Memory problems 5.1 pro+ & 16 bit - workaround

[DMorgan]

Hello:

I'm trying to run neat image against a large panorama and can't get it to work in 16 bit.

In Photoshop Neat Image is greyed out unless I downsize the file to a small portion of the actual size. Run standalone I continually tget the error "Neat image cannot get free memory block...." The message will not go away unless I end neat image in task manager. Neat image is requesting 618,642,604 bytes which should not be a problem as I have 4GB of memory installed (3GB usable in XP 32bit). I have rebooted several times and tried running neat image alone, before any other programs have run. The only other wrinkle is that the PC is a dual opeteron system with the memory split between the two processors.

Is there anyway to get this to work?

Thanks
Doug Morgan

[DMorgan]

I should add that the pixel dimensions are 30,463 x 10,154.

Doug

[DMorgan]

As a PPS: The plug in will not work with the file, and is greyed-out, even if converted to 8bit. Standalone works with the 8 bit file only.

Doug

[Doug Morgan]

I guess I should have waited until I had really given up before posting, but here's a PPPS:

Standalone 8 bit fails as well. File loads fine, allows me to set everything up and then chokes with the same message. This time it wanted about half the memory as last time. Doesn't end without canceling the job in task manager. Nothing else running.

Please advise, thanks...
Doug Morgan

[NITeam]

I am afraid you are hitting the limitation of Windows itself. - It cannot provide more than 2GB of RAM to one application. A 30463x10154x16bit image is 1.8GB and there is also Photoshop and Neat Image in RAM.

In any case, I recommend to apply noise reduction before stitching panoramas because any stitching modifies camera noise. It is methodically correct to apply noise reduction before such transformations.

Hope this helps.
Vlad

[Doug Morgan]

There seems to be something else at work here, though. Neat Image won't work with an 8 bit image either, even if nothing else is running on the PC. The full size of the image in 8 bits is less than a gigabyte.

Doug

[NITeam]

Doug,

NI standalone needs to work with two images, the input and output, thus doubling the size of required memory and it again hits 2GB limit.

Vlad

[Doug Morgan]

Mostly out of curiousity, is this a virtual memory or real memory issue? In other words, if I only had 1 GB of physical memory would I be limited to file sizes less than 500MB? Does the XP /pae switch make any difference here?

Also, does Neat Image's memory space increase to 4GB under Win64? Or are there any plans to either allow usage of more memory with a newer windows version or possibly introduce some sort of paging scheme?

Thanks for your help...
Doug

[NITeam]

It is a Windows architecture limitation, not physical or virtual memory limitation. In 32-bit Windows, we are always limited by 2GB (3GB using a trick from Microsoft) of address space. The 64-bit Windows will be able to support much more memory and applications specially written for that Windows will be able to use more memory. Of course we will try to support that as well, in 64-bit Windows.

At the moment, you can resolve the trouble in two ways:
1) reduce noise in individual images before stitching the panorama;
2) use Neat Image plug-in in a PS action so that NI would process the image without opening the plug-in window, in this way the image size should not matter.

Vlad

[Guest]

After just going through this again, I thought I would post the easiest work around. I often find NI won't work as either a plug in or standalone for panoramas. I don't know why this solution didn't come to mind immediately, but hey, I'm an idiot:

In photoshop duplicate the document or merge up to a single layer and create two copies.

Use Canvas size and divide each document roughly in half -- pick an exact number of pixels for each side that adds to the total width-- don't use inches or percent! Select opposite sides to retain using the lower arrows, of course.

Use the NI plug in on one side, going through the whole process with the sample area, etc.

For the other side simply select neat image from the top of the filter menu to perform the exact same NI job.

In canvas size extend one document the pixel width of the other, move that side in, flatten or merge down, and viola!

This method obviously takes more time than simply NI'ing the whole thing at once but it works for virtually any size panorama. I guess it's either this or wait for windows XP64 to find some support. Unless of course NI learns to page to disk (hint, hint).

Note that for my purposes at least applying NI to the images before stitching is less desireable for a couple reasons: 1) I often don't know that I need it until I bring up the shadows. 2) It would be impossible to mask the effect to certain areas. 3) As stated above, I'm an idiot, and don't often plan ahead.

Happy holidays....
Doug Morgan

[NITeam]

A similar way of filtering the whole large image would be to crop a small piece of the large image into a new document, then to adjust and apply NI to this smaller image. Then simply use Ctrl-F (apply last filter) to the original large image. Neat Image will not open its window and will apply the same noise reduction to the whole large image in one pass.

Hope this helps.
Vlad

[Guest]

That works too -- thanks!

Fewer steps but seemed to take about the same amount of elapsed time, probably due to PS shuffling stuff in and out of memory. The PS file size is almost 10GB....

Doug