Photoshop won't release RAM

[photoneil]

Hi everyone. I've always had a problem with Photoshop not releasing RAM when an image is closed or even flattened. Consequently, each action takes up more and more RAM until all my RAM is used up and the PC slows down to Scratch disk speed - very slow!

My only solution is to shut down Photoshop and open it up again. This does release the RAM!

This seems to have got worse since moving to CS2!

My typical images have many layers and are 100-400MB. I have 2.5GB of RAM of which my basic system uses 400MB. Photoshop tells me I have 1754MB available to use and I have set it to use 100% of the available.

With this and just 1 image open, I get to use Photshop for about 20 minutes before the RAM is all used up and I have to shut down and restart.

Can anyone help me understand this?

[bripriuk]

Hi

The recommended level for memory use is 50%, which should solve your problem.

Brian

[tombothetominator]

Yeah, you told photoshop to use all your memory, so it is doing just that; using all your memory. Just because you flatten an image doesn't mean that photoshop is going to release the memory. Like bripriuk said - set it to a lower percentage and you will be much happier.

[photoneil]

Hi guys. Thanks for the advice. I did what you said and reduced my RAM use % to 50%. I'm afraid it made no difference.

I started with only Photoshop open and a single RAW image. The RAM usage at that time was ~500MB. Within 20 minutes I had added 10 layers, mostly adjustment layers and the RAM usage had gone up to 2.3GB. That's when the scratch disk started to be used and the PC slowed right down.

I guess it is just using 50% of whatever RAM is left available!

I shut down the file with no change to RAM usage. The PC was still using the scratch disk. I then shut down Photoshop and the RAM usage went down to 400MB.

I reopened the image file which was now 400MB itself, and the PC was performing normally again.

I don't know of any other software application that doesn't release RAM that it has once used but no longer needs.

So I'm still stuck.

Cheers

Neil.

[tombothetominator]

what is your available ram showing in the memory usage pane? I'm betting it is more than your 2.5 GBs of physical ram, because you have a paging file setup as well. When your usage in PS goes to 2.3gb, go into the task manager - performance tab, and check out what your commit charge is, and what your available memory is.

How many separate physical hard disks do you have on your machine (not just different partitions of a single physical drive)? The reason i ask is that sometimes it is really beneficial to set the windows paging file (and photoshop scratch disks for that matter) to store on a drive other than the one that your programs are working off of.

[lewismayfield]

Bump

I have the same problem. It is maddening. I have 2 gigs of ram and have to do my PS work in short increments.