all the sudden i'm seeing that when i'm working on smallish layered psd files, they're saving on my disk at huge sizes. for example, small layered file in p'shop says the doc is 3.09M/27.1M but when it's saved it's 230M. file has 2 layers with one alpha channel and one layer mask.
why is this happening? nothing has changed as far as i know.
thanks!
mary
Pshop CS3
mac os 10.5.4
quad intel mac with 4 GB ram
#1
Are you saving it as a DCS file instead of a .psd?
#2
Does it contain a Smart Object?
#3
I believe the "doc size" shows the size of a flat uncompressed image (flat/layered). However it doesn't seem to take into account smart objects etc. It's not the actual file size you will get when saving but should give you a hint of how heavy your file is.
PSD with layers etc. will always be quite large. You can compress them to save some space, flatten/remove unnecessary layers/channels, use solid color layers instead of layers filled with color and so on...
Also you can go to preferences and tell it to ask you about "maximize compatibility" for PSD files. This feature saves a flattened copy of your image with your file (as well as some additional info for backward compatibility). I recommend leaving it on but if you don't need it and size is critical, feel free to turn it off.
#4