Photoshop LE Limitations?

[rodc]

Okay, where do I start. I attempted to open a 220MB tiff in Photoshop 5 LE. It opened but gave a disk error 36 when I tried to convert to greyscale. I opened the file in PaintshopPro7 - no worries - converted to greyscale - no worries. I saved the file (now 80MB) and reopened in Photoshop. I can now duplicate layers and whatever else I wish to do?
Here's my question: If PaintshopPro handled the 220MB file so easily, is it treating the file information (pixel by pixel) with the same integrity as PhotoshopLE or was my original trouble BECAUSE it was Photoshop Limited Edition???
rodc

[etaf]

dont know paintshoppro very well - but are they both using the same drive for scatch space on the PC?

[Bodog]

I'm guessing that a file that large was a 16 bit tiff. You probably needed to convert to 8 bit before converting to greyscale. PSP 7 may have automatically done that. Just a guess?? Been awhile since I used LE. As I recall it would open 16 bit but that's all. :confused:

[rodc]

ETAF: I'm not sure what sscratch space is but there is only one drive so I guess - yes they are using the same drive for scratch space. (Is scratch space the use of the hard drive for 'virtual memory'?

BODOG: The image was an 8 bit - I re-opened in Photoshop.

[etaf]

Is scratch space the use of the hard drive for 'virtual memory' - yes, windows, needs space here and so does Photoshop. Not sure about LE, how LE set up space - so just wondered if you had seperate drives and photohop was set on a drive NOT C: and LE used see and was low in space that may be the problem.
whats you free space like

[rodc]

Free space is in the GB's however RAM = 512Mb....How does this affect the processing of a 220MB tiff file?

[PacAce]

Free space is in the GB's however RAM = 512Mb....How does this affect the processing of a 220MB tiff file?
Everything, I'm afraid. Photoshop uses Scratch disk space to hold all the data of the image(s) you are working on. This includes the image data itself, the history data, the layers data, etc. All these are kept on disk. PS uses the RAM as a cache to hold the data in memory while it is working on it or a portion of it if everything doesn't fit into memory.

There's a way to find out how much RAM is being used and how much of data is actually stored in scratch disk space. When you are working on an image, if you click on arrowhead on the lower left hand corner of the PS window, you will get a dropdown menu. Select "Scratch Sizes". When you do that, to the left of the arrowhead, you will see two numbers separated by a "/". The first number is the amount of RAM you are using for all the open images files and the second number tells you the amount of RAM that's actually allocated to PS. If the first number is bigger than the second number, then that means that only a portion of the data you're working on is actually resident in RAM since there's not enough RAM to fit everything in.

The amount of RAM allocated to PS is specified in the "Memory & Image Cache" panel of the Preferences window. This should be set so that both PS and the OS gets enough RAM to work as efficiently as possible. If you give PS too much RAM, then there may not be enough left over for the OS and other apps and this will lead to system thrashing (excessive accessing of the system swap files on disk as data is constantly moved back and forth from RAM to disk). If the reverse is true wherein PS isn't given enough RAM, then PS will end up thrashing data in and out of RAM and scratch disk space. A good starting point for PS RAM allocation is 50%. You can then tweak it from there.

[rodc]

Thank you All. I'm off to experiment and Tweak!
Rod