How to open huge PNG image

I have a really big PNG image, it's ~11GB. Is there any way to open it? I would just like to view it without too many problems.

I tried Photoshop CS6 and it's too big even for this kind of modern software.

I am using Windows8 64.

alex

Posted 2013-09-27T15:56:04.113

Reputation: 550

Consider SumatraPDF. – Simon Kuang – 2014-06-21T06:25:26.437

4do you have access to a system with 16GB ram? if so, use it. – Frank Thomas – 2013-09-27T15:58:41.007

@FrankThomas I have 12GB. Any what do you mean by use it? – alex – 2013-09-27T15:59:15.073

4I have trouble seeing how an 11GB PNG would be useful for ANYTHING. :) Regardless, aside from using a memory hog like PS, did you try viewing it with any image viewers? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2013-09-27T16:00:28.850

1to load a file, your system must have at least as much ram + page/swap as the filesize + the amount the base system needs to run. if you are having trouble with the file, I recommend you use a box with 16GB ram, since it will have enough capacity to load your file and run the OS without having to do too much paging. by "use it", I mean open the image on a system with 16GB ram. – Frank Thomas – 2013-09-27T16:02:28.613

@techie007 yes, I have. They say the file is too big obviously. I'm generating a high resolution image and in one of the steps I have a file like this. – alex – 2013-09-27T16:03:04.397

possible duplicate of What software works well for viewing massive TIFF images on Windows 7?, How to quickly view huge PNG images in OS X?, Viewer for huge images under linux (>100 MP color images)

– Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2013-09-27T16:03:27.500

@FrankThomas ok, thanks. Do you know any software that could handle it? – alex – 2013-09-27T16:04:11.870

@alex - What happens when you attempted to open it in Photoshop. If you are using a 64-bit version of Photoshop you should be able to open it. – Ramhound – 2013-09-27T16:04:41.537

1What operating system are you using? Do you want to view the image or edit it? – terdon – 2013-09-27T16:07:11.710

@Ramhound Could not complete your request because the file-format module cannot parse the file. I just suppose it's a file size issue @terdon Win8 x64. just view. – alex – 2013-09-27T16:20:39.000

Answers

Photoshop CS6 probably has the most overhead per pixel of any program (i.e., is probably one of the worst for opening huge images like that).

You are not going to be able to view a 11GB image without too many problems. These images are specifically known as gigapixel images and there's actually a lot of research/development that's gone into this subject in the past few years. Image viewers/editors are not designed to operate on files of that size; 32-bit viewers in particular are very likely to exhaust their address space, and 64-bit viewers might not be much better.

The key point is that your image is not 11GB. It's 11GB compressed as a .png file. As an uncompressed bitmap (which is what an image viewer must convert it to in order to display it), it could well be over 50GB-100GB of data depending on how well it compressed.

If you only have 12GB of RAM, you might try restarting your system (to close everything down and free up as much memory as possible) and then loading the image in a 64-bit version of Paint.NET. If that doesn't work, then you'll probably want to start looking into something like VIPS, which is specifically designed to process large multi-gigabyte images in small chunks using multiple threads. This will not allow you to directly view the image, but you can break it down into smaller chunks that you can view.

You might also look at HDView, which is designed to process and display large images in a web viewer, and the GMaps Image Cutter is designed to do the same and present it in a Google Maps-like interface (works on more browsers/platforms than HDView).

Darth Android

Posted 2013-09-27T15:56:04.113

Reputation: 35 133

First I would recommend you to use pngcrush. It will reduce/optimize the size of the png. With a tool like GIMP it shouldn't be a problem to open the PNG-file.

In GIMP, under Preferences -> Environment, you can adjust the "maximum new image size" and the "maximum filesize for thumbnailing". Maybe that will help. With the 12GB of RAM, that shouldn't be a problem to open the png-file.

Also you should close everything, that you wont need. Kill any processes, that aren't necessary to run the system.

Christian

Posted 2013-09-27T15:56:04.113

Reputation: 6 571

7pngcrush won't be of any help here. A viewer has to decompress the image to display it. – Darth Android – 2013-09-27T16:56:43.583

I'd look at the memory usage and swap settings of GIMP, set them up properly so that it has a specific upper limit (e.g. 10 GB) on its memory use, and then I'd open the image with GIMP. – pts – 2013-09-27T23:27:04.540

I would advise you to resize it, then open.
You could try with some command line tool, or if you don't like command line, this is a gui.