Excessive RAM usage , version X6

[zhunter71]

I am using Paintshop pro X6 and it seems very power hungry to me, i have just saved a file that is 124MB in size, and although it only took about 30 seconds, during this time the RAM usage was as shown on the attached, 9.7GB!!

I have only just yesterday had a new processor and more RAM fitted, i now have a 4.7 MhZ processor and 16GB in RAM, running Windows 7 Home

earlier this week , i had a processor at 3 MHz and 8 GB of RAM and this same file took 23 minutes to save! and used around 6.1 GB of RAM throughout so my PC was useless and almost frozen for the entire time!

I dont remember the JASC version of PSP being so power hungry, has anyone else had PSP using huge amounts of RAM like this? and is there any solution to prevent it using so much?

thanks

[hartpaul]

What type of file? I ask because if it was a jpg file then it would have large pixel dimensions, if a bitmap or tif then not so large.
Just set up a 144 Mb tif file 11232 x 7488 pixels and it used about 22 % CPU in PSP X6 taking about 20 seconds to save.
In Photoshop it took about 19% CPU and about 15seconds.

[zhunter71]

yes it was a JPEG. but it still seems an excessive use of RAM doesnt it?

[LeviFiction]

What are the dimensions of the image? I mean it does depend on a lot, if that's 124MB compressed beyond a level of 1 then it's bound to be huge. Also Jasc's version was a 32-bit program and capable of only 3-4GB of RAM anyway. This could potentially be too much but it depends on a lot. 1) Size of the image 2) number of layers 3) number of steps (it's an undo limited only by your available RAM, the more steps on a large image, the more memory needed to keep all of those steps in memory)

[Forriner]

yes it was a JPEG. but it still seems an excessive use of RAM doesnt it?

I agree, theoretically. What are the dimensions of your image in pixels?

I use PSP X7
I opened a JPEG panorama of mine, dimensions 51,106 × 4,914 pixels, total 251,134,884 pixels, say ~251 Mpix.
According to the task manager, at 8 bits per channel (JPEG) memory usage for PSP X7 was ~825MB .

I converted that image to 16 bits per channel:
According to the task manager, at 16 bits per channel memory usage for PSP was 1,546MB . or ~1.5GB with no editing (undo info).

While saving that file as JPEG, so PSP had to reduce the colour depth back to 8 bits/channel, memory usage went to 2.2GB for a second.

So I would say that unless your image was a bit bigger than mine those 9.7GB would seem a bit much, but without more info it's impossible to say.

You can find the memory usage for the image itself in PSP with shift+i, menu Image/Image information... the Image Information tab.
The Task Manager info is PSP.exe plus images etc.

So, what were the pixel dimensions?
Was this the only image you had open?
Had you done a lot of editing (undo info)?
How much memory is used for PSP in the Task Manager before opening that image, during editing, saving and after closing it. (Does PSP give most of the memory back to the system?)

Edit to ask: how had I not seen LeviFiction's reply? I could swear it wasn't there when I started. And I wasn't typing for almost two hours

[brucet]

I've had similar issues. But it's not the image as such.
I have PSPx8 installed on two laptops. An old i3 running Win7 with 4 gig of ram. And a newer i5 laptop running Win 8.1. 8 gig of ram.
Preferences in PSP are set exactly the same on both computers.
A 150meg tiff saves in about 3 seconds on the old i3 machine.
The exact same image takes approx 10+ seconds on the newer laptop.
I ended up giving up trying to find a solution. I'm sure it has more to do with how PSP talks to your computer than the file type itself.

By the way. On the i5 laptop the tiff takes 10+ seconds to save in PSP but it takes less than 2 seconds to save in Photoline. Point being that it's not the file. It's not the computer. As I said it's how PSP is talking to your computer.

regards

[zhunter71]

in answer to some of the questions above

So, what were the pixel dimensions? 14758 x 10437, so 154 Mpix, so smaller than the 251 Mpix mentioned above

Was this the only image you had open? Yes

Had you done a lot of editing (undo info)? drew one small line

How much memory is used for PSP in the Task Manager before opening that image, during editing, saving and after closing it. (Does PSP give most of the memory back to the system?) 94 MB

Just opening the image and doing nothing else, the RAM usage sits at 5.6GB with the image just sat on the screen and nothing else


if it is how PSP talks to my PC, can i change that so it doesnt guzzle as much RAM? will updating to a newer version, maybe X8 make any difference?

the image is being saved in .psp format to retain the layer info

[hartpaul]

Just opening the image and doing nothing else, the RAM usage sits at 5.6GB with the image just sat on the screen and nothing else

In My case with X6 32 bit I get 488 - 494 MB and with X9 521 MB no where near your 5.6 GB (5600MB ).
So it looks like there is something seriously wrong with your system and PSP X6

[zhunter71]

and any ideas what that could be to cause that? Hard Drive problem maybe? its a new processor so cant be that and the RAM is all working fine

[zhunter71]

just for information as well, i have installed and tried PSP X8, and opened the same file up as mentioned above, and got exactly the same RAM usage at 5.6 GB with the image just sat there

[zhunter71]

one more update, the file i was working on was in .psp format and thats the one that was using 5.6GB in RAM, iv'e just saved it as a single layer JPEG, and opened that, and this is using only 548 MB in RAM!

So it appears to be the .psp format. Does anyone know of another format i can try that will retain layer information and quality ? thanks!

[zhunter71]

update, i have tried saving as a different format to retain layers,

the .psp file was 124MB in size and used 5.6GB in RAM just to open and have on the screen

i saved the background layer, which had the basic information on as a JPEG, then opened that up, i added back in the same 6 layers that the .psp file had and saved that as a .psd (Photoshop) file

It increased the file in size from 124MB to 144MB, but when opened it only uses 1.6GB! 4GB less than the .psp file, so the lesson for me going forward is never use .psp file formats! use .psd!

[brucet]

FYI. I just opened PSPx8 on my i5 laptop. (8gig ram).
Opened a 6000*4000 16 bit tiff and saved it as a PSPImage file. Task manager showed 214.1 ram used.
I duplicated the layer. Saved it. Task manager showed 543.8.
I then added an adjustment layer. Task manager showed 567.8.
It was now a 410meg file.

So what's it all mean? I have no idea. But your initial reading is high!!!!
Are you sure PSP is not building a data base or such on new folders/files somewhere.

Maybe the 'technical' gurus here have a better answer. But it seems a computer conflict somewhere or PSP performing something in the background.

regards