Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 4/6/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi Kevin,

I hope you can help me.  I just freshly installed CS3 on an upgraded quad core with 3 gigs of ram.

When opening files with lots of anchor points or complicated files, i would get a series of different problems.  Everyone is reporting different errors everytime.

"Not enough memory to load the TIFF file."
"Can't finish previewing. Could not complete the requested operation."
"The operation could not complete because there isn't enough memory (RAM) available."

Please help!!

Thanks,

John


ANSWER: Hi John,

What operating system are you running?

Thanks

Kevin

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Kevin,

We are using Windows XP SP3.
This is happening on Illustrator CS3.

I called adobe support but they are saying that "the file got corrupted." But how can this be that different files keep getting corrupted.

The particular case that I was looking at was, when they open the file it will be in "outline mode".  When they try to change to "preview mode" they'll get "Can't finish previewing. Could not complete the requested operation."

The person said it was working fine and she'd be switching back and forth from preview to outline mode then all of a sudden while doing a switch, it will give an error and next time she opens it, it'll give her that problem.

Are they incorrectly saving these?
I tried:
- deleting the AIPrefs
- deleting the whole CS3 Preference folder
- Under Preferences > File Handling > unchecked Version Cue
- Scratch disk on D:\ 300+gig free

Confused.....

John

ANSWER: Wow John,

You went way overboard on deleting things. First off, you need to go to your Control Panels and find the memory usage monitor. 3 gigs of RAM may not be enough for AI. Fonts, other apps, file size, all deduct greatly from your actual available RAM.

Second, the fact that a placed file is giving you these errors leads me to believe that this is either an ginormously large file or you have very little active memory.

Try deleting the TIF file and see what happens when you save and reopen. Also when you place files, make sure that they are LINKED and not EMBEDDED images and not being accessed across a server.

Thanks

Kevin



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Kevin,

Most of our file sizes are less than 30mb. Even the 10 - 15mb are spitting out this "not enough ram" problem.

They also have about half of the memory still free after opening these files.

One concern you mentioned:
"Also when you place files, make sure that they are LINKED and not EMBEDDED images and not being accessed across a server. "

The files are all being accessed across a server. What would the difference of LINKED and EMBEDDED be? And how would them being accessed across a server cause a problem?


Answer
Hi John,

Accessing files across a server is never a good idea in general.

Then if your TIF files are linked this means that you are actively accessing these images as you work, which can cause the problems you are experiencing. Its a double-whammy.

Embedded images are placed inside your file and increase the size of your AI file considerably. Which means if you place an 80mb tif or jpg file, the full size (not the compressed size) is opened when you access your file. This can cause an "out of memory" error because the actual files can be huge.

The proper workflow for working with images placed in an AI file is to have them on your desktop along with the Illustrator file and copy back over when completed. Server drag downs and transmitting files while working across server networks is a known issue with CS3 and can cause up to corruption.

Again, my first recommendation is to isolate the issue. I would remove any placed image(s) inside the Illustrator file and see if you still get the same error. Then start bringing them back in one by one to see when it breaks. Between this and not working on the server we should be able to find out the culprit.

Thanks

Kevin