Railfan Technology > Photoshop - not enough memory when saving files?

On today's show - we discuss how to get around the "Not enough RAM memory to
save file - try saving in a lower resolution or as a non-optimized JPEG"

I occasionally get this message using Windows XP, Photoshop along with
2 Gig of memory with little else running. My video card has 1 Gig of memory
as well but I believe that is for another purpose. Scratch disk (which is
not RAM, is more then adequate and "efficiency" is 100% as measured by
Photoshop.

Why the memory issue and how do you fix it?

Typically, I am forced to save to a lower res and /or reboot and all is
well again.



/Mitch

This is just a stab in the dark but i think one or more of your ram cards are bad, get in to my computer and see what you have. BTW 1 Gig is border line shutdown with most programs now days.

I think my computer is storing things in memory and not dumping the
info when no longer needed. Kind of like the theme to Giligan's
Island. Seems to be more a problem the longer I'm editing and it's
rare when I first start. Closing programs does not help.

/Mitch

Never heard of this on a Mac but there is a "Purge" command on the Mac version that may be on the Windows version and may help with your issue.

It's under "Edit" > "Purge" and from that you can select "Undo", "History", "Clipboard", or "All".

Perhaps if you clear these out just before you save, it will remedy the problem.

It could be that some applications running in the background are hogging memory. Sometimes apps that have been closed actually continue running. Open the task manager and you might see some "processes" that are using some of that memory. You might want to close them, but be careful not to close something that you need to have running!

This happens to me with Firefox and Thunderbird on occasion for some reason. I will close the program and when I try to start it again I'll get a message that it is already running, or at least that the process is running.

Yes, same thing here when i use my burning software. when i close it out and then try to restart it, it tells me either its still running or won't start at all. I have to go into Task Manager and close it down and than restart it, than the software loads up.

Nuts

In Preferences check your performance settings. Do you have another disk drive you can use to save work product?

Work is saved to a separate drive. Virtual (scratch disk) is yet
another drive. I was expecting a feature similar to that which
is available in a Mac - dumping /purging the memory but can not
find it in a Window's version. I've gone to Task Manager but
did not note any programs that could be practically closed even
those in the background.

To date, I've been fortunate in that the files that I could not
save were not originals, only lower res edits. A reboot gets me
back to track speed but it's frustrating. Hmmm.. sounds like a
good motto for a PC. "PC - it's frustrating".

/Mitch

Mgoldman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Work is saved to a separate drive. Virtual
> (scratch disk) is yet
> another drive. I was expecting a feature similar
> to that which
> is available in a Mac - dumping /purging the
> memory but can not
> find it in a Window's version. I've gone to Task
> Manager but
> did not note any programs that could be
> practically closed even
> those in the background.
>
> To date, I've been fortunate in that the files
> that I could not
> save were not originals, only lower res edits. A
> reboot gets me
> back to track speed but it's frustrating. Hmmm..
> sounds like a
> good motto for a PC. "PC - it's frustrating".
>
> /Mitch

My experience with XP is you should not run out of memory as it uses virtual memory and if required will use that if only at a crawl. With PS2 and and a 7 year old PC with only 512 meg I have never had an out of memory message tho the system has run into a crawl. I have just got used to reboot with a restart on a periodic basis.

I do find bridge to be a huge memory hog as it tries to keep info from every directory you visit in memory so if you have 300 RAW files in a directory that can be a big problem.
I never use bridge at home. I also find at school if I try I can get a MAC to choke on bridge.

I think any modern O/S using paging and page faults so recently used "pages" are kept in memory or virtual memory through one type of algorithm or another. the O/s tries to anticipate what you will use next which is very often something you just used and tries to avoid going back and forth to the HD for every piece of data.

This also exemplifies why saves to a new file name even in edits are preferred since if the write fails you still have the original and in a like note it is better to save and then close after you make sure the write is successful. In both case the delete may take place but not the subsequent write. Likewise it is better to copy to a different device and then if required delete from the original which is the default mode for XP.

To conclude if you are getting lots of new types of problems or unexplained ones you may have some type of hardware problems. Oh yes, every computer will fail at sometime, even MAC's LOL.

Bob

Bob

I'm running down a checklist --
What version of Photoshop are you running? These tips are for CS3
You have a dedicated scratch disk and you have Photoshop pointed to it via edit/preferences/performance?
With Photoshop not running, have you searched for Photoshop .tmp files? They usually show up in the scratch disk folder if Photoshop crashes. If you suffer a lot of crashes, they can really eat up space.
Are there any icons in your lower right hand corner of your screen that don't need to be running?
Someone else mentioned checking to make sure your memory's good by right clicking Computer and selecting properties

When you are running Photoshop (Windows), go to Edit > Preferences > Performance (Photoshop CS3, otherwise it's labeled as Memory & Image Cache) A little window will appear that will allow you to allocate more of the system's memory to Photoshop. You will need to restart Photoshop for this new adjustment to take place. Increase in 5% increments.

Tom