Photoshop CS6 Not Enough Memory error

[Reality Reimagined]

Just installed CS6 about a month ago and at different points of taxing the program and my system and on various tools or events in Photoshop, I get an error that tells me there is not enough ram to complete the task.

I've read a few other folks are having this issue - but the answer for them is usually a 32-bit/low amount of memory to begin with. 

I'm using CS6 Extended 64-bit and my comp specs are:

Windows 7 Pro

16 gigs of DDR3 memory

Intel i-7 second gen chip

ATI Radeon 5500 with 2 gigs onboard memory

And all of my stuff is up to date - including PS.  I've allocated 75% of the system memory to PS in the preferences. 

Thoughts?

[Guest]

Without knowing exactly what you are doing when running into the error it is hard to say.  But the memory error may not necessarily be ram.  It could be insufficient scratch disk space, or hd space, or the process just gets bogged down and fills up buffers.

When it happens again take note of what you have just been doing.  If you have a lot of layers and large numbers of history states it can eat up perhaps more than 100 gigs of scratch disk.

You only need 2 gigs allocated to the OS so you can probably up your percentage a little.

[Reality Reimagined]

Thank you for the response!

Most of the time it seems to happen on either the Quick Selection tool or the basic brush.  Most of the crashes have been happening on a document that has less than 10 layers.  When using the refine selection process for the Quick Selection brush I will get an RAM error message or trying to save the file as a PNG or even Jpegs.  Saving a file in this type of instance as a PSD has never caused any issues, ironically. 

I read once long ago that having the same capture scratch disk be the HDD that also stores all of the content you are working with was a bad idea.  Still true today?

[Guest]

Ideally you want either a SSD with all the programs on it, or a separate HD for scratch.  You only have one read/write head so if it has to write a scratch file and then read a program file you can see the problem.  It gets frazzled.

A lot of issues reolve around the graphics card and driver, so make sure that is up to date.  Check makers website.  ATI catalyst 13.4 seems stable.

[Reality Reimagined]

I would hate to think that I would have to redesign major components of my system to accomodate this problem.   Keep in mind that I'm a disgruntled CC convert as I run a studio and I need to the new RAW software for our cameras.  CS5.1 was working just fine IMO and I didn't have any of these issues - not to sound disgruntled

Thank you though for your help Curt - most appreciated!

[Guest]

Keep in mind the major resource change from CS5 to CS6 was additional strain on the graphics card.  Could not find your card on this list http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php 

Generally you want a card to rank near 1000.  Over that you probably pay more for card than you get in performace. 

[station_two]

Curt Y wrote:

…find your card on this list http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php 

Generally you want a card to rank near 1000.  Over that you probably pay more for card than you get in performace. 

Thanks, Curt Y.  Most helpful post—though only one of the many you have offered throughout the years.

(I'm happy because the card arriving tomorrow for my machinescored 1,681.  )

[Guest]

Wow!  Thanks for the compliment, especially from one that knows a lot more than I. 

[Reality Reimagined]

Update...

My card ranks at 1700 or so.

I've ordered a second internal HDD that I will intall tommorrow, but I'm at the point now that I edit an image with less than 10 layers for a few minutes and then I get the same error message that there isn't enough ram to complete my process.  It happens when I go to paint on a mask, when I select the quick selection tool - when I try and open an image.  I restarted my computer, launched PS and tried to open an image and I get the error message.  Other times it opens the image and lets me work for ten minutes, half and hour, an hour and then suddenly it tells me that I do not have enough RAM to complete the task.

Is it worth uninstalling and reinstalling?

[Reality Reimagined]

Final update as the problem seems to now be fixed.

I installed a second 1TB HDD that is completely empty and dedicated it as a scratch disk for PS.  I then opened an image in PS and immediately got the error message that "could not complete command due to not enough memory (RAM)".

I restarted everything and tried to open the image again and got the same error message.  So I went back to the forums and started looking.  Found a post that suggested that you hold down Control-ALT-Shift while PS opens and reset all of the preferences in PS.  I did and I haven't had a single issue since I did that.

I'm not sure why or how - but perhaps in the download and install of the latest version of PS things got scrambled.

Hope this discovery can help others as I did find a lot of folks complaining about the same error.

[davidb34575077]

Lowering the % in the image size when I "Save for Web" heped me

The image was a 6000 x 4000 and i turned the percentage down to 65% and ended up with 3900 x 2600

Hope it helps