Photoshop CS4 - Not enough RAM to open a file???

[soom1976]

I get this wonderful "Not Enough RAM" message, while trying to open a big TIF file (over 100 Mb). Till now it happened with big files that were saved in Windows. All other programs, including Photoshop CS3 opens the files just great. Resaving files in any other app helps, but this thing is a joke - I'm thinking going back to CS3... : (

Thanks.

[pabloinla]

The tiff file is saved by MS Office 10 Document Imaging software. I am able to open with that software. There are no other options to save in other file types. So the file is good. All I really needed was a print of that file for my records. Conclusion: Adobe is not geared for all .tif formats.

[Tai_Lao]

Pabloinla,

Your posted TIFF file is an untagged (no embeded profile) grayscale TIFF generated by Hewlett Packard hardware and Microsoft software.

"tiff:Model: HP PrecisionScan LTX 1.2", "xmp:CreatorTool: Microsoft Office Scanning 1.03.2349.01".

There is no end to the grief caused by HP and MS in my experience. 

Wo Tai Lao Le

我太老了

[pabloinla]

Thanks! I think, with humor, that I need a different scanner software to create editable files in .tif format. Whatever is up with the .tif file, we could spend lots of time trying to "fix" it, but in this case, not worth it.

[pabloinla]

One last note on this errant .tif file, my cheap little program, Polyview, had no problem opening these files immediately. Polyview can open it so I'd say Adobe has a program error that should be fixed.

[Tai_Lao]

pabloinla wrote:

One last note on this errant .tif file, my cheap little program, Polyview, had no problem opening these files immediately. Polyview can open it so I'd say Adobe has a program error that should be fixed.

Graphic Converter opened it up immediately too.  But Preview cannot.  So it's not just Adobe that has this problem.

Yes Adobe, can and should fix this.

Wo Tai Lao Le

我太老了

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

Since Adobe owns the tiff format it means Microsoft might have done something they might not actually be allowed to do by making the format their own pseudo format.

[pabloinla]

MS Word does not recognize the file, something is wierd in the file but it

does open in Polyview. So whatever!

[Guest]

Wade_Zimmerman wrote:

Since Adobe owns the tiff format it means Microsoft might have done something they might not actually be allowed to do by making the format their own pseudo format.

Adobe just manages the TIFF spec and cannot spank other entities for doing something that they are not "allowed to do". Other developers are not restricted from doing whatever they want. Using a custom tag that has not been registered with Adobe might be a developer's way of keeping the image tied to their own system. It would be grossly unusual for a company to produce a file format that can only be read by their own applications, right?

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

It would be grossly unusual for a company to produce a file format that can only be read by their own applications, right?

Wrong!

You are talking about crazy people who think they can own the world. They have all gone completely mad with greed.

[pabloinla]

Yes, grossly sloppy coding. I agree!

[Chris Cox]

Yes, that's a really bad file.

It uses an obsolete form of JPEG encoding that almost nobody supports (it was a mistake and quickly deprecated, many years ago), and has a half dozen unknown/undefined tags.

You need to tell Microsoft about this so they can fix their software.

[soom1976]

Tai Lao wrote:

With all due respect, it is you who could craft your posts more carefully.

Ok, lets not make this thread an argument about post crafting.

I'll make it as clear as possible:

Tai Lao wrote:

You have stated you are on a one-drive laptop machine.  Therefore, you have no clue as to how much unfragmented available space you actually have for the Photoshop scratch disk.  Your drive unavoidably has fragmentation from prior use.  Also remember that, on a one-drive machine, Photoshop has to share the available drive space with the invisible, uncounted swap files of the OS.

According to many different discussions, nobody, even Apple, can really tell If it is necessary to defragment OS X drives, and there are only 3rd party software that do it. Although I'll give it a try, I'm sure this is the issue, because I have tried to set my Scratch disk to an empty external FireWire harddisk, with no avail.

You still neglect to specify if this happens in CS3 on the very same drive, in the very same machine, today.

Yes - Photoshop CS3 is exactly on the same machine with exactly the same settings on exactly the same drive and it opens exatly the same files at exactly the same day.

You could consider using the free http://s5.yousendit.com/ service to post a sample file that will not open in CS4.

Will do as soon as I get to work with those files again.
Thanks

[Tai_Lao]

soom1976 wrote:

According to many different discussions, nobody, even Apple, can really tell If it is necessary to defragment OS X drives,

This is not about defragmenting the drive.  I am attempting to make you aware that you will always have fragmentation on your drive in a one-drive laptop, no matter what you do.

Photoshop needs to find a single, contiguous, non-fragmented chunk of drive space to create the scratch disk.  On a one-drive machine you will never, ever know exactly what the largest, unfragmented chunk of drive space you have at any given instant is, but you can bet your life on the fact that it will be a lot less than the total amount the Finder shows you.

As I just typed, your drive will inevitably be fragmented even before you boot up, and the swap files of the OS will further fragmented once it's running.

You can use an external drive for scratch, just make sure it's formatted as Mac HFS+ Extended and NOT case-sensitive.  Do a Get Info (Command I) on the icon of the external hard drive in the Finder and check "Ignore Ownership of this Drive" if necessary.

Photoshop creates the scratch drive the instant you go to open an existing file or create a new one, setting its size on assumptions it makes based on your workflow history, not just the size of the file you're opening.  Thus, it is possible that the scratch disk sizes for CS3 and for CS4 will be different on your machine.  This will be the case if you have worked on bigger files or with more layers. etc, on one version than on the other one, even for the very same file.  The difference could be dramatic.

Wo Tai Lao Le

我太老了

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

Tai tells the truth and you seem to be not only arguing with him but everyone that this cannot be a user induced problem.
But it can.

Also though you may have been working with 60 states of history for a long time does not mean it hasn't caught up with you and contributed to the fragmentation of the your data space which PS needs to make the scratch.

But if this information is not useful to you then I say by all means ignore it.

Aso repairing the r permissions might help.

And Mary's concerns about an erroneous message it might not be an erroneous message if an issue cannot not be resolved  but keeps calculating past the scratches capacity and the RAM's capacity as well then there really is not enough memory so the message might be realistic though surprising.

But all of this is nothing the OP really has to concern themselves with though others that read this thread might take into consideration.

[jadco32]

I have the same problem. A 120 MB TIFF file created by my scanner - Photoshop CS4 (Mac version) can't open it because of not enough memory. I tried opening it with Photoshop Elements 6.0 on the same computer and it opened fine. I used Elements to save the file as a PSD. Then Photoshop had no trouble opening, even though the PSD file had grown to 302 MB. Photoshop crashed shortly after this, but then when restarted was able to edit the 302MB file.

[pabloinla]

Goes to show that Adobe should work a bit on opening all types of .tif files so we don't have to try workaround methods. Your file was large, mine was tiny! Same issue!

[jadco32]

It¹s ironic that they supposedly ³manage² the TIF format. Even more ironic

that they¹re slightly stripped version of Photoshop could open my file

easily. Anyway, Photoshop is a very complex program, not only to use, but I

imagine also to program, so you¹re always going to see things like this. All

the best.

[Chris Cox]

Not the same issue, else Elements would not have been able to read the file.

One issue was Microsoft writing bad files --  Photoshop isn't going to be able to fix that.

The other issue:  I have no idea what could be wrong until I get a copy of that file to debug.

[pabloinla]

I included the file with my original thread. If you can't find it, let me

know. Anyway, the comment about Elements, well if Elements could read the

file and Photoshop could not and the file is .tif, seems related to

Photoshop code, doesn't it? My file, well it may be damaged, hence a

different issue!

[Chris Cox]

Elements cannot read the bad encoding written by Microsoft.  They use the exact same code for TIFF as Photoshop.

Elements CAN read another user's file that has a DIFFERENT problem.

Just because 2 people can't read 2 completely different TIFF files does not mean that the underlying cause is the same.

[pabloinla]

Honey pie, that is exactly what I was saying! Anyway, this issue is

inconsequential and time to leave it alone!

[soom1976]

jadco32 wrote:

I have the same problem. A 120 MB TIFF file created by my scanner - Photoshop CS4 (Mac version) can't open it because of not enough memory. I tried opening it with Photoshop Elements 6.0 on the same computer and it opened fine. I used Elements to save the file as a PSD. Then Photoshop had no trouble opening, even though the PSD file had grown to 302 MB. Photoshop crashed shortly after this, but then when restarted was able to edit the 302MB file.

Exactly - it proves again, that it's a bug in Photoshop CS4

[jadco32]

It¹s ironic that they supposedly ³manage² the TIF format. Even more ironic

that their slightly stripped version of Photoshop could open my file easily.

Anyway, Photoshop is a very complex program, not only to use, but I imagine

also to program, so you¹re always going to see things like this. All the

best.

[Chris Cox]

Even more ironic is people posting replies without reading the previous discussion.

[Jesse Higman]

My CS4 is doing the same things with a 20MB TIFF file. After reading this thread I actually took the time to create an account so I could reply and hopefully add to the hunt of this problem. Tonight I just have to work around it with CS3, thank God I still have it installed. I have 8GB of Ram and CS4 is the only thing open. There is 138GB open on my new scratch drive. I have allocated all the memory PhotoShop will take in the preferences and still it wont open a 20MB TIFF!! WTF If it helps, these TIFFs are comming out of Maya 8 on a Mac.

Good luck everyone...

I'm glad this Forum is here.