Photoshop Elements - Opening a 900 MB *.psd file - Program locking up?

she may not be able to print something that large. there are limitations on print file sizes. RAM is definitely a key issue here.

If you have a 32-bit OS, your max RAM is going to be 4GB regardless of what your motherboard can take. If you have a 64-bit OS, you can stuff your motherboard with RAM, but make sure it's all the same timing, and I would try to buy it all from the same manufacturer and get the same type if possible.

XP is going to take far less memory resources than vista or 7 (but its support is going to dry up in 2014).

it almost sounds like the picture resolution is 20,000x15,000, given 8bpp.

Go to Edit>Preferences>Performance You'll see the RAM you have available and the RAM reserved for PSE to use. You should have at least 1 Gb of RAM available for Elements to use. (I have 950 Mb and my Elements handles 1 Gb or bigger files just fine.) You'll also see the Scratch Disk space available. It's important with these big files to have a ton of scratch disk space available. I can't tell you how much exactly but think about how the scratch disk is used. It's where the tweaked versions of the image sit as edits are being added to it. Every tool, effect, style, etc. that's used is recorded there. When you Undo or look at the History Palette, you can go back a lot of steps and all these steps are sitting in the scratch disk space. If your mom has 20 or 30 Gbs of HD disk space available, I'd start off by defragmenting the hard disk. This will organize all the bits and pieces of programs and free up a solid chunk of disk space for Elements to use.

It's possible that RAM problems are at issue, although I don't think that's the case.

I mean, a 900MB file being loaded into memory is certainly possible (e.g. using virtual memory it becomes a certainty).

More likely, the file is just taking a long, long time to read into memory and scan so that all the elements are accessible. I mean, 900MB is a lot -- I can see it taking 60 to 90 seconds to load, and maybe longer if the program has to prep the file for manipulation or conversion.

When you say 'locking up' are we talking 30sec. or something like 5-10min?

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