Small File Yet Not Enough Ram to Open?

[Paul I]

I have a small psd that worked fine in Photoshop Elements and in Premiere yesterday. Windows system. Now it won't open in either. I'm getting a message in Photoshop Elements that says the file could not be opened because there is not enough memory (RAM). I checked preferences and it says available RAM is 474,409K. The file is only around 400K. Any ideas?

[Richard Coencas]

Paul,

Try deleting prefs first.

Rich

[Paul I]

Thanks Rich. Tried that, by holding down Control/Alt/Shift at the same time. Still no luck. Perhaps I should manually delete the prefs? Do you know where they are? Any other ideas?

[Richard Coencas]

Paul,

Exact location of prefs varies by OS. The readme in the application folder has more details. Or if you let me know your particular OS I can point you in the right direction.

The macro (ctrl-alt-shift) is kind of tricky on timing, but once you learn to use it is is very handy. You have to kind of poise your fingers over the keys while you click the app shortcut, and then push them down immediately after launch, but before the splash screen comes up.

Rich

[Paul I]

Rich--the OS is XP Pro. Thanks.

[Richard Coencas]

They are in C:\documents and settings\username\application data\adobe\...
Where C is your hard drive and username is the user who installed elements. You may also have to show hidden files in the Windows Explorer window to se the application data folder. Just delete the content of the folder I indicated. New prefs will be generated next time you run Elements.

Rich

[Peter Duniho]

"Paul I" <pissler@socal.rr.com> wrote in message
news:2ccd3ecd.-1@webx.la2eafNXanI...

> I have a small psd that worked fine in Photoshop Elements
> and in Premiere yesterday. Windows system. Now it won't
> open in either. I'm getting a message in Photoshop Elements
> that says the file could not be opened because there is not
> enough memory (RAM). I checked preferences and it says
> available RAM is 474,409K. The file is only around 400K.
> Any ideas?

My experience has been that many software developers have "dumbed down"
their error messages (for fear of confusing users, I guess, though I think
it has the opposite effect) and that, when trying to open a file, many other
kinds of errors are simply reported as "not enough memory".

As you've already guessed, you probably have plenty of memory. I think it's
more likely that there's something wrong with the file, unfortunately. To
give Adobe the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that the file is corrupt
in a way that makes Elements think it needs WAY more memory than it really
does.

Did anything happen that you can think of between the last time you were
able to open the file and the first time you weren't? Maybe the power went
out, or the computer otherwise had an abnormal reset? Something that might
have corrupted the data on your files.

Hopefully resetting your preferences will do the trick. But if you can
still open other .PSD files, just not this one, I think it's likely it
won't. I hope the file you're trying to open either has a backup somewhere,
or wasn't that hard to make.

Pete