Hi, I have been working on a large group of DNG’s and I’m noticing that as I proceed through the edits my computer memory seems to be ‘not releasing’. Example: Select photo, process it in RAW, open it in Photoshop CS3, edit, save and CLOSE the image. My computer memory does not seem to be refreshed when I close the image and eventually, after several images, I have to close the application to retrieve the memory. I am running on a PC Vista with 3 gig of memory (max my operating system will work with). If anyone has suggestions, I would appreciate them. Thanks, J.
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it doesn’t release it, but it should reuse it, up to the amount of memory set in your preferences. check there first, make sure it’s set to a sane level like ~60-80%.
Hmmm, I’m watching it on a little desktop widget and it seems to release memory for a few images and then ‘not’ release but increase memory usage until max out. The files are all approximately the same size (Dngs from a 12mg pixel camera). If I’m closing each file after editing in Photoshop, why is the memory usage increasing. Sorry, to be a pest but I really don’t understand this. The files are all approximately the same size.
This is a problem that affects both Windows and Apple OSes. Until Apple went Linux memory handling was actually worse than Windows. For reasons I do not understand Windows, even XP and Vista, are structured to use paging files (hard disk virtual memory) even when there is physical RAM available and will preferentially do so to the detriment of performance. Presumably that is why Photoshop allows you to reserve a percentage of physical RAM for its use rather than let Windows allocate memory to the slower paging file. You can experiment with various page file settings, or lack thereof, on your own system. However "memory" in Windows is not just RAM sticks and hard drive paging files. Windows still uses placeholders to tell the OS where data is located in physical or virtual memory. Those placeholders can be used up/unreleased/misallocated and the OS will report that memory is low, inadequate more often than any lack of physical/virtual ram. If you really think this is affecting performance on your system there are several shareware programs that will release memory and resources.
Do you clean out the history? This may clog the memory as it really keeps track of everything, including file operations. In such cases PS may retain the memory footprint so it could replay any operations on the protocol more quickly. Beyond that I think the behavior is "as designed".
Ahhh, I thought that when you closed an image the history would ‘refresh’. Maybe not…that’s a good idea. Let me give it a try. It would be much easier than having to close the progam. Thanks! j.
From posts by Adobe people in the past. Once Photoshop claims memory it doesn’t release it until you exit the program. Opening an image and then closing it doesn’t release the memory.
From posts by Adobe people in the past. Once Photoshop claims memory it doesn’t release it until you exit the program. Opening an image and then closing it doesn’t release the memory.
Robert
And, if PS told Windows to release the memory, Windows might not until the program exits. Jim
It won’t use only 75%, either. It allocates (i.e. reserves) 75% at opening if prefs are set that way, but will use all the RAM that the system has available if necessary. That’s the reason you don’t set ridiculous memory allocations of 90-100% in prefs (unless you have more than 2GB of RAM, which is PS current maximum) – there’s no free RAM for the system to use after Ps launches in that case, so only virtual memory remains for the system and everything will slow or crash.
Once PS has used all available RAM (not only its allocated RAM), then it will start writing scratch – which is also set up and waiting at opening. I’m assuming PS was set up this way for initial speed – if it has RAM already allocated at opening it will not have to waste processor time calling for RAM.
It took me a while to get around the concept of all this, but I think I understand it now – it is in fact very well thought out for maximum speed and stability.
Once PS has used all available RAM (not only its allocated RAM), then it will start writing scratch
Not so anymore. From CS3, writing to scratch is a continuous background activity, starting the moment you open the file. Furthermore, the scratch file is dynamically updated the whole time. The net result is a huge speed increase, and it also means that RAM doesn’t have to be filled to capacity all the time if your scratch disc is operating efficiently.
One thing just occurred to me. I don’t know what "widget" you’re using, but if you’re watching Vista’s cached memory figures that’s not really meaningful in this context. That memory will be released in a snap if needed elsewhere. Ideally, Vista should not have "free memory" at all, if it’s operating at peak efficiency.
Actually, that’s what started the widget watch. The performance was slowing down bit by bit until I would get out (close) CS3 and re-open. That’s what made me suspect memory problems in the first place.
PS cannot ‘claim memory’ on its own, it makes a request to the OS for that amount of RAM. The OS allots memory usage. If an application could claim memory, then the OS would run out of memory very rapidly and topple over.
I hope I’m answering the question correctly…I have my memory allocation set at 70% and I don’t have a separate scratch disk. I could have though. Let me try setting up a separate scratch. Thanks everybody for all the suggestions. j.
Ohhhh, Fred, thanks! I didn’t understand that at all. So, if I have it set to 70% and I have 3g memory (all that my 32 bit op. sys will handle), it’s going to allocate the 70% and then go after whatever else it thinks it needs. But, on closing the image, doesn’t the application release that extra memory it doesn’t need anymore? I’ve been trying to be fairly scientific about my experiments and it seems that the memory usage starts to build on about the 12th image I process – before that it stays within range of 70% – and then as I process and close more images it just keeps growing. Finally, I shut down and restart, reopen the last image and it’s fine again for a while. Now I wonder if it isn’t Photoshop CS3 but the RAW processor that might be mucking up the works… Anyway, thanks for the explanation. j.
But, on closing the image, doesn’t the application release that extra memory it doesn’t need anymore?
No. It’s not supposed to. But it will be reused.
I still think it’s disk, not RAM.
The way Photoshop memory management works these days, the load shifts very gently and quietly from RAM to disk when memory runs out.
That’s why it’s so important to have an effective scratch disk configuration. Having it on the same drive as the Windows pagefile will slow things down after a while.
OK, I’m going to try decreasing my memory to 55% and creating more scratch space on another drive. This will take a while to test so I’ll get back to everybody if it works. In the meantime, thanks to everybody who contributed brain power to trying to solve my problem. J.
For any of you guys that are still interested in this, I tried the following: I decreased my memory to 55% and created a scratch space on my backup drive. This seemed to improve my processing quite a bit. Then I tried bumping my memory space back up to 70% and the processing time went down for the first few images and then started to decline (same problem). So I think I’ll leave it at 55%. Thanks again for all the suggestions and help! j.
