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Trouble report 70

Out of memory when stitching large images

Versions affected

All.

Description

I shoot double wide 35mm negs (Xpan) and scan them at 4000 dpi. This givees me ~115 meg files. I can stich then in Photovista but not in Panorama factory. I'm using the defaults is there some thing I'm missing?

I'm running windows ME on a 75 meg board with a 8 and 1.2 g drive.

Photo vistas stiched image is ~190-200 meg.

What kind of limits does your software have on file size?

Workaround

None.

Status

The image size limit seems to depend on which version of Windows you are running.   The limit is one imposed by Windows 98 on the maximum single memory (RAM) allocation.  The Panorama Factory is designed to store images in a single memory block and so it bumps into this Windows limit.

I cannot blame this completely on PF or on Windows.  Although this is a Windows limit, PF could have been designed to work around the Windows limit by breaking up large images into smaller "tiles."  Unfortunately, the cost
of retrofitting a change like this is prohibitive at this time.

So anyway, here's the answer as best as I can understand it:

WINDOWS 98 and WINDOWS ME

It appears that under Windows 98, The Panorama Factory has the following limits (Windows ME is probably the same as Windows 98):

  1. Maximum image size for 48-bit images -- approximately 44 million pixels (approximately 254 MB).
  2. Maximum image size for 24-bit images -- approximately 67 million pixels (approximately 254 MB).
  3. Maximum image output from the resize command for both formats -- approximately 44 million pixels.  (The limit on the resize command is imposed by intermediate storage used during the resizing function).

WINDOWS NT and WINDOWS 2000

The limit is higher under Windows 2000 (Windows NT is probably the same as Windows 2000):

  1. Maximum image size for 48-bit images -- approximately 162 million pixels (approximately 930 MB).
  2. Maximum image size for 24-bit images -- approximately 244 million pixels (approximately 930 MB).
  3. Maximum image output from the resize command for both formats -- approximately 162 million pixels.

You can check whether you are using using 48-bit mode (also called 45-bit mode) or 24-bit mode in the Project properties dialog (File menu).

If you are willing to use 24-bit images (you can change this in the Project properties dialog), you'll be able to stitch images that are half-again as large as you can stitch in 48-bit mode.  But you'll lose the ability to use the Color tool.

If you are willing to convert to Windows 2000 you'll be able to stitch images that are approximately 4 times as large as you can stitch in Windows 95 / 98 / ME.


Revised: January 29, 2008

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