9 replies to this topic

[Greg]

I recently received about 200 (.TIF) files related to a project I'm working on for the city.

They were part of a large data package, so I have no idea what they are, but am hoping they are aerial tiles.

When trying to open them in Photoshop CS4 I get an out of memory error, even though I'm running 4GB ram on quad processor machine!

I cant seem to get them open with any of my other imaging software either.

Any suggestions?

[Hans van der Maarel]

How big are they? I've been able to open TIFF's up to 2 Gb in size (I think that is a hard limit actually) on a Windows box with 2 Gb of ram. Granted, it took half an hour, but it worked...

[François Goulet]

I had a similar problem a while back (wasn't "out of memory" thought), and it was because they were 24-bit TIFs. I converted them to 16-bit and it worked...

I'm running Photoshop 7.0 at work, so it could be the reason too...

[Greg]

They range anywhere from 2MB to about 850MB

But it looks like I have temporarily solved the problem.
I downloaded a free viewer called "IrfanView" which apparently will open anything. It worked!

I still cant export or resave the files from the viewer because of memory issues, but at least I can now view the content!

(they are huge scanned B&W municipal plans)

[Michael Schmeling]

Try ImageMagick (the 'convert' utility). It may be able to convert the images to something Photoshop can read.

[Greg]

Thanks Mike,

I just tried ImageMagick, but it wont read the files either. It says "invalid file format" which makes no sense because I can rename a JPG to .TXT or even .BLARGHHHHH and it will still open in most of my software. The extension is usually not the problem.

[Michael Schmeling]

The TIFF format has many options, and some are a bit exotic. Probably you have the bad luck that your files are exactly in one such exotic format, which is not implemented fully in the usual utilities.

If IrfanView can read the files, can you save at least one of the smaller ones in a different format?

I have a computer with 8GB RAM. If you want you can send me one of the larger files and I could try to convert it. PM me if you are interested.

[Nick H]

They range anywhere from 2MB to about 850MB

But it looks like I have temporarily solved the problem.
I downloaded a free viewer called "IrfanView" which apparently will open anything. It worked!

I still cant export or resave the files from the viewer because of memory issues, but at least I can now view the content!

(they are huge scanned B&W municipal plans)

Hi Greg, have you tried the batch conversion utility in Irfanview? Start Irfanview, don't load anything and then press the 'B' key. You can convert a directory of files like this, to the format of your choice. Probably best to do this with copies of your original files, I'd guess. Ticking 'Advanced options' will let you set a new colour depth, which should reduce the file sizes.

Regards,
Nick.

[Greg]

Thanks guys, I appreciate all the suggestions.

IrfanView will not export to any format.
Ive contacted the department that provided me with the files to see what they recommend.

[Nick H]

Just a thought. If you load one of the TIFFs into Irfanview and press the "I" key, what does this tell you about the image? The compression and so on.

Regards,
Nick.