How much RAM is enough for large format scans

bonk

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How much RAM would I need to comfortably scan 4x5 color negatives with
- up to 12000x9600px (as TIFF)
- SilverFast SE
- MacOS Ventura
- Epson Perfection v850 Pro scanner

and then thereafter comfortably retouch, edit it with Photoshop, Capture One, Affinity Photo.

Will 16GB suffice or do I really need 32GB for this workflow?
 
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M-88

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I've done 9600x6400 pixel (which is roughly half the image area you have specified) TIFF scans with Silverfast and Canon scanner. I would recommend 32 GB. Because while 16 GB will suffice for Silverfast, Photoshop could certainly use more memory.
 

TheFlyingCamera

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16 will work. More is better. Scanning at 2400dpi, a 4x5 image will generate a large file, but it won't choke the life out of your machine. Make sure you're not running anything else in the background though. On my old iMac with 16gb of RAM, it would take a long time to make that scan and save it. Trying to scan bigger negatives at that kind of resolution would make the software choke and I'd have to quit SilverFast and re-start my scanner, making sure nothing else was running in the background. Now, I have an iMac Pro with the Xeon chip and 64gb of RAM, and I can scan an 8x10 negative at 2400dpi while I have ten other large files open in Photoshop, AND I'm watching a video on YouTube.
 

Steven Lee

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I have a 64GB machine, here are some numbers:

Right now I have the latest Photoshop open with approx 12,000x9,000px 4x5 scan open in it, with half a dozen of adjustment layers including two raster layers. Task Manager is reporting that Photoshop consumed 6.2GB of RAM. I have a few other things running and the overall memory consumption is 11.7Gb

So... while technically it appears that a 16GB should be enough, in reality I would recommend 32GB - 64GB because you probably want to have several scans open at the same time, and perhaps have something else (also heavy) also running in the background, perhaps Silverfast.
 

Adrian Bacon

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a 12000x9600 pixel 48 bit full color TIFF file would consume just under 700MB of ram if fully loaded into memory.

12000x9600 = 115200000 pixels.
48 / 8 = 6 bytes per pixel.
115200000 x 6 = 691200000 bytes.
691200000 / 1024 / 1024 = 659.1796875 MB for the TIFF file saved on disk and loaded in RAM.
 

destroya

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not sure about retouching, the more the better. but for scanning, I am using my real old win XP machine with 2 gig ram that has a SCSI card along with a flextight III for all my 4x5 and have no issues scanning them. I move all the scans to a modern machine for post.

john
 

juan

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I made a lot of scans back when 16GB was considered a lot. So it’s possible, but slow. Be sure to unplug your computer from the internet to eliminate the possibility of a background process ruining things. More would be much better.
 

Alan Edward Klein

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What if you add a video program later on? Allow for expansion. If you insist on only 16GB now, probably acceptable, make sure you can add more memory in the future and have the chassis slots unavailable.
 

GLS

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I use my A7RIV in pixel-shift mode to digitise my 4x5 sheets. The resulting files have a resolution of ~ 190 megapixels.

My PC has 32 GB of RAM and an i7 4790K CPU running at 4 GHz. I can work on images at this resolution with multiple layers and it handles it OK, even when the PSB files get very large (5+ GB each). 64 GB would probably be better, but not essential.
 

SteveInConverse

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Hmmm, I might have an issue maybe. I have 32gb of RAM and my processor is 4ghz. I'm running windows 10. I plan to scan in the 2600dpi range for testing my scanner. I can shut off internet and other processes as needed. Would all this be sufficient?
 

koraks

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Yes. If things turn out to be slow, you can always upgrade. Also, no need to turn off internet; it's not going to make any meaningful difference. Well, apart from yourself being distracted perhaps
 

SteveInConverse

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koraks said:
Yes. If things turn out to be slow, you can always upgrade. Also, no need to turn off internet; it's not going to make any meaningful difference. Well, apart from yourself being distracted perhaps
Click to expand...

Ah ok. Upgrading is not possible for me at this time. I'm maxed out on this machine and it's a bit long in the tooth, on it's 2nd MB etc. I run LR and PS without issue which is nice.
 

wiltw

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I do not know if this applies with certainty to the design of your scanning software, but software is written so that 'virtual memory' can be used, where RAM is paged in/out of harddrive (or solid state) memory when more RAM memory space is being used than is available.
 

juan

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it Should work just fine. Maybe a bit slow, but I have scanned with far less RAM. I always turn off the internet for big jobs because Microsoft has a way of deciding to download updates when it wants and slows what you‘re are trying to do.
 

SteveInConverse

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juan said:
it Should work just fine. Maybe a bit slow, but I have scanned with far less RAM. I always turn off the internet for big jobs because Microsoft has a way of deciding to download updates when it wants and slows what you‘re are trying to do.
Click to expand...

Scanned a bit last night trying to learn Vuescan and it seems fast enough. Just have to learn a good process for the workflow.
 

jp498

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I use an old Lenovo X240 laptop with 8GB ram and Windows 10 for scanning with the Epson software.
Editing: custom gaming style Ryzen 5 with 32GB ram, GPU, Windows 10, photoshop, LR, etc... 32GB is fine. 64 is not much more $ though on a PC.
 

SteveInConverse

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So.... VUESCAN, HPG4050 and my Win10 machine are not getting along, so loaded it up to an older Lenovo Win 7 machine and it appears to function better. Speed of the scanning seems fine (for me) and now I just need to work on workflow and post process.
 
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