Huge backgrounds, huge photos ...

[foureyes]

I tried to do the beginner's tutorial (Paint Shop Pro 9) but immediately had a lot of problems. I even had to restart my computer because everything was 'frozen'.
To begin with: I used the following sizes: 10 x 8 ", 200 res., 16 million colours.
My background layer was at 16%. The photo I wanted to use is 72 res. , not the 200 resolution mentioned in the tutorial. Anyway, the photo showed up at 56%. I guess I have to resize the photo.
But working with these enormous sizes is difficult for me. How do other people do this?

[jtaubman]

How much memory do you have in your computer? This is normally the problem if you have less than 512Mb, make sure you shut down all your other programs before you start.

[foureyes]

How much memory do you have in your computer? This is normally the problem if you have less than 512Mb, make sure you shut down all your other programs before you start.

512 MB, so that should do I guess. My pc is from April 2005.

[Lauren]

Yes your ram should be sufficient, although you could certainly have more!!.
The ppi is less important than the number of pixels in each photo/background/element - check out the article which discusses this - http://digitalscrapbookplace.com/university/articles/ppiexplained1.shtml

The reason we need to work with such large files is because to get a good print they need to be this large unfortunatelyl - If you wish to create your layouts for web work only you dont need to work at such a large size.

[Avril]

You know just two days ago I had this problem......and I have lots of memory.......3 x 512.........anyway after a whole frustrating afternoon.......I saw what I was doing wrong the whole time (heavens I could not believe that I had not seen it)

when I put in the resolution........ I was doing it per cm instead of the per inch......so may be that is what you have been doing......
and believe me that eats up the memory! :mad:

hope this helps!........and with luck this solves your problem!

Hugs
Avril

[foureyes]

Thank you Lauren for the informative article. It's an eye-opener. I really regret it that all the files are so gigantic. I am used to writing webpages and there it's crucial to work with small files. I am afraid I cannot handle all these big backgrounds and other huge parafernalia necessary to compose a scrapbook.
I'll give it another try though. And Avril I'll watch the inches and centimeters !