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GIMP Image Size Limits

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GIMP Image Size Limits Kevin Myers 20 Oct 10:05
  GIMP Image Size Limits Sven Neumann 21 Oct 10:53
GIMP Image Size Limits Kevin Myers 20 Oct 11:16
GIMP Image Size Limits Kevin Myers 21 Oct 18:53
  GIMP Image Size Limits Sven Neumann 21 Oct 19:27
   GIMP Image Size Limits Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero 21 Oct 19:33
  GIMP Image Size Limits Branko Collin 21 Oct 21:02
GIMP Image Size Limits Kevin Myers 21 Oct 19:37
GIMP Image Size Limits Adam D. Moss 21 Oct 20:23
033e01c2793d$582ceb60$66c8a... 07 Oct 20:21
  GIMP Image Size Limits Branko Collin 21 Oct 22:43
Kevin Myers
2002-10-20 10:05:50 UTC (over 21 years ago)

GIMP Image Size Limits

Hello,

Are there any known, inherent, limitations on the size of images that may be loaded and processed by the GIMP?

So far, I have loaded and manipulated grayscale images up to several hundred megapixels, and that seems to work ok except for a few relatively minor zooming bugs. However, I've had some problems where my largest images (on the order of 400 to 600 megapixels) have failed to open. So far I have chalked that up to hitting the wall on the available RAM on my machine (presently 768MB). Therefore, I am considering upgrading my system RAM to 1.5GB. However, I would like to be certain that GIMP will actually be able to work with these larger images if I buy the additional RAM. I have just learned that some other graphics programs that I've been using (ImageMagick for example) have an upper limit on maximum image size of around 400M pixels (2GB / 5 bytes per pixel), and I'm hoping that isn't true of the GIMP. I'm running extremely low on options for dealing with these images at the moment.

Thanks.

s/KAM

Kevin Myers
2002-10-20 11:16:16 UTC (over 21 years ago)

GIMP Image Size Limits

More related info: 398 and 424 megapixel gray scale images load and display fine on my machine. On the other hand, a 442 megapixel image does NOT. The load process indicator reaches 100% and that window closes, but the file dialogue window never closes, and the viewer window never opens. The CPU remains maxed out at 100% until I kill the gimp process. According to Windows task manager, my system RAM is NOT completely utilized. So apparantly I'm running into some kind of bug or internal gimp limitation. GIMP 1.2.4 under Win 2K.

s/KAM

----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin Myers"
To: "gimp developers" ; "gimpwin
developers"
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2002 3:05 AM Subject: [Gimp-developer] GIMP Image Size Limits

Hello,

Are there any known, inherent, limitations on the size of images that may

be

loaded and processed by the GIMP?

So far, I have loaded and manipulated grayscale images up to several

hundred

megapixels, and that seems to work ok except for a few relatively minor zooming bugs. However, I've had some problems where my largest images (on the order of 400 to 600 megapixels) have failed to open. So far I have chalked that up to hitting the wall on the available RAM on my machine (presently 768MB). Therefore, I am considering upgrading my system RAM to 1.5GB. However, I would like to be certain that GIMP will actually be

able

to work with these larger images if I buy the additional RAM. I have just learned that some other graphics programs that I've been using

(ImageMagick

for example) have an upper limit on maximum image size of around 400M

pixels

(2GB / 5 bytes per pixel), and I'm hoping that isn't true of the GIMP.

I'm

running extremely low on options for dealing with these images at the moment.

Thanks.

s/KAM

Sven Neumann
2002-10-21 10:53:51 UTC (over 21 years ago)

GIMP Image Size Limits

Hi,

"Kevin Myers" writes:

Are there any known, inherent, limitations on the size of images that may be loaded and processed by the GIMP?

yes. In GIMP-1.2 the size of the tile-cache The GIMP can handle is limited to 2GB (if I remember correctly). There's a similar limit to the size of the swap file.

With GIMP-1.3 we tried to remove these limits but the code hasn't seen enough testing to state whether the changes work and if there are other parts of the code that still need to be changed.

Salut, Sven

Kevin Myers
2002-10-21 18:53:13 UTC (over 21 years ago)

GIMP Image Size Limits

Thanks very much to Sven for this info. Well, since many of my images are rather large (in the 400 to 600 megapixel range), maybe I can provide some of the additional large image testing that is needed. But I have one problem. I'm running Windows, and can't seem to figure out how to get started building the GIMP under Windows. Presently I am using the binary installable 1.2.4 distribution, but I can't even figure out how to compile it using the source from Tor's web site. As descibed in my previous post, I can't even get through the first step, which is running ./configure . So, until I can solve this problem, there is no way that I can start trying to work with 1.3 . Any help getting my build process off the ground would be greatly appreciated.

One more question related to size limits: How many bytes per pixel does the pixel cache use? I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer is 5 based on the image sizes where I'm running into problems. That's what ImageMagick uses for its pixel cache, and I run into problem at almost exactly the same image size.

s/KAM

----- Original Message ----- From: "Sven Neumann"
To: "Kevin Myers"
Cc: "gimp developers" ; "gimpwin
developers"
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 3:53 AM Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] GIMP Image Size Limits

Hi,

"Kevin Myers" writes:

Are there any known, inherent, limitations on the size of images that may be loaded and processed by the GIMP?

yes. In GIMP-1.2 the size of the tile-cache The GIMP can handle is limited to 2GB (if I remember correctly). There's a similar limit to the size of the swap file.

With GIMP-1.3 we tried to remove these limits but the code hasn't seen enough testing to state whether the changes work and if there are other parts of the code that still need to be changed.

Salut, Sven

Sven Neumann
2002-10-21 19:27:30 UTC (over 21 years ago)

GIMP Image Size Limits

Hi,

"Kevin Myers" writes:

Thanks very much to Sven for this info. Well, since many of my images are rather large (in the 400 to 600 megapixel range), maybe I can provide some of the additional large image testing that is needed. But I have one problem. I'm running Windows, and can't seem to figure out how to get started building the GIMP under Windows. Presently I am using the binary installable 1.2.4 distribution, but I can't even figure out how to compile it using the source from Tor's web site. As descibed in my previous post, I can't even get through the first step, which is running ./configure . So, until I can solve this problem, there is no way that I can start trying to work with 1.3 . Any help getting my build process off the ground would be greatly appreciated.

in that case it would probably be easier to install a real OS on that machine. Fortunately multiple OSs may coexist happily.

One more question related to size limits: How many bytes per pixel does the pixel cache use? I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer is 5 based on the image sizes where I'm running into problems. That's what ImageMagick uses for its pixel cache, and I run into problem at almost exactly the same image size.

the answer is 1 for grayscale/indexed, 3 for RGB. Add another byte if your image has an alpha channel and another 4 bytes for the projection. The latter used to allocated copy-on-write at some point. Unfortunately this feature has been disabled (at least to my knowledge); thus the memory for the display projection is always allocated.

Salut, Sven

Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero
2002-10-21 19:33:39 UTC (over 21 years ago)

GIMP Image Size Limits

sven@gimp.org (2002-10-21 at 1927.30 +0200):

the answer is 1 for grayscale/indexed, 3 for RGB. Add another byte if your image has an alpha channel and another 4 bytes for the projection. The latter used to allocated copy-on-write at some point. Unfortunately this feature has been disabled (at least to my knowledge); thus the memory for the display projection is always allocated.

Add another for the selection, which is always there, even if there is no selection "visible" (selection all and selection one still use the byte). Or so said mitch.

GSR

Kevin Myers
2002-10-21 19:37:49 UTC (over 21 years ago)

GIMP Image Size Limits

That matches the behavior that I am seeing Sven. I have grayscale images, so 1 byte for the gray plus 4 bytes for the projection = 5 bytes total per pixel, and 400+ megapixels * 5 bytes per pixel = 2000+MB (2+GB), hence that is probably why I am running into problems with gimp 1.2.4. Now can you explain to me just what a projection is? Is that merely space for the output colors after running an image through some kind of transformation?

For the project in question, *nix is not an option. Sorry, I'm stuck with Windoze.

s/KAM

----- Original Message ----- From: "Sven Neumann"
To: "Kevin Myers"
Cc: "gimp developers"
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 12:27 PM Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] GIMP Image Size Limits

Hi,

"Kevin Myers" writes:

Thanks very much to Sven for this info. Well, since many of my images

are

rather large (in the 400 to 600 megapixel range), maybe I can provide

some

of the additional large image testing that is needed. But I have one problem. I'm running Windows, and can't seem to figure out how to get started building the GIMP under Windows. Presently I am using the

binary

installable 1.2.4 distribution, but I can't even figure out how to

compile

it using the source from Tor's web site. As descibed in my previous

post, I

can't even get through the first step, which is running ./configure .

So,

until I can solve this problem, there is no way that I can start trying

to

work with 1.3 . Any help getting my build process off the ground would

be

greatly appreciated.

in that case it would probably be easier to install a real OS on that machine. Fortunately multiple OSs may coexist happily.

One more question related to size limits: How many bytes per pixel does

the

pixel cache use? I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer is 5 based

on

the image sizes where I'm running into problems. That's what

ImageMagick

uses for its pixel cache, and I run into problem at almost exactly the

same

image size.

the answer is 1 for grayscale/indexed, 3 for RGB. Add another byte if your image has an alpha channel and another 4 bytes for the projection. The latter used to allocated copy-on-write at some point. Unfortunately this feature has been disabled (at least to my knowledge); thus the memory for the display projection is always allocated.

Salut, Sven

Adam D. Moss
2002-10-21 20:23:49 UTC (over 21 years ago)

GIMP Image Size Limits

Sven Neumann wrote:

One more question related to size limits: How many bytes per pixel does the pixel cache use? I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer is 5 based on the image sizes where I'm running into problems. That's what ImageMagick uses for its pixel cache, and I run into problem at almost exactly the same image size.

the answer is 1 for grayscale/indexed, 3 for RGB. Add another byte if your image has an alpha channel and another 4 bytes for the projection. The latter used to allocated copy-on-write at some point. Unfortunately this feature has been disabled (at least to my knowledge)

I got the projection to a state where COWing from a simple source image worked but came across a showstopper bug, which is why it should be disabled until someone can fix the COW tile system's inability to (IIRC) do the right thing when COW-ing lazy-validated tiles that haven't been validated yet. I looked at it for ages and could never find the bug.

As far as I could tell the projection tilemanager was the only source of tiles that we were potentially trying to COW which actually used the tile system's ability to validate lazily (tiles allow callbacks for populating their pixels the first time the tiles are ref'd). Well that's how it was last time I looked into tile management, for all I know the 1.3 tree uses Calvin's COW-manager which was looking pretty good a hundred years ago but possibly daunting to adapt to the trunk (even back then).

Branko Collin
2002-10-21 21:02:51 UTC (over 21 years ago)

GIMP Image Size Limits

On 21 Oct 2002, at 11:53, Kevin Myers wrote:

Thanks very much to Sven for this info. Well, since many of my images are rather large (in the 400 to 600 megapixel range), maybe I can provide some of the additional large image testing that is needed. But I have one problem. I'm running Windows, and can't seem to figure out how to get started building the GIMP under Windows. Presently I am using the binary installable 1.2.4 distribution, but I can't even figure out how to compile it using the source from Tor's web site. As descibed in my previous post, I can't even get through the first step, which is running ./configure . So, until I can solve this problem, there is no way that I can start trying to work with 1.3 . Any help getting my build process off the ground would be greatly appreciated.

There's a recent Usenet thread starting with message in which Keith Lai and Tor
Lillqvist go through the process step by step. Perhaps that is of any help.

Which build environment are you using?

Branko Collin
2002-10-21 22:43:09 UTC (over 21 years ago)

GIMP Image Size Limits

On 21 Oct 2002, at 15:06, Kevin Myers wrote:

MinGW under Win 2K.

I presume this is in reply to my question which build environment you are using? It would really help if you replied in the way that is considered polite and useful on the internet, i.e. with the reply below the question.

AFAIK, MingW is one of the two 'legal' build environments for WinGIMP, the other being MSVC.

I tried starting the build process in CygWin once or twice, but as the docs say, that does not work.

HTH,