Panorama stitching and RAM usage

[Ovi_W0lfy]

Hi, I have been using Lightroom and Photoshop of stitching 12 MP and 16 MP images for a few years now. I used to have 8GB of RAM which was very little for stitching more than 12 images at 12 MP. I have changed from laptop to desktop and have 16GB of RAM and upgraded my camera to 16 MP. I still see RAM usage going up insanely fast, at 10 images of 16 MP RAM usage is 90% and HDD is being used as replacement for low RAM.

Is it a bug in Lightroom or Photoshop to use so much RAM or is it really that much necessary ? I ask because the desktop I have at the moment is a bit slow and want to get something better. I was thinking of getting a laptop with 32GB of RAM but I wonder if I start stitching images I see RAM usage go to 90% again, if so should I go with a desktop and 64GB DDR4 ?

I have a Micro Four Thirds camera and to compensate for lack of MP and shallow depth of field I love using telephoto lens with at f 2.8 and stitch a wide field of view with narrow depth of field. Sometimes it can be around 8 to 12 images but most of the time their are more then 12 images and it does seem to bog down any machine I currently own when RAM usage is almost to the max.

I have tried other software like Microsoft's Image Composite Editor and Kolor Autopano Giga but they seem to have more stitching errors then Lightroom or Photoshop and the output doesn't seem to be as good. For example ICE doesn't play well at all with Panasonic RAW files.

[JP Hess]

What is the clock speed of your processor? My suspicions are  that you probably  will not benefit significantly by increasing the RAM.

[Ovi_W0lfy]

I have an Intel Core i5 3470 clocked at 3.2 GHz

[JP Hess · Accepted solution]

I have a similar processor, but I'm only using 8 GB RAM. In talking with my son-in-law who is a computer technician, I was told to look at the performance monitor. He said that if only the processor performance maxed then adding more RAM wouldn't help. When I checked the performance monitor both the processor and the RAM maxed out. So he indicated that I could probably benefit some by adding more RAM. But he also indicated that I would see a greater performance boost with an i7 processor. I'm not ready to purchase a new computer right now. But I'm going to increase my RAM to 16 GB based on his recommendations.

I'm working with 24 megapixel images from a DSLR and have been able to stitch as many as 18 raw images (14 bit). But it takes Lightroom close to 5 min. to process the stitching. I will be interested to see if there is much difference after I increase the RAM. I'm only sharing what I have been told because I'm facing the same dilemma you are. The large panoramas can help produce much higher quality images. But I think I need a computer with a faster processor and more RAM if I expect any significant increase in processing speed.