1.3 gig tiff file freezes my machine – what now?

L
Posted By
Louise
Dec 3, 2005
Views
1067
Replies
13
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Closed
I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.

I don’t know how it got quite so large 🙂 But I do know I’d hate to lose all that work and go back to the original to begin again.

I don’t understand why it’s freezing:

P 4, 3.2
2 gig of ram
ATI Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantis – 128 DDR

Help?

Thanks.

Louise

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

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L
Louise
Dec 3, 2005
Louise wrote:
I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.
I don’t know how it got quite so large 🙂 But I do know I’d hate to lose all that work and go back to the original to begin again.
I don’t understand why it’s freezing:

P 4, 3.2
2 gig of ram
ATI Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantis – 128 DDR

Help?

Thanks.

Louise

Photoshop 7

This was a scanned negative – tiff file.

As I worked, I periodically saved the file so as not to lose the work.

Louise
J
Jim
Dec 3, 2005
"Louise" wrote in message
I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.

I don’t know how it got quite so large 🙂 But I do know I’d hate to lose all that work and go back to the original to begin again.
I don’t understand why it’s freezing:

P 4, 3.2
2 gig of ram
ATI Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantis – 128 DDR

Help?

Thanks.

Louise
You will need a very large pagefile and a very large PS scratch area to work with such files.
Jim
L
Louise
Dec 3, 2005
Jim wrote:
"Louise" wrote in message

I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.

I don’t know how it got quite so large 🙂 But I do know I’d hate to lose all that work and go back to the original to begin again.
I don’t understand why it’s freezing:

P 4, 3.2
2 gig of ram
ATI Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantis – 128 DDR

Help?

Thanks.

Louise

You will need a very large pagefile and a very large PS scratch area to work with such files.
Jim
Sorry for my ignorance:

"pagefile" refers to virtual memory settings? What would you recommend for a pagefile setting given the specs of my machine.

Does this have something to do with system cache? Because I sometimes use speech recognition software, I use a little utility called cacheset.exe from sysinternals.

How do I set the PS scratch area?

Thanks again.

Louise
J
Jim
Dec 3, 2005
"Louise" wrote in message
Jim wrote:
"Louise" wrote in message

I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.
I don’t know how it got quite so large 🙂 But I do know I’d hate to lose all that work and go back to the original to begin again.
I don’t understand why it’s freezing:

P 4, 3.2
2 gig of ram
ATI Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantis – 128 DDR

Help?

Thanks.

Louise

You will need a very large pagefile and a very large PS scratch area to work with such files.
Jim
Sorry for my ignorance:
Not a single one of us was born knowing much about operating systems.
"pagefile" refers to virtual memory settings? What would you recommend for a pagefile setting given the specs of my machine.
I recommend letting the system determine the size of the pagefile.
Does this have something to do with system cache? Because I sometimes use speech recognition software, I use a little utility called cacheset.exe from sysinternals.
Not exactly. The pagefile is what XP uses so that it can pretend that there is more memory available than that allowed by RAM.
How do I set the PS scratch area?
The scratch area is really just a folder which PS uses for its temporary files. You can only help by defragmenting the drive so that XP can allow the amount of disk space allocated to the folder can be increased as needed.
Thanks again.

Louise
Jim
K
KatWoman
Dec 3, 2005
"Louise" wrote in message
Jim wrote:
"Louise" wrote in message

I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.
I don’t know how it got quite so large 🙂 But I do know I’d hate to lose all that work and go back to the original to begin again.
I don’t understand why it’s freezing:

P 4, 3.2
2 gig of ram
ATI Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantis – 128 DDR

Help?

Thanks.

Louise

You will need a very large pagefile and a very large PS scratch area to work with such files.
Jim
Sorry for my ignorance:

"pagefile" refers to virtual memory settings? What would you recommend for a pagefile setting given the specs of my machine.

Does this have something to do with system cache? Because I sometimes use speech recognition software, I use a little utility called cacheset.exe from sysinternals.

How do I set the PS scratch area?

make sure you are log in as admin

control panel >system>Advanced>performance>settings>advanced>virtual memory>you can see how much space is available and increase the paging file size to your liking

IN Photoshop under Preferences>memory and cache options will show you how much RAM is available, usually you can increase this.
under plug-in and scratch disks if you have extra drives or a removable drive you can use them for extra space too.
LA
Loren Amelang
Dec 3, 2005
On Sat, 03 Dec 2005 14:22:35 -0500, Louise wrote:

I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.

So you are not using Photoshop at this point, you are just looking at the saved file in a Windows folder and trying to move it to another location? If so, I don’t see how the Photoshop scratch or pagefile settings are relevant.

If you are moving the file to another folder on the same logical hard drive partition (the same "drive letter"), Windows shouldn’t even need to copy the file – it just changes the directory pointers. I can’t imagine why it would freeze unless the directory structure of your drive is seriously damaged.

If it is, that is what CHKDSK and Scandisk are for. Typically you would right click the icon for your drive, choose Properties, the Tools tab, and Error-checking. Safest plan is to run it without "Automatically fix" first, and see what it finds. Almost always it is safe to go ahead and let it fix errors. If it doesn’t find any problems without "Scan for bad sectors", turn that on and try again – but be prepared for a wait measured in hours.

If the destination is on a different partition, then the entire 1.3 GB needs to be read, and written to the new partition. If one bit of it can’t be read, Windows may retry for a _very_ long time (I’ve seen over five minutes!), and appear to be frozen (Windows Explorer may be reported as "not responding"), before giving up and reporting a read error. Again disk Error-checking would be a good place to start.

For detailed XP instructions:
<http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q315265>

Apparently if XP Chkdsk finds no errors, you get no report or log, just the "check complete 0" dialog. If there are problems you may need to look in the "Event Viewer" to see the details: < http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/132863.htm l>

The Event Viewer might also contain messages from a S.M.A.R.T utility provided by your drive vendor, or other drive-related messages.

Earlier Windows versions created a Scandisk.Log file at the top of your Windows drive with full details of the scan.

Can Photoshop re-open the file? If so you could then save it again to a new location.

Loren
C
ChuckT
Dec 3, 2005
You might try a fractal compression.

But really unless your’re working to make a realy BIG print or to print on something that can print 400+ dpi @ feet x feet (and I don’t know what printer that would be!) you shouldn’t work in tiff for a file that big anyway – your sure it’s a tiff, right?

Something that big (1+ GB) should be a multi-layered PSD, maybe even a 16 bit LAB PSD, and then convert down & flatten to 8 bit tiff to output the file. Tiff format files that size are good for archive purposes but I wouldn’t work on one as a tiff if I could help avoid it.

cvt

On Sat, 03 Dec 2005 14:22:35 -0500, Louise wrote:

I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.
A
adykes
Dec 4, 2005
In article <PLmkf.26768$q%>,
Jim wrote:
"Louise" wrote in message
I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.

I don’t know how it got quite so large 🙂 But I do know I’d hate to lose all that work and go back to the original to begin again.
I don’t understand why it’s freezing:

P 4, 3.2
2 gig of ram
ATI Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantis – 128 DDR

Help?

Thanks.

Louise
You will need a very large pagefile and a very large PS scratch area to work with such files.
Jim

Check fragmentation on all partitions. Saving a file this big over and over can make a mess unless the partition is huge and empty.

Hit ctrl-alt-del, pick task manager and learn how to make sense of the numbers in task manager. Look at View->Select Columns to see more system info.

I hope the OP isn’t using a Win98 machine 🙂


a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore.
A
adykes
Dec 4, 2005
In article wrote:
I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.

I don’t know how it got quite so large 🙂 But I do know I’d hate to lose all that work and go back to the original to begin again.

I don’t understand why it’s freezing:

P 4, 3.2
2 gig of ram
ATI Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantis – 128 DDR

OS ? I assume w2k or XP.

We used to be able to crash NT on demand by opening a text file with a text editor when the size of the file was greater than the available pagefile space. We were opening 1GB+ text files and it was *very* reproducable once we figured out what was going on. Details on request.

I suggest making a fixed pagefile size of at least 3GB so that PS can have a file, and a copy in pagefile plus some left over for the OS.

This is just a WAG, but it’s easy to do.


a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore.
L
Louise
Dec 4, 2005
Al Dykes wrote:
In article <PLmkf.26768$q%>,
Jim wrote:

"Louise" wrote in message

I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.

I don’t know how it got quite so large 🙂 But I do know I’d hate to lose all that work and go back to the original to begin again.
I don’t understand why it’s freezing:

P 4, 3.2
2 gig of ram
ATI Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantis – 128 DDR

Help?

Thanks.

Louise

You will need a very large pagefile and a very large PS scratch area to work with such files.
Jim

Check fragmentation on all partitions. Saving a file this big over and over can make a mess unless the partition is huge and empty.
Hit ctrl-alt-del, pick task manager and learn how to make sense of the numbers in task manager. Look at View->Select Columns to see more system info.

I hope the OP isn’t using a Win98 machine 🙂
whoops – I should have said – Win XP Pro

I will defragment – hopefully that will help prevent this along with fixing virtual memory, scanning the drive, etc.

Louise
R
Roberto
Dec 4, 2005
"ChuckT" wrote in message
You might try a fractal compression.

You are joking, right?

Something that big (1+ GB) should be a multi-layered PSD, maybe even a 16 bit LAB PSD, and then convert down & flatten to 8 bit tiff to output the file.

Photoshop’s RAM requirements blimp-out on layers, but they are usually necessary. Saved TIFF can be BIGGER than a saved Photoshop file, especially the flattened PS file.

Anywho, PS has limits. CS has it’s new large file format and is happy with very large files.

Now to the OP! Adobe has a document on their web site giving the steps one should take to lower the overhead of PS and CS. Seek it out. Following the directions can save your butt.
R
Roberto
Dec 4, 2005
"Al Dykes" wrote in message

We used to be able to crash NT on demand by opening a text file with a text editor when the size of the file

Oh hell, it’s easier than that to crash NT. 🙂 Just create a file of a thousand backspaces or so and then from DOS just Type it! Blue Screen! Hum… haven’t tried that with XP yet. I will in a minute.
L
Louise
Dec 4, 2005
Al Dykes wrote:
In article wrote:

I worked on a tiff file in Photoshop for quite some time. When I was done, I had a 1.3 gig file. Now, I can’t even move it to another directory in Windows Explorer without freezing my machine.

I don’t know how it got quite so large 🙂 But I do know I’d hate to lose all that work and go back to the original to begin again.

I don’t understand why it’s freezing:

P 4, 3.2
2 gig of ram
ATI Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantis – 128 DDR

OS ? I assume w2k or XP.

We used to be able to crash NT on demand by opening a text file with a text editor when the size of the file was greater than the available pagefile space. We were opening 1GB+ text files and it was *very* reproducable once we figured out what was going on. Details on request.
I suggest making a fixed pagefile size of at least 3GB so that PS can have a file, and a copy in pagefile plus some left over for the OS.
This is just a WAG, but it’s easy to do.
Many thanks to all of you for your very helpful suggestions.

I now have:
a 3 gig swap file
Photoshop set to use a separate partition (I don’t have another drive) for the scratch file.
Photoshop set to use 75% of available memory

I have defragged both the scratch file drive and the
Photoshop Directory (I created a bat file that will do this anytime I run it so that I don’t have to defrag the whole drive all the time).

Things definitely are going faster and I am pleased with the speed increase.

One more Question: When I did crash Photoshop, I got an error in gdiplus.dll. Does this provide any other clues?

Thanks again.

Louise

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