Radial Blur: Not Enough Memory (RAM) error

[Chad Bennett]

FYI - There appears to be an unknown limitation with the Radial Blur Filter and large files in that it produces a "...not enough memory (RAM)..." error message when you try to apply it (Photoshop 7.0.1 & 6.0.1). My file is 7250px X 4550px @ 200ppi, RGB. I tested on several Windows 2000 computers (SP2) and one Mac (OS9) and they all produced the same error. The best configuration I tested with was a dual P3-1GHz computer running Windows 2000 (SP3) and 2GB of RAM. I also followed the Optimizing Performance recommendations in the Support Knowledgebase Document 318243.

All the other Blur filters work as well as many other filters (every one I tested, that is). If I reduce the resolution of the file to 150ppi it drops under the limitation and the Radial Blur completes successfully.

I contacted Adobe Tech Support and they were able to reproduce the problem on both platforms and said that they would report it to software engineering.

I'm sharing this information because I've seen other posts about this in the archives and responses were to add more RAM or other clever optimizing methods (Photoshop can only address a maximum of 2GB of physical ram on Windows). I didn't want others going crazy as I was trying to figure it out. In short, it is a limitation of the filter which is related to the size of the image. You may be able to overcome the limitation by reducing the size of the image. But that is not always an option.

Good Luck.

[Chad Bennett]

FYI - There appears to be an unknown limitation with the Radial Blur Filter and large files in that it produces a "...not enough memory (RAM)..." error message when you try to apply it (Photoshop 7.0.1 & 6.0.1). My file is 7250px X 4550px @ 200ppi, RGB. I tested on several Windows 2000 computers (SP2) and one Mac (OS9) and they all produced the same error. The best configuration I tested with was a dual P3-1GHz computer running Windows 2000 (SP3) and 2GB of RAM. I also followed the Optimizing Performance recommendations in the Support Knowledgebase Document 318243.

All the other Blur filters work as well as many other filters (every one I tested, that is). If I reduce the resolution of the file to 150ppi it drops under the limitation and the Radial Blur completes successfully.

I contacted Adobe Tech Support and they were able to reproduce the problem on both platforms and said that they would report it to software engineering.

I'm sharing this information because I've seen other posts about this in the archives and responses were to add more RAM or other clever optimizing methods (Photoshop can only address a maximum of 2GB of physical ram on Windows). I didn't want others going crazy as I was trying to figure it out. In short, it is a limitation of the filter which is related to the size of the image. You may be able to overcome the limitation by reducing the size of the image. But that is not always an option.

Good Luck.

[Chad Bennett]

FYI - There appears to be an unknown limitation with the Radial Blur Filter and large files in that it produces a "...not enough memory (RAM)..." error message when you try to apply it (Photoshop 7.0.1 & 6.0.1). My file is 7250px X 4550px @ 200ppi, RGB. I tested on several Windows 2000 computers (SP2) and one Mac (OS9) and they all produced the same error. The best configuration I tested with was a dual P3-1GHz computer running Windows 2000 (SP3) and 2GB of RAM. I also followed the Optimizing Performance recommendations in the Support Knowledgebase Document 318243.

All the other Blur filters work as well as many other filters (every one I tested, that is). If I reduce the resolution of the file to 150ppi it drops under the limitation and the Radial Blur completes successfully.

I contacted Adobe Tech Support and they were able to reproduce the problem on both platforms and said that they would report it to software engineering.

I'm sharing this information because I've seen other posts about this in the archives and responses were to add more RAM or other clever optimizing methods (Photoshop can only address a maximum of 2GB of physical ram on Windows). I didn't want others going crazy as I was trying to figure it out. In short, it is a limitation of the filter which is related to the size of the image. You may be able to overcome the limitation by reducing the size of the image. But that is not always an option.

Good Luck.

[Chad Bennett]

Colin,

Sorry for the confusion. I did resample the image (Document size set to inches). So, after resampling down to 150ppi the pixel dimension became 5438px X 3413px.

[Thomas Madsen]

Chris Cox wrote:

> You'll probably need about 3 times the image size in RAM assigned
> to Photoshop to make it work.

The image size is 94,4 MB if the image is 7250px X 4550px @ 200ppi
(RGB, 8 bit per channel).
I have 1066 MB RAM assigned to Photoshop 7.01 and I still get the
"...not enough memory (RAM)..." error message if I try to apply
some radial blur to it.

--
Regards
Madsen.

[Ho]

>Yes, I'd like to fix it - but it needs some serious work....<<

So what are you doing between midnight and 4am anyway? While you're at it, give the Lighting Effects filter an overhaul too. Can you have these done by the end of the week? Great. I'll have more for you to do by then...

Oops, sorry Chris. I turned into my boss there for a minute.

[dave milbut]

Shh.. they're busy working on the Talent filter! :)

[ID. Awe]

Actually their working on the 'Fix Filter' filter.

[LenHewitt]

Chad,

The other workaround is to apply to one channel at a time.....sometimes you
can get away with that

[Trevor Morris]

The reason for this (my guess/my experience) is because radial blur effectively increases the size of the canvas in memory, and with extreme values, this can result in an image that is up to 9 times larger (left, right, top, bottom + diagonals = 9 times larger) than the original. You see, the pixels are spun or smeared outward and I'll bet that is done in memory without clipping at the canvas boundaries - even though the end result is only the size of the physical canvas. In your case, that means (if my theory is correct) an approximate 850MB file! Slap on history, scratch space and other applications running and your 2GB of memory runs out pretty quickly. Again, I want to emphasize that I am not certain that this is the issue, but only my best guess given similar experiences with this filter in the past.