what’s the trick to working with large files, 200mb and up?

DW
Posted By
doug_winter
Oct 13, 2003
Views
276
Replies
5
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Closed
I have a large, RGB, 300dpi, 200mb, tiff image. I scanned a 6cmx6cm neg and I want the final output to be 23×23". Everything looks really good but it’s really difficult to manipualte the image. Burn, Dodge, retouch, etc. Is very slow and clunky. Is there a quick trick to working with images of this size? I’m using a Dell 2.4ghz processor with 512 RAM. I only have one hard drive so my swap file DOES reside on the same hard drive.
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RL
Robert_Levine
Oct 13, 2003
Big files take time to work with. I’ve got a P4 2.66 with one gig of RAM and had a job a while back that had built in coffee breaks everytime I did something.

One question: Are you sure it needs to be 300 dpi? Unless it’s going to be printed on a press there’s no reason for that kind of resolution. And even on a press, 300 dpi is not always needed.

Bob
DW
doug_winter
Oct 13, 2003
I’m just going to output to an IRIS print.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Oct 13, 2003
Doug,

Over the years, the general rule of thumb that I’ve heard is that minimum RAM requirements for optimum PS processing is about 5 times the working size of an image. Adding in other overhead requirements for the O/S, applications, and background processes, as well as the max 75% RAM allocation in Photoshop (imposed by Windows limitations), I suspect working with 200MB images could easily justify having 2GB of RAM in your system, if your motherboard can accommodate it.

Regards,

Daryl
RL
Robert_Levine
Oct 14, 2003
Then you certainly don’t need 300 DPI.

Bob
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Oct 14, 2003
300 or so dpi is usual for an inkjet.

Daryl has the right approach. I also work with 6cm x 6cm, and run into the same problems, and I run a Gig. Even black and white uses Ram like crazy!

It helps to purge your history from time to time, and also, flatten the image to save ram. If you want to retain all the Layers, save the file with the layers, copy, flatten and continue.

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