Merge to Panorama/Photomerge hangs up in PS CC

[Matthew A Kraus]

I have 5 images I select to make a panorama.  Usiing PS CC 64 bit on Windows 7 OS, File/Automate/Photomerge works fine.  But when I try to select the photos in LR 5 and Edit in/Merge to Panorama in PS, it opens PS CC and loads the 5 images and opens the Photomerge dialog box as I would expect, but when I click OK it begins the merge process and hangs up and PS stops working.  So I can get "photomerge" to work if I choose the images directly from PS, but not when I send the images to PS from LR.

I've never had a problem with this process with CS 5 or CS6.

Help Please.

Thnaks,

Matthew Kraus

[Noel Carboni]

Generally speaking, Photoshop places a very heavy load on your computer system when you do a Photomerge.

If your system isn't up to the stress, or if you have it misconfigured - e.g., the Photoshop RAM limit is too high and it starves the OS for RAM, or if your hard drive fills (scratch files can be huge during Photomerge) - then you might see a lock-up.

Are you seeing it actually crash (i.e., with a message), or just become unresponsive?  If the latter, have you left it alone for a long time?

-Noel

[Matthew A Kraus]

Thanks for the reply.  It doesn't actually crash, but after about 10 minutes I give up when the cursor is still not moving.  Now it is getting hung up and not moving on "align selected layers based on contents".   I then go to Task Manager and it tells me PS is no longer responding and I need to shut it down through this as I can't shut it down through the PS window.  I have 50 GB scratch disk and 12 GB RAM which I think should be more than enough.

Any other ideas.  Again, it works fine with CS^ & CS5.

Thanks,

Matthew Kraus

[Noel Carboni]

I don't know how big your pano is, but I've seen Photoshop use over 200 GB of scratch and a lot more than 12 GB RAM to do a pano.

Rather than assume it's not responding, go into the Task Manager and look in the Processes view to see if Photoshop.exe seems active, i.e., RAM allocations are changing, I/Os are happening, etc.

How big are your files, and how many of them are there?

Can you make it work with a couple of small overlapping images?

-Noel

[Matthew A Kraus]

Thanks again.

Just as a reminder, this strange behavior does not occur when I open the files directly into PS CC and use photomerge.  It only occurs when I bring them into PS from LR with Edit in/merge to panorama in PS.  And again, it down not occur in CS5 or CS6.

I am trying to merge 5 files that are about 80 MB each when it doesn't work.  If I make the files smaller, say 300 KB each, it works.  But I don't think 5 files of 80 MB each should overload my system.

When I go into Task Manager as you suggested and look in the Process view, Photoshope.exe does seem to be active, though it says not responding in the Application view.  If it helps you, the memory usage is 1,075,556 KB

Thnaks,

Matthew Kaus

[Noel Carboni]

Chances are good that it's using a lot more resources than you think it should, but I can't say for sure.

Is it the 32 or 64 bit Photoshop that's running?  That will matter in how much RAM it can use and how heavily it will use your swap file.

Also, when it seems to stall, look at your free disk space on your scratch drive and see if perhaps it's gotten short.

-Noel

[Matthew A Kraus]

I am runnign Window 7 64 bit.

How do I look at the free disk space on my scratch drive when it stalls.  I can Right lcik on my scratch disk file and go to properties and it tells me it has 45 GB avaialble and 5 GB used, but that's the same as when I'm not running PS, so I don't think that's how to do it.  So how can I answer your question?

Matthew Kraus

[Noel Carboni]

Just looking at Computer should show you an overview of scratch usage.  There's no magic.

I suggest that if you're not seeing more than 5 GB used, then Photoshop has chosen to use another drive for scratch.  For all drives other than the system drive, Photoshop will put files in the root folder of the drive of the form Photoshop Tempnnn...n where nnn...n is a number.  You should see these files created when Photoshop is run by looking at the folder in Explorer.

-Noel

[Matthew A Kraus]

I really appreciate your sticking with me and trying to solve this issue

for me and explain what's going on. Unfortunately, you're getting a little

over my head in my knowledge and understanding of computers.

I've double and triple checked my PS preferences and I have the correct

drive selected for my scratch disk.

I'm just having trouble understanding " Photoshop will put files in the

root folder of the drive of the form Photoshop Tempnnn...n where nnn...n

is a number. You should see these files created when Photoshop is run by

looking at the folder in Explorer.

We may be going beyond the time you're able to put into helping me, and if

so, I understand, but any other thoughts would be appreciated. I suppose

the work around is just to open them directly into PS and use photomerge

from there.

Thanks,

Matthew Kraus

[gasknr]

I am getting the same behavior from PS CC, if I select my images in bridge and use the photomerge option from there PS hangs on the blending, they align as quick as they should but blending is painfully slow. I do a lot of pano's, mostly with a TSE lens so photoshop should have no problems stitching as there is no paralax. Photoshop CS6 used to just chew through it.

The process does complete eventually, like i said it just hanges for a long time, once it kicks back into action is proceeds at a pace that I would expect. After the align layers based on content is complete and the blending layers .... starts the progress bars fills to about 1/5 then hangs........ 4/5 minutes later (worst case) then its zipp.. off she goes again. Its almost as is Photoshop has cought narcolepsy and has a spell half way through.

I use a hex core CPU and have 64ig of ram and allocate PS 40gig, I use a standalone (PS only) 120gig SSD as the primary scratch then a 64gig SSD as the secondary scratch, after that its the system drive. Monitoring the scratch during the blend the temp files get up around 5gig, the application is "not responding" in the task manager.

I cant believe its lack of resources, my PC was built for photoshop.. I also feel confident its not my system by the way it handles surface blur on large area 16bit images, I can run a 30 pixel radius @ threshold of say 20-30 in approx 1-2min which I think is very fast.

The panos I am attempted are also really quite small, three files from a 5DII, a laptop could handle that!.

Does it matter that I load the cr2 files into photomerge?, although I am sure it never used to so why would that matter now.

Like also mentioned above If i load the files into photoshop as layers then run photomerge (auto align layers) it completes the process in about 15-20 seconds.

I am happy to use the workaround of loading the files into PS, not looking for a solution but rather thought I would post FYI

[Noel Carboni]

Look in the Task Manager when it's running...  Is it 32 or 64 bit.  If the former, you know what's wrong.  Is it possible you're running the 32 bit Bridge?

I do panos directly from .cr2 files myself, and select them via the dialog I get in 64 bit Photoshop when I choose File - Automate - Photomerge.

-Noel

[gasknr]

I am definetly running 64bit editions for both apps.

When I run the process through file>automate>photomerge I get the same hang as if running it from bridge.

Its very confusing, in the applications photoshop is "not responding" though in the processes I can see that its active, the usage is changing albiet only a few bytes at a time. In the performance the CPU usage is around 7-10% but with some obvious spikes intially in all six cores, and the memory is about 8gig (13%), another reason why I dont think its a resource issue.

Its the blend process, the aligning is just fine. I can use auto align layers and then do a manual blend, but if I auto align the layers and then auto blend panorama I get the same behaviour. At first I thought it might be because I was trying to blend merged bracketted images that had some motion in them and photoshop was having trouble blending but its the same with single images with no motion blur in them at all.

Like I mentioned earlier I use mostly shots from a TSE so they are distortion free so manualy stitching is basically just as fast, I still like to use the automated feature though as it does such a good job. I dont think I would like to be stitching multiple images with paralax with this problem, it would be very frustrating.

[Matthew A Kraus]

I too am still having this problem.

When I start in LR5.2/edit/merge to panorama which open pscc 64 bit, it

takes forever.

If I start in LR/edit all 3 files from LR into PSCC 64 bit and go to

file/automate/photomerge/open files/ it takes forever

But when I start in LR and edit all 3 files in PS CS6 and then go to

photomerge, it works fine.

It seems like it has to be a PSCC problem. Because it works fine in CS6.

Matthew Kraus

[duffyknox]

I am also running into this. My system has plenty of resources, and Photoshop CC is setup properly with plenty of memory and scratch disk space, but when I try even a small 2 picture panorma from lightroom 5, photoshop CC stops on aligning the images. I can cancel the action fine, and nothing is frozen but the pano never completes. Photoshop CS6 does not have this issue.

Duffy Knox

[Matthew A Kraus]

So this certainly appears to be a Photoshop CC bug.

Matthew Kraus

[Noel Carboni]

Nope, at least not a bug that's easily reproduced by everyone.

I have a set of 25 raw files that I have set Camera Raw to open to 6144 x 4096 pixels @ 16 bits/channel.  I use this set for benchmarking Photoshop.

I have benchmarked stitching these together into a 344 megapixel result since Photoshop CS5.  My best time with Photoshop CS6, starting by selecting all the .cr2 files, was 6 minutes 26 seconds.  Photoshop CS5 turns in a time of 6 minutes 35 seconds.

I just did them in 6 minutes 15 seconds with Photoshop CC 14.1.2.  There are certainly some parts of the process that are single-threaded, but I see no new problem here.  Photoshop CC is faster than ever.

My advice is to look for causes that might have something to do with your specific system or setup (e.g., scratch drive assignment, or memory limits).

-Noel

[gasknr]

yes i think its fair to say its not a global bug affecting all users but it is apparantly quite wide spread, just like the sampling issue with the healing brushes and clone tool. That has not affected everyone but has many and has only since the release of CC.

In almost all case though all was good in CS6 and earlier, if it is indeed a system or resource issue, why now, why not with CS6 and earlier. My biggest regret so far with CC is that I unistalled CS6 before installing CC, now I have no easy recource as I cant reobtain CS6 through the cloud which i would do in a heartbeat if given the chance.

"My advice is to look for causes that might have something to do with your specific system or setup (e.g., scratch drive assignment, or memory limits"     If you read earlier posts this has been discussed and unlikely the cause, my settings are identicle to that of what they were in CS6 where all worked just fine.

[Noel Carboni]

gasknr wrote:

now I have no easy recource as I cant reobtain CS6 through the cloud which i would do in a heartbeat if given the chance.

I just downloaded and installed a copy of Photoshop CS6 from the cloud the day before yesterday.

In my case, I went to Adobe.com, drilled down through the various Product links, then found a "Log in to Creative Cloud" link (it was on this page, specifically).

Once I logged in, I saw a screen full of product icons, including [Ps].  Next to it was a [Download] button, which I pressed.

That took me to this page:  https://creative.adobe.com/products/photoshop

Note the little version selector at the left side, just under "In this version".  It's set to [ Photoshop CC v ], but the little arrow at the right means you can pull it down and change it to Photoshop CS6.

-Noel

[J453]

Have you tried restoring Photoshop's preferences and restart both Photoshop and Lightroom?

http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/2012/07/photoshop-basic-troubleshooting-steps-to-fix-most-issues.h...

[duffyknox]

Well, I have to take it back. It seems the problem was related to a specific set of pictures for whatever reason. After more investigation I found it to very quickly on other picture sets.

[J453]

If specific files hang it up, feel free to post a set of images that exhibits the behavior so we can investigate.

[ATEriksen]

It hangs when aligning and blending, depends how small images is. I also got monitoring of every system resources on a seperate LCD and noticed strange things. CPU only use 10%, GPU 0% and i got 12 GB free RAM, and even then PS CC hangs. This screenshot is after 30minutes of waiting on 10 images from 5D Mark III raws. Also happends if I use jpeg, but thats not a option. I got plenty of hardware power.

i7 3690x 5GHz watercooled, 16 GB g.skill ripjawz, gtx 580 amp2+, 4 velociraptors in raid5 and pci-e ssd.

Im also pretty sure this didn't happend with PS CS6 x64, but I removed that when I got PS CC x64.

Im using x64 os and x64 applications only.

[ATEriksen]

Mouse icon shows hourglass, PS is almost frozed up. Sysinfo shows 10595 MB free RAM, 11% cpu usage, and my raid is practically in standby (not reading or writing). SSD only 1-2 MB/s read/write (could do approx ~2GB/s)

[Noel Carboni]

CPU: 11% might indicate it's still working on something in one or more cores, though at 30 minutes it's getting awfully long.  I take it the progress bar stops moving?

I suggest that 16 GB of RAM is not enough to be stitching 10 5D images in Photoshop.  It should be enough for practically anything but Photoshop is not miserly with RAM when it comes to stitching panoramas.  I've seen it use more than that when stitching sets of 25 MP images.  It's possible there is part of the Photomerge that is incapable of using Photoshop's virtual memory system.  I have yet to have a Photomerge fail or stall with 48 GB of RAM.

If you have a single SSD on a SATA III connection you'll only ever be able to sustain 500 MB/second I/O, by the way.  That's because of the SATA speed.

Just out of curiosity, and kind of a shot in the dark...  Does the behavior change if you lower your History states in the Performance preferences (e.g., to 10)?

-Noel

[JJMack]

Since I have a trial version of CC installed I though I would give it a try.  My machine is capable of handling Photoshop CC.  When I retired some 10 years ago I treated myself to a trip to New Zealand.  I took a series of 13 portrait oriented images there to be stitched. Taken on top of the mount 360 around. Oly e-20 5Mpixel camera so 65Mpixel in all.  Photoshop CC Photomerge had no problem stitching the images.  Here is a screen capture.

Image on to the Photomerge layered stitched.  Middle image stitch was done using different software. Bottom image a copy of the Photomerge image flattened and offset wrapped to match the order on the center stitch. Photomerge started it looks like stitching the first image in the middle of the panorama and wrapping around looking at the image layer names and the position they have been put in the stitched image. The stitch was quite fast and did not use much processor power.