Panorama with PS Elements 1.0 Help needed.

07/30/2003 06:44:42 PM · #1

I'm trying to make a Panorama from four 2560 X 1920 photos. I plan on using DPCPrints to get it printed out 12 X 36 so I need to make good use of all available pixels. The problem is that unless I start off using only 25% of the originals, I run out of RAM. My system has 256meg which seems like it should be enough. Am I missing something?

Thanks,
Roger

medic391

Canon PowerShot SX20 IS

07/30/2003 06:50:59 PM · #2

the first thing i would do would be to exit out of all the little icons by the clock in the lower right corner of your desk top. right click on each one and look for exit or disable. this should free up some of your ram. if your computer is always on, reboot. some programs stay in memory even after you close them.....i hope this helps

bod

07/30/2003 06:55:21 PM · #3

Also make sure you have plenty of free space on the disk partition with your windows swap file on it (C drive if you haven't changed it).

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM

07/30/2003 06:58:32 PM · #4

meddic391,
Thanks for the advice but I already tried that. I'm getting the same error when I try just two full-sized photos. Will work at 75% though. Any other ideas out there?

medic391

Canon PowerShot SX20 IS

07/30/2003 09:41:06 PM · #5

you could try to increase the size of your swap file. the swap file is a section of your hard drive set aside by the o/s to act as memory. the problem with playing with the swap file is it's dangerous. you run the risk of not being able to reboot. a safer route would be to get another 256mb stick of ram and popping it in. also keep in mind that i am not familiar with the program you are using. there could be a way to solve your memory problem in there.

cpanaioti

Canon EOS-40D

07/30/2003 09:58:15 PM · #6

I have my hard drive partitioned and have a separate partition as the scratch disk. The size of the separate partition is 1.47 GB.

What is your photoshop usage set at in the properties (under edit)? I have photoshop RAM set at 50% of available RAM. I've read that this percentage should not be set over 75%. You might be able to play with this value and the size of your scratch disk to obtain an optimum setup for your machine.

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS

07/30/2003 10:11:38 PM · #7

Roger,

1.) What OS are you running?

2.) Are the photos TIF or JPG?

Try and look at your available system resources when all programs are closed, then open photoshop, look again, etc. 256M SHOULD be enough, though I will bet it will page like crazy!
If you are running XP, do ctrl-alt-del and when task manager opens click on the "performance" tab, look under "Physical Memory". You can monitor as you open stuff.
I am running XP, until recently with 512MB, I've stitched as many as five photos without any paging. No experience trying it with 256, though...

Fritz

cpanaioti

Canon EOS-40D

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM

07/30/2003 10:48:21 PM · #8

TIFF or JPEG doesn't matter once the file is opened since the files are uncompressed to edit.

I have two copies of the same image, one jpg and one tiff. On disk they are 115K and 794K respectively. When opened in photoshop they are both 791K.

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

07/31/2003 01:29:12 AM · #9

Thanks to everyone for the help. I ended up setting the Photoshop RAM available to 90%. This allowed me to open three photos, the forth photo didnâ��t add very much anyway.
Looks like the real fix is to by some more memory. By the way I tried this on my home system running Windows 98 and my work system running Windows XP with similar results. Both systems currently have 256 Meg of RAM.

I wonder if I can get my boss to spring for some more memory???

vjoz

Canon EOS-10D

07/31/2003 06:36:55 AM · #10

Have you checked out the Visual memory settings in windows?

If you right-click on "my compter" and then "properties", click the "advanced" tab and check the settings on "Performance"...

It's odd if you cant open 4 images in PS elements...

v. - No "Ã¶"'s here, I'm lucky, i'm tired in my elbows.

edit: I've got no problems opening plenty of pics, This should be some memory settings problem...

good luck

Message edited by author 2003-07-31 06:39:33.

Gordon

RIM BlackBerry Curve

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

07/31/2003 06:44:11 AM · #11

You can get Photoshop to report different file sizes (current file, scratch size etc) in the status bar. There should be a menu dropdown there that lets you see more about what is going on. Not sure if elements has this.

Undo/ history things take up a great deal of memory. Purging the histories can free up a lot of memory, as can reducing the number of steps that you save undo information for (should be in the preferences)

Probably the least painful solution is to buy some more memory, but I see you mentioned it was a work machine.

Another approach that might work is to stitch two of the pictures together, close the result, and stitch the other two together and then combine it all in one final slow step.

If that doesn't work, crop the pictures to just the overlapping areas and work on those, then layer than on top of the final versions - work on as small an amount of data at a time as you can.