Photoshop filling scratch disks too quickly

[CFranklyn]

Hi all, I am working on a large image file (22,000 x 12,000 pixels). I am working in TIFF format, 8 bit, the file size is about 500mb.

My system is a Mac Pro late 2013, 6 core with 64GB of ram.

There are only about 10 layers in this image: the background is a comped photograph (rasterised to a single layer), above this a couple of color fill layers (one with a graduated mask and one with a black/white mask created from a path). Then there's a few mostly empty layers with relatively tiny areas of cloning brushed into them.

I have no idea if this is important or not but thought perhaps worth mentioning.

Every time I open this image and begin to work on it, my scratch disk, on which there is about 130GB of free space, is filled up within about 5 minutes and I cannot continue working as I get error messages. All I am trying to do is work on the mask of a color fill layer.

Photoshop CC 2017 began doing this today, and I just noticed there is a brand new Photoshop CC, so I decided this would be a good time to upgrade and install a fresh new version. I have the exact same behaviour on the newly installed version of CC too.

(edit) Just wanted to mention that I am working on other images of similar file-size and not experiencing this problem.

Any advice on what is going on? Thanks in advance.

[D Fosse]

Get more scratch space. 130 GB is very little under any circumstance. There's not just the document itself, there's also history states and a bunch of other stuff. Scratch sizes can explode - give it plenty of room.

If you get "out of memory"-messages, that's it.

[CFranklyn]

Hi D Fosse, thanks for the reply. I'll take on board your advice on this and try to find a solution to have more free space.

However, in general for the kind of work I do, I have found 130GB is normally totally sufficient. Whether it's a bug or just a particular element in this document that is extremely memory intensive, I've only had this problem with this one image, and I'd like to understand why that is....