One problem to another - now Photoshop! - how big a TIFF is too big ?

[AlistairW]

Hello,

So I tried M31 last night with dither, and then attempted to stack the images in Deep Sky Stacker. Initially I did not enable Drizzle (and it worked), but I wanted to give it a go to see what it did. Anyway DSS ran out of RAM because it is a 32 app. Did a search and found the solution was to use the Visual Studio "editbin" utility to modify DeepSkyStacker.exe and make it LARGEADDRESSAWARE. Reran my stack and great a 450Mb Tiff file displayed nicely. Looked good.

But, now Photoshop (64 bit) can not open it, keeps saying it is out of RAM. Now I am on  laptop with 6G RAM and 500G of diskspace for Photoshop scratch space. Only a integrated graphics card, but that should be ok, as I am not interested in 3D stuff.

So given Photoshop is used by a lot of us here, is 450Mb Tiff file large? At the moment I can not find a way round this. Fortunately I am using a trial version from the Cloud for 30 days, so I could email Adobe, but googling around a lot of people seem to have variants of the problem with much better spec'ed machines than me.  So is anyone else finding this issue, or use another Adobe variant lie Lightroom successfully ?

Really frustrating as I imagine at some point when I progress on to longer exposures then the file size is bound to grow. Or is it simply my PC is poor - (64 bit Win7, Core I5, 6G RAM).

Just want to be able to process ......

Thanks

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

450MB is large, but nowhere near the limit of the TIFF format.

[Thalestris24]

Hi

As I understand it, a 6Gb system will only have 3Gb available for apps. So maybe not that much relative to a near 1/2 gig file.

Louise

[Scorpius]

Probably won't make a difference but try right clicking the file in its folder and then click the "choose default program"option from the dropdown menu. Then choose PS as the default program & see if it will open then...

[Alien 13]

I just tried my lappy I5 win 7 with 4GB of ram with a 750MB TIFF file and opened it ok but it did sweat, I do have a G force graphics card in it though so it might be worth looking at your onboard graphics settings (allocated memory)

Alan

[AlistairW]

OK so here is an update on what I have done ... remember I am on the 30 day Photoshop trial. As part of the trial you get Lightroom as well. So what I did (as a complete fluke), was import the 450MB TIFF in to Lightroom - it worked !!! - (I will skip a few hours forward now). Next I tried "Open as a Smart Object" in Photoshop (simply right click on the TIFF in Lightroom and select the option). Guess what the TIFF loads in to Photoshop ok. I have no idea why this has worked so far, or even what a "Smart Object" is (anyone any ideas ?). Next I added a layer to the TIFF in Photoshop and did a stretch, - handled that ok. Then I saved (with the layer) - no problem .....

I have no idea what any of this means, and my PC was very slow. (I had to close Light Room once Photoshop had opened). But I think this is a way round. Fortunately the monthly £8.50 option from Adobe comes with both Lightroom and Photoshop.

(I don't think I have ever come across a "hobby" where you need so many disciplines, and clam tempter to  to get somewhere)

Thanks - (and if anyone has any idea why what I did seems to work so far please shout  )

Alistair

[Thalestris24]

Hiya

I've no idea why you couldn't load the tiff in PS but could in LR. I only have CS2 and that's my limit of knowledge of PS! There is an interesting general article here. It's a year old so don't know if anything has changed.

Louise

[NGC 666]

When I try to open stacked Autosave TIFF files from the stack, they are around 250MB and sometimes don't open in Photoshop. My solution is merely to save picture to file in DSS, then import that to Photoshop. Works every time. The file is usually smaller, too - especially when cropped (in DSS) to where all photos stack.

If that doesn't work, you could try cropping the TIFF file in two in DSS, then importing both into Photoshop and stitching them back together. I have never seen a 450MB TIFF file, though...

[AlistairW]

thanks for the suggestions, will give those a try too - at the moment my work round seems to be doing the trick for me.

[mart1nw]

Alistair,

Is it a HP laptop? I've recently had the same problem and it has something to do with the format of the TIFF file. It is an erroneous error from photoshop. I'm at work at the moment without the information. I'll try and dig it out later.

Martin 

[AlistairW]

Its a samsung - 5000 series if i remember

[mart1nw]

Hi Alistair,

In that case, I might be leading you up the wrong path. My problem was down to the HP / Windows combination mentioned in this post: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/535446 

See all posts in the link above but more relevant from post 23 onwards. But I guess if you have a Samsung, it may not be relevant.

HTH

Martin

[mart1nw]

^ 

Not too sure what the extra character is at the end of the link!

[AlistairW]

Thanks for the update- will take a look

[wxsatuser]

There is no point in drizzling unless the object is small and you have a lot of exposures to stack.

Drizzling not only doubles or triples the image size but increases both ram and diskspace by the

square of the drizzle. Two times drizzle will want four times the ram and disk space.

Personally I would'nt drizzle something like M31, small galaxies or PNs could be worth it but

if they appear small in the FOV I would use custom rectangle to crop the image.

[toxic]

1 thing to do is to save your tiff file as 16 bit because photoshop below cs2 wont load 32 bit tiff and neither will paint shop pro 7 and below.