Ginormous Image Files

Here’s a follow up to a comment I made about 800 MB files in a previous posting (see Canon 1Ds Mark III Workflow).  There were a few incredulous responses along the lines of, “How could anyone have an 800 MB image file?”  The answer was pretty straight forward.  Start with a 20 MB RAW file, convert it to tiff (now you’re around 100 MB), add a few layers and presto, an 800 MB gorilla.

But I have that one topped.  Give this one a try.  Shoot a 360 degree panorama.  Now at 15 degrees between shots it takes 24 images to make the full 360.  Let’s see, that’s 1680 MB of RAW files.  To make life simpler, convert the RAW files to JPEGs.  Then stitch them together in CS3 using Photomerge.  Don’t flatten the layers; just save the file as a PSB (you have to use Adobe’s large file format) and there you have it – a 2 GB image file.

Here’s an interesting tidbit for the Lightroom version of Trivial Pursuit:  LR can’t import the file – too big.

All I can say is, “It’s a good thing they now have 1 TB external drives.”  And to think my very first computer had a 90 KB single sided, single density 5 1/4″ floppy drive.  Yep, just one of them.  Come to think if it, with its 4 MHz Z80 CPU it would have taken about a week (maybe more) to stitch together the 24 images assuming I could have found enough storage to hold the file once it was done.  We’ve come a long way baby.

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Author: doinlight

Ralph Nordstrom is an award-winning fine art landscape photographer and educator. He lives in Southern California and leads photography workshops throughout the Western United States. View all posts by doinlight