I am turning to this forum to maybe find a solution regarding PSD marketing files that we use from a certain game provider at my place of work.
Just to let you know, our manager has already contacted them directly about the problem and they insist there is nothing wrong with their files.
The issue I am having with them is that anytime that I have to use their files, the PC nearly comes to a standstill, everything becomes very slow/freezes and what normally takes me 15-20mins will be 4-5 times that long. We use more than 10 providers which all provide the marketing files to advertise their games but this is the only provider which gives us these problems.
I have tried the following:
Rasterizing all the layers in the PSD
Closing any additional software and leaving only Photoshop open
Increased the memory usage and reduced the history states in Photoshop
This improves the process but still, moving layers from one window to another is super slow and when saving it also takes very long compared to other providers.
The main thing that I can see that is happening is that it uses up all the RAM but what I can’t understand is why only their files are doing so.
These are my PC specs:
Intel Core i5-6400 @ 2.70GHz
16GB RAM
Solid State Drive
NVIDIA GTX 1060 3GB
Windows 10 Pro
My colleague also has similar specs and also has the same exact issues with this provider.
What do you think can be wrong with these PSD files and if I can try something to solve the problem? I can also share a PSD file here for further inspection.
They may have unnecessary graphics hidden and bleeding off the canvas on multiple layers and that’s driving up the file size and contributing to the slowdown. If they paste things on to layers and don’t crop the layer afterwards, the file size can become monstrous. I’d suggest making a copy of the file, note the file size, then start on the top layer, do Select > All, then Image > Crop. Then repeat and do that same thing on each of the other layers. Then save and note the new file size, which will probably be lower. Maybe much lower. Maybe manageable.
If that doesn’t help, I’d start deleting layers one by one, saving after each delete and noting the new file size each time. And keep checking the performance to see if the absence of one of those layers improves things. It might be a hang up with layer masks or clipping masks, if those are things they are including.
I downloaded the file and opened it on my Mac with 16GB of RAM. It’s a big file, but it opened just fine and I could work on it with no slowdowns. I’m running Photoshop v. 22.5.2.
There does seem to be something wonky about the file that I can’t explain. A 1920x1280-pixel file should not weigh in at 350 MB, yet it does. One of the first things I checked was the bit depth, and it’s a standard 8 bits per channel.
When I flatten the three layers and converted the file to grayscale, it still weighed in at well over 300 MB. This file is ten times larger than it should be, and I don’t know why. It’s full of some kind of data taking up space, but I don’t have a clue what it is.
This script will remove the photoshop:DocumentAncestors metadata from an open file. To automate this task, one can use the Photoshop “Script Events Manager”. The script will be triggered on key events such as Opening or Saving a document. Running the script via the Script Events Manager automates the process of removing this metadata (File > Scripts > Script Events Manager). I am not aware of a method to “threshold” the removal at a specific number of entries, all of the photoshop:DocumentAncestors metadata will be removed, whether potentially useful or excessive! Use at your own risk.
There’s more ways in that link.
There is an issue with Photoshop PSDs which can cause bloating.
It’s explained in the links.
Interesting. That’s something I’d had never heard about before, but it explains the gigantic file size. Nice work tracking it down and figuring it out!
I knew there had to be something wrong that I cannot see because it wasn’t making sense. @Smurf2 I downloaded the file and it works smoothly, file size totally decreased and I think you have solved our issue.
Thanks all for the help, and thanks @Smurf2 you have saved us a lot of hours of work!
