I can't save my work! - "not enough memory available for this task" Help!!

[xelag007]

Hi,

I worked all the day on a big project on Windows XP SP2 with Photoshop CS2 (9.0.2). It used now 1895Mo RAM! I have 3.5Go of RAM.

When I try to modify a text area for instance, the following error pops up : "Not enough memory available for this task" - translated in english from the original french message : "Impossible d'effectuer cette opération car la mémoire vive disponible est insuffisante."

The same error pops up when I try to save!! I am totally stuck. I can't save my work, and if I quit Photoshop to restart it so as to free some RAM, I lose my work (3-4h )!

I try :

- to close all other programs using plenty of RAM

- to clean the history

- to hide all my layers

- to tune the memory management in Edit/Preferences - Memory management.

  - by raising the max amount of RAM used by Photoshop,

  - by setting the level of cache memory to 1

- to raise the paging file size (actually set to 4Go max), but it needs to restart WinXP... so as to apply the modification.

I don't know what to do anymore!! Please help me to save my work.. I thought about doing some screen shots with the key to keep some kind of trace of what I have done.. Otherwise, I don' know what to do.

Thank you for your quick help,

Alex

[Ricky-T]

Classic example of why you should save your workm in progress...just hit Ctrl+s to do it on the fly.

You can shrink your image down which will make it smaller enough to save, or you can try to save as a diffeent format. The making loads of screen shots would be good if it wasnt really an option seeing as it would use even more memory to do that then put the image together out of the screen shots. Try to save as a format that doesnt compress much or at all like default TIFF or Bitmap. If you can save it as anything you can always resave after to make it a different file format. Other than that, theres pretty much nothing you can do.

[xelag007]

Classic example of why you should save your workm in progress...just hit Ctrl+s to do it on the fly.

Yes I know. But it is the first time I work with Photoshop on such a big project and I thought it would be more stable.. Do the newer versions manage the memory better ?

You can shrink your image down which will make it smaller enough to save

Not enough memory to resize the image. And in the manipulation, it would corrupt some of my layers..

you can try to save as a diffeent format

I could succesfully save in Bitmap format. But I lose all my layers info..

The making loads of screen shots would be good if it wasnt really an option seeing as it would use even more memory to do that then put the image together out of the screen shots.

I made screen shots without any problem. I saved them through MS Paint without any memory problem, while Photoshop in parallel was just used as a static image for snapping...

[PeterK__]

Try going Edit-Purge All, and also clear up some space on your hard drive. You may be running out of scratch disk space. Photoshop needs plenty of free space on the scratch drive(s) to perform it's operations, save history states, snapshots, etc.

[xelag007]

Try going Edit-Purge All, and also clear up some space on your hard drive.

Yes, I did it. It didn't change anything...

[Guest]

"- by raising the max amount of RAM used by Photoshop,"

I think that is going in the wrong direction.  Giving more memory to Photoshop means you are taking it away from Windows.  It may be Windows that hasn't enough memory.

Save often is an important rule. (Ricky-T)  And a big scratch disk is important (PeterK)

[Guest]

Q Photo wrote:

"- by raising the max amount of RAM used by Photoshop,"

I think that is going in the wrong direction.  Giving more memory to Photoshop means you are taking it away from Windows.  It may be Windows that hasn't enough memory.

That crossed my mind too but don't you have to restart PS to get it to take effect?

[xelag007]

That crossed my mind too but don't you have to restart PS to get it to take effect?

Yes, that's right. So I'm stuck on that RAM tuning.

[Guest]

Sorry about the amount of RAM & Photoshop vs. Windows comment.  While it may be true it is of no help to you in this situation.  (as usual, JJ is right)

Shot in the dark.  Is it possible to open new blank files and drag one layer (from your project) into one new file and save those files, one at a time?

[xelag007]

I think that is going in the wrong direction.  Giving more memory to Photoshop means you are taking it away from Windows.  It may be Windows that hasn't enough memory.

Windows has still some free RAM, check attached image. That's Photoshop which pops the error message. I've never seen such an error message in an other software.

[PeterK__]

How much space do you have left on your hard drive and scratch drives? I'm pretty sure that's the issue. You need to delete some stuff from your hard drive to make space for Photoshop's scratch disk.

edit - and/or buy an extra hard drive to use for more scratch space.

[Guest]

PeterK.. wrote:

- and/or buy an extra hard drive to use for more scratch space.

That's very good advice but it won't help him out of this hole!