss earlier versions of photoshop, and they direct me to folders that don't exist for files that do not exist when I search on my computer. 

Please provide a remedy.  I am trying to get some work done and this is necessary. I am under deadline.

Thank you,

Tony

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

s this happening with one specific image, or all images? 

How big is the image, and what is it's bit depth?

I realize you are discounting scratch space, but if it is not RAM, I'd look more closely and scratch.  What size are the Photoshop temp****  files in the root directory of your primary scratch drive?  Do you have any orphaned Photoshop temp*** files with old dates clogging up scratch space?

If it is one particular image, a trick that can fix things when a file goes weird on you is to group all the layers, and duplicate to a new document.  Note, that while this transports alpha channels, you would lose and work paths.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Something else that occurs to me, what is the brush size you are using with the Spot Healing brush?

[tony00777]

Duplicating to a new document worked. Thanks Trevor!

[Trevor.Dennis]

OK, that's cool.  I don't know if you had any work paths in the original.  Like I said, you can't directly drag or copy to the new document, but if you:

1. Select the work path in the original and copy with Ctrl c (Cmd c)
2. Switch to the new document and make a new work path and paste with Ctrl v (Cmd v)

That will do the trick.  Or you can make all work paths into shape layers before duplicating.  There is probably a more elegant way of copying work paths between document though.  (Hmmm I just searched and didn't find one.)

[wasims61556838]

I was also facing same issue but I restart my Photoshop CC 2018 not everthing working fine like before.

[piamedeadigital]

I don't know why this says solved, I haven't seen any solutions and what is marked as correct answer is a question. I'm having this problem. And again I don't see any solution here. 

[Timothy5FD7]

I'm also recieving this message whenever I attempt to use the spot healing brush and I'm not sure how to fix it