Help - I have run out of RAM

[mfodrini]

I am working on a scrapbook page. I have background paper, 4 pictures and some embellishments and have been saving as I go. All of a sudden I couldn't save anymore and it said I had run out of memory. I have 896 MB of RAM, so that should be plenty, shouldn't it? I tried closing all other programs, rebooted and I still have the same problem. Is this page salvabeable?

[Ward Grant]

Welcome to the forum,

I wonder if it is hard disk memory and not RAM; I think the 896 should be well within the system specs.

I am assuming a Windows unit so try Start>MyComputer then Right Click on your C:\ drive. It should show how much free and used memory you have. Make a note and then look at the file in Windows Explorer and see how large the file is. If you are tight on free memory and the file is large, this might be the problem. If you can post the numbers, it might help us see what is going on.

Since you have been saving as you go (Yeah!), you should have a file that will have the majority of your work.

[mfodrini]

My computer shows that my C drive has 47.9 GB used space and 180 GB free space. My document is 124.6 MB, 3600 x 3600.

[mfodrini]

One more thing - the file seemed to start having problems when I wanted to add one more text box.

[TonyW]

When it's about to have problems take a look in Help>Sytem Info and see how much free memory it shows as being left and the percent that's used by Photoshop. You might be surprised at how little remains - you can usually safely increase the % available to Photoshop to 75%, You do it in Preferences. In System Info you can also see how much scratch volume you have free (space on your hard drive that's available for Photoshop to use when it runs low on RAM)

Tony

[mfodrini]

Thanks for the info, but I can't find in my preferences where to change the % in Photoshop to 75%. Also in my Help>System Info, it doesn't specify how much memory is actually used by Photoshop. It says Built-in Memory 896 MB, Free Memory 393.7 MB.

[mom to 4]

Thank God you guys are here for us!

[TonyW]

You change it in the Memory and Image Cache Tab of Preferences. It should look something like this (mine is PSE5).

502

I don't think it actually tells you how much is used - just how much is left although you can work it out by difference. But by the time you have the Editor, Organizer and a file open with lots of layers it can be a lot.

Tony

Colleen :D :D

[msbrad]

Ditto Colleen!

I do rely heavily on the experts around here. I know where my knowledge limits are, and often my husband gets tired of my questions.
m

[TonyW]

I found where you can see how much is used and available - in PSE5 it's in the scratch sizes at the bottom left (Can't remember if it was the same in previous versions). First number is how much RAM is being used (I had 2 psd files open), second is how much is available. I have 2GB of RAM of which 400MB is doing other stuff leaving 1600MB for Elements and I have 55% allocated which is why it shows 892MB available. These days you can never have enough RAM :)

503

Tony

[Jodi Frye]

Also a disc defrag may be in order...Elements and Photoshop needs room (free space) between the contiguous and fragmented files to squiggle around and do it's thing.

Start>Right click ' My Computer ' and choose ' manage'>storage>disc defragmenter...use the ' Analyze' button...system will tell you if it needs to be done. Altho I don't always rely on what XP tells me...if it's got alot of thick red bars (fragmented files) and not much 'white space' which is free space then i do it anyways.

[Tracker]

Thanks very much Jodi for the suggestion. I am now fully defragmented and in my "high tech" terms I got a lot more big white spaces than before:D :D

[Jodi Frye]

Ah yes, white space is good :) Hope it helps...

PS, mine needs to be done too but will wait t'il just before bed...no telling how long this one will take :rolleyes:

[Tracker]

Yup, mine took about 1/2 hour. It has never been done before on this 3 year old machine:o . Now , if there is a Doctor in the house that could defragment MY brain:) :) . Thanks again

[johnfranklin]

I am working on a scrapbook page. I have background paper, 4 pictures and some embellishments and have been saving as I go. All of a sudden I couldn't save anymore and it said I had run out of memory. I have 896 MB of RAM, so that should be plenty, shouldn't it? I tried closing all other programs, rebooted and I still have the same problem. Is this page salvabeable? First and foremost when you duplicate a layer you add the original file size to the new file size. When you are working on a large project try to find groups of layers you can safely merge (done editing,best I can do ,pick a reason) leave only these layers visible and use the merge visible command: layers dropdown or shift>control>E . This applies itself perfectly to scrapbooking projects. Second if you are using windows XP familiarize yourself with the task manager(summon with cntl>alt>delete then click on processes, at the top, second tab) there are several processes that you can safely end to borrow some extra RAM. Most notably the yahoo tray icon,messenger, pager, and browser, plus the anti-virus. Please shut off your modem when you kill the AV! Third, there are many apps. which load at start-up. The free Anti-spyware application Spybot SD14 has a section in it's tools which tells you apps are loading & running at start-up and what they are for. Simply uncheck the ones spybot and you agree you don't need and they are prevented from loading. You can probably free up an extra 50 to 100 megs of RAM using these methods. I possess enough foolish bravado not to do this but save well and often.

[SenorSlick]

The page is very possibly salvageable. If you are actually out of ram I would first do a complete defrag of the drive....I would also do a ctrl alt delete and drop out (close) any non-essentials, further I would do a start-msconfig and have some non-essential programs not start up when you boot up. All of these will free up ram.... Good luck.

[johnfranklin]

The page is very possibly salvageable. If you are actually out of ram I would first do a complete defrag of the drive....I would also do a ctrl alt delete and drop out (close) any non-essentials, further I would do a start-msconfig and have some non-essential programs not start up when you boot up. All of these will free up ram.... Good luck. It is my understanding that the sole purpose of RAM is to perform current operations in the electronic ether and NOT resort to permanant storage, sufficient RAM = not having to use virtual RAM (the swap file, which does actually exist on the hard drive) There is a current school of thought that with current HDD technology, DMA & SATA, the read write capability is at such a speed where defragging either doesn't matter much or matter at all. better to keep the drive clean (free up space) than organized. I believe I covered the task manager and startup issues in my just prior, somewhat verbose, posting. If you use the Spybot SD14 app and not msconfig to kill the unnessary startup apps you get a free worthwhile anti-malware app as a bonus. Por favor Senor Suave, leelo (la oracion de mio) y digame lo que' usted piensa.

[nshivers]

Hey--I'm a couple days late on this forum, but I was hoping that someone could help. I'm receiving an "out of memory" error when I try to open the organizer--I can get into the editor just fine. I've cleaned up everything and should have sufficient memory (changed preferences in editor to use 75%) but how can I get into the organizer to change preferences there? Please tell me I can do something other than add more RAM (already have 1G)--I have clients waiting on photos! :eek:

[rediger]

Does anyone know were to look to see how much memory I am using or have left on a MAC? I am new to macs and can't find it.
Thanks, Melissa

[Wendy]

Hi Melissa ...

Try this ...

Somewhere you should have a utility called Activity Monitor ... it maybe in Applications. Open that up and you will be able to see your current usage.

If you can't find it just do Command F and do a search that way :)

By the way what memory do you have installed ...

Wendy

[rediger]

Thanks Wendy for pointing that our to me. It says Space utilized 64.90 GB Space Free 83.83 I just took it to the apple store and had them put in a gig of RAM. This is a totally syupid question, but is this a lot of space that I have left? I have been downloading a lot of products for digital scrapbooking and don't get all the MB, GB memory stuff.
Thanks so much!

[Wendy]

Hi Melissa ...

Lets try explaining it simply ...

When you download things to your computer they take up some of the space on your computer hard disk ... so installing Elements and storing scrapbooking papers just use up some of your disk space.

However ... when you open up something like Elements and start using it then needs memory to actually run the program.

With 1GB of memory you should really be OK ... so donlt worry about it :)

Wendy

[johnfranklin]

Thanks Wendy for pointing that our to me. It says Space utilized 64.90 GB Space Free 83.83 I just took it to the apple store and had them put in a gig of RAM. This is a totally syupid question, but is this a lot of space that I have left? I have been downloading a lot of products for digital scrapbooking and don't get all the MB, GB memory stuff.
Thanks so much!Rediger, you're slightly off target in that you're comparing apples to oranges. The utilized space / free space 64/ 83 GB numbers are refering themselves to the hard drives capacity. RAM, is Random Acess Memory which is purely electronic storage and calculating area (current operations). I don't know the exact terminology with the MAC, but in windows you summon the task manager CNTRL,ALT,DELETE click on the "performance" tab or the "processes" and see exactly how much how much RAM is being used and who's using it. Pehaps Wendy can direct you to the Mac equivalent of these areas. With the windows task manager you can kill unnecessary processes, yahoo pagers and such nonsense which are are set to load at startup and eat system resources. I'm sure the the guys at Apple have thought of all this, I simply don't know what to tell you to click on or what to call it. Any applications you kill while you're working will reload at re-boot and all will be as it was

[Wendy]

John ..

I have already given Melissa a link to the Activity Monitor on the Mac ... that monitors memory usage too. However as she really didn't understand I decided to explain it in fairly simple general terms instead ...

Wendy