Topic: Photoshop & Large Images (Read 3772 times)

bradleygibson · « **on:** June 25, 2007, 01:57:00 pm »

After years of hesitation, recently I finally took the plunge and moved to medium format digital. I picked up a Phase P45+ 39-megapixel digital back.

Last weekend I was out shooting at Mt. St. Helens and after returning from the shoot, sat down for my first "heavy-duty" retouching sesson with Photoshop CS3 Extended, ACR 4.1. System details: Mac OS X 10.4.10, Dual 2.7Ghz G5 tower, 8GB RAM, 256MB GPU, Dell 30" LCD, ~175GB free 7200RPM HD.

I've been using Photoshop since version 3, and I probably had more crashes last night working on one image than I've had using every version from 3 through CS2 combined .

I have been using a non-destructive workflow (Adobe sometimes refers to this as parametric editing) for a few years now, but the jump from 8 to 39 megapixels just seems to be too much. I've been working on retouching a P45 raw image in CS3 Extended completely non-destructively (ACR smart objects, smart filters, adjustment layers, etc), and I am sad to say that even beyond the poor performance I'm seeing (I can forgive that, as it is a lot of data), Photoshop is really struggling.

Specifically, ACR froze for over 1/2 an hour during a spot removal session (required a force quit to recover), Bridge crashed while cataloging a folder, and Photoshop itself crashed, when adding a B&W layer, attempting to create a Quick Selection, and even when opening a second version of the file. Some of the tools (B&W layer, Quick Selection) also gave out of memory errors.

I'm very surprised at this, as Photoshop has been an icon of stability for me for many years.

When processing, my system still has a few gigabytes of available RAM as 32-bit Photoshop has limited to 3072MB--Photoshop's 100% allocation (3GB) limit.

I'm wondering if there are others out there using a non-destructive workflow on large images (medium format digital backs, film scans, stitched images, etc.) Have you had similar issues?

Thoughts? Suggestions? Workarounds?

Are there any 64-bit imaging applications available (not 64-bit pixel data, but 64-bit addressing) that operate non-destructively?

Any help, advice or experience you may have with similar workflows would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help,
Brad

Schewe · « **Reply #1 on:** June 25, 2007, 03:30:57 pm »

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When processing, my system still has a few gigabytes of available RAM as 32-bit Photoshop has limited to 3072MB--Photoshop's 100% allocation (3GB) limit.
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Oh yeah? How do you know? Are you running Activity Monitor to check the system free ram? The odds are that you are starving both Photoshop, Camera Raw and your system by running Photoshop up to 100%. That's prolly what's causing your instability. To treally tell how muchg free ram there is, you'll need to run Activity Monitor and keep checking hte free ram in the syste. If you see it dropping under 1-200MBs free, then you DON'T have enough free ram. You also don't indicate how much free HD space you have and where your scratch disk is set to...if it's the same HD as your boot drive that will slow things down a lot too.

With your upgrade from 8-39MP you might want to consider upgrading your hardware as well. A Dual 2.7Ghz G5 tower is pretty low end these days...even the low end MacPro would blow it away...

bradleygibson · « **Reply #2 on:** June 25, 2007, 05:20:50 pm »

Jeff, you are hilarious!

Yeah, I run utilities which let me see what's really going on on my system. In this case, it's showing me my allocated, free, paged, etc. RAM so I can see what's really going on.

I'm researching these issues as we speak and Adobe has a technote/kb article which might apply to my situation, and you know what? Despite the article implying I can set it to 100% on a Mac with >4GB (at least that's how I read it), it later talks about tools and plug-ins only getting about 700MB of RAM to work with when I do...

So I think you've hit the nail on the head, my friend. 100% does seem like a bad idea after all.

(http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=320005&sliceId=1)

I'll drop it down to 70% (the default) and have a go at it again tonight. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm with you on the tower hardware upgrade, but it's one thing at a time for me. Right now, I'm not even CPU bound anyway, because there's so much I/O. But right now, it's all about the crashing. But once that's sorted, we'll see where the weak link in the chain is. I will be so thankful when the crashing stops. The rest is bonus.

Thanks for the tips, Jeff,
Brad

P.S. Best of luck with the book. It's in very good hands. As a small token of appreciation, I'll be buying two--one for you and one for Bruce.

Quote

Oh yeah? How do you know? Are you running Activity Monitor to check the system free ram? The odds are that you are starving both Photoshop, Camera Raw and your system by running Photoshop up to 100%. That's prolly what's causing your instability. To treally tell how muchg free ram there is, you'll need to run Activity Monitor and keep checking hte free ram in the syste. If you see it dropping under 1-200MBs free, then you DON'T have enough free ram. You also don't indicate how much free HD space you have and where your scratch disk is set to...if it's the same HD as your boot drive that will slow things down a lot too.

With your upgrade from 8-39MP you might want to consider upgrading your hardware as well. A Dual 2.7Ghz G5 tower is pretty low end these days...even the low end MacPro would blow it away...
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BernardLanguillier · « **Reply #3 on:** June 25, 2007, 08:46:31 pm »

I have been dealing with large files on my new Mac Pro with PS CS3 - I mean really large like 100+ MP and 1.8 GB on disk size, and didn't have any noticable poblem. My previous PC with 2GB of RAM was basically unable to deal with these files (30 minutes just to open the files).

I haven't used smart objects, but use masked adjustement layers a lot.

What I have noticed though is a very obvious slowing down of opening times in a single session.

- open first 1.1 GB file: 20 sec
- open second 1.1 GB file: 20 sec
- work for a few minutes - merge files,... - save
- close the file
- open 3rd 1.1 GB file: 2 minutes...
-> restart PS

- open same 3rd 1.1 GB file: 20 sec

I need to test more to see what is actually going on.

The Mac Pro has 16 GB RAM, and PS is set to 3GB (scratch disk is an empty 150GB 10.000 rpm Raptor). I have tried playing with the new libs to authorize/forbid RAM paging but it didn't seem to affect this behavior much.

Cheers,
Bernard

bradleygibson · « **Reply #4 on:** June 25, 2007, 10:20:10 pm »

Funny--I did my first gigapixel stitch last weekend and didn't have the trouble I had trying to retouch a single 39Mpxl photograph last night.

What have I learned? That even with lots of memory in the system, Photoshop can only access 4GB, and the tools (some layers, the quick select, etc.) need some of that 4GB to do their work.

I set the memory slider down to 65% (2GB for pixel data, ~2GB for everything else) and things have settled down now. I'll tweak the number a bit to find the best performance without crashing.

Thank you Bernard and Jeff for the advice and experience--I was relieved to learn that this can work... I'd still like to see a 64-bit version of Photoshop to take advantage directly of all that memory, but I suppose that will have to wait.

Best regards,
Brad

Schewe · « **Reply #5 on:** June 25, 2007, 10:47:01 pm »

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I set the memory slider down to 65% (2GB for pixel data, ~2GB for everything else) and things have settled down now. I'll tweak the number a bit to find the best performance without crashing.
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Actually, I think you can run it up higher...try 80-85% and watch Activity Monitor while you work. As long as you keep 100-200MBs of free system ram you'll be ok. It was the 100% that was making Camera Raw flakey-it has to grab its ram from Photoshop but still be included in the max 32 bit app limit of 4 gigs...

bradleygibson · « **Reply #6 on:** June 26, 2007, 01:31:33 am »

Yes, I think you're right. I've been inching it up 5% at a time like Adobe suggests until some of the tools I'm using start to choke at the filesizes I'm running. So far, so good.

BTW, at 50% setting I had over 6GB of system ram available... I'm sure I don't have a system memory issue (see attached screenshot), but rather the Photoshop tools themselves weren't being left enough room to do their jobs.

Thanks, again, Jeff,
Brad

Quote

Actually, I think you can run it up higher...try 80-85% and watch Activity Monitor while you work. As long as you keep 100-200MBs of free system ram you'll be ok. It was the 100% that was making Camera Raw flakey-it has to grab its ram from Photoshop but still be included in the max 32 bit app limit of 4 gigs...
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Mac Pizzle · « **Reply #7 on:** June 27, 2007, 12:48:15 am »

Don't believe it's your machine. P45+ files are different than the P45 files and ACR doesn't fully support them yet (yes, it will open some but, as you have seen, will encounter a lot of problems). You need to use C1 Pro to convert your RAW files until ACR fully supports the + files. Check the P1 forums as others have encountered the same problems.

bradleygibson · « **Reply #8 on:** June 27, 2007, 02:44:24 am »

I guess I owe Adobe an apology for the headline of this post--with less aggressive memory settings, CS3 is now working like a champ. I'm able to develop the same raw file at different exposures (as smart objects--not possible from C1, unfortunately) blend them and attach smart filters and layers without a hitch.

I can't speak to the P45+ files in general, but the ones that I have (courtesy Capture Integration) are all working just fine.

If you're having trouble with yours, let me know--perhaps I can help.

Best regards,
Brad

Author Topic: Photoshop & Large Images (Read 3772 times)