Photoshop displaying "Out of Memory" popup

[GracieAllen]

Before I waste people's time with a long entry (that's getting nothing in the Adobe Photoshop forum), is there any point asking in this forum about Photoshop saying its out of memory when doing content-aware fill during pano creation?

 

[thebestcpu]

I doubt it is a waste as there are many helpful forum members. Usually the error message is correct so knowing about your OS, PS version, amount of total and available memory, total and available disk space as well as the size of the panorama you are processing. The job that you are running seems that it would need a lot of extra resources so that is likely a good starting point for examination. Knowing the amount of resources being used can be done with Activity Monitor on the Mac and Task Manager on Windows. Just ask questions if you need help as you go along to help figure out what is going on.
Just my suggestion of course
John Wheeler

 

[GracieAllen]

I'm not getting much useful in the Photoshop forum. Hopefully, someone here will have some ideas.

Two PCs, same problem.

Desktop is a normal PC, Windows 10 Pro, 32GB of memory, AMD 5700XT 8GB, SSDs for everything. A couple terabytes of space available on scratch disks. The GPU has “Anti-Alias Guides” on, and OpenCL has been on and off – no difference.
Cache is set to “Large pixel dimensions” with 6 levels and 1024K tile size
Efficiency, even when displaying the “Out of Memory” error, is ALWAYS 100%.

Laptop is a Dell 7740, 32GB of memory, Quadro RTX 3000, SSDs for everything. Around 600 GB of scratch space available.

Both systems have had the normal “Making Photoshop run better” and “Making Lightroom run better” sorts of modifications. I’ll stick to the desktop since that’s what I’m processing on at the moment.

Photoshop is 23.0.1, Lightroom Classic is V11. Desktop also has Photoshop 22.5.3, but the same thing happens, so not relevant.

I frequently have a problem with Photoshop saying it is out of memory. Specifically, running in normal environment with Lightroom and Photoshop running, and a few other things that use far less memory than either.

Send a small panorama from Lightroom to Photoshop – 5, D850 images. Specify “Reposition” (or Auto) and Content-aware fill empty areas. Photoshop loads the 5 images, creates the panorama, but FAILS on the fill with an “Out of Memory” popup. Some of the time, the panorama will succeed, but I will NOT get the new “unnamed” panorama layer, just the original 5 images with the masks. It appears to have been processed, but didn’t create the final layer. And, of course, the fill fails with an "Out of Memory" popup.

Occasionally, if Photoshop is not up, and sending the images from Lightroom starts it, it MAY successfully do the fill. Occasionally, if I flatten the panorama, then purge all cache, it MAY successfully do the fill. But the vast majority of the time, it fails with an Out of Memory error.


It doesn’t HAVE to be a panorama. I can sometimes take a single, normal D850 image (which may have been "large" a few generations ago, but is average size these days), do a selection, do some processing, and depending on what I’m doing I may get a “Could not <whatever> because there is not enough memory” popup.

I’ve tried changing the amount of memory set for Photoshop from 70 to 75, to 85, to 96% of memory with no difference. Currently at 85% per the recommendation of a recent topic.

Updating from Photoshop 2021 to 2022 did nothing. Updating to 23.0.1 did nothing.


Periodically, Lightroom will ALSO not create a 5-shot panorama, and has NEVER successfully created a 9-shot (3 pano panels each composed of 3 HDR images) panorama. Unfortunately, Lightroom doesn’t tell you WHY, it just dumps a generic “error” message popup.

Based on a previous topic, Virtual Memory is set to “System managed size”.
Windows recommended paging file size is 4981 MB
Currently 14GB is configured on the O/S drive and another 7.8GB on a separate SSD for a total of 21GB of virtual memory.

Watching the Task Manager I can see Photoshop using 13-17GB of memory, sometimes more, dropping back to about 11-12 GB when the panorama is done. Lightroom also chews up 6-12GB of memory depending on what I’m doing.

Since the problem APPEARS to be memory-related, is there some particular way memory needs to be configured on Windows 10 Pro to ENSURE that Photoshop does NOT complain about a lack of memory?

I got an email request to try the panorama from Bridge instead of Lightroom. I ran a couple small panoramas (4 or 5 images) from Bridge and they worked. So it appears that if there 10+ GB of unused memory it works. Opened Lightroom and a couple other applications to eat some memory, ran a third panorama and it failed on the fill – same “out of memory” popup.

So, if there's a lot of free memory (not using Lightroom) it appears to work, but that is NEVER the way it gets used. And when it failed, PS still said the Efficiency was 100%. Scratch disks still have hundreds of GB available.

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi @GracieAllen
Thank you for a quite complete description of your system. Hopefully either here or in the Photoshop forums you will get some guidance.
It does seem like a heavy lift yet I would have thought still doable within your system parameters.
It does leave open the possibility of a bug in LR and/or PS that is not releasing memory after it is being used making the problem even worse.
So pursuing the limitation with Adobe as a bug would be a good parallel path to take.
It actually does sound from the symptoms that you are running out of memory though e.g. when you do it from Bridge if passes.

I will assume that the fail occurs when from LR you use the Edit In > Merge to Panorama in Photoshop
If you are taking a different path, just update in another post.

Note that when not taking into account of the overlap between images, your Nikon 850 files horizontall are 8256 pixels wide and with 5 images makes it 41,280 total width.
Height is 5504 pixels making the potential canvas size around 227 Mpixels and in 16 bit mode RGB ~1.3 GB per Layer worst case. PS can be pretty good at not using the transparent areas yet not sure what happens with the Photo Merge process. With 5 Layers in the stack you could be up to 6.8 GB for this one panorama stack and adding the merged Layer on top you would be at 8.2 GB
That is already close to the limit of the extra memory you had at 10 GB.
Then, extra memory is being used for the Content Aware Fill that would chew up some more.

Now if PS was really smart, it would not use the transparent pixels in each Layer as full memory, and release temporary memory along the way (or effectively use virtual memory.
That is why I think there is a bug because if you exceed the 10GB extra memory limit, good software should just use virtual memory and slow down, not just say I am out of memory.

Do not that the Photo Merge operation is an Adobe Script that was made in 2006 and I don't know if that has been updated over time or not. I took a quick look at the code and I did not see anything obvious that would create an issue yet not an expert on memory management from within a script. Other forum members may have some other ideas.
Again, off hand you very well may be just running out of memory.

So I consider this a software bug in not using Virtual Memory very well when doing the PhotoMerge, then that means as you work with Adobe, what are the "workarounds" (not these are all my opinions)

I don't see that you do much different in your system other than I consider it best to allocate memory as the default. Giving too much memory to PS can cause other system issues and slow downs (thought it does not appear you have caused any issues there as of yet)
A system with 64G memory would obviously give you more head room (at a price and not all systems support 64G)

Though not a pleasant thought you can downsize you image by 2X and probably have a pretty complete workaround. Note that at 300 DPI with the dimensions given above, the pixel density would support an image that is 11 1/2 feet wide and 18 inches high. That's even assuming one would view that panorama from 12 inches distance. That many pixels or that resolution per inch may not be needed. I know that's a PITA especially with such a nice camera yet this is a workaround.

Another path that can be taken to help narrow down the issue is to

1) give the same images to someone on a Mac system and see if they have the same issue or not. Offhand I would assume they would see the same issue yet if they don't, that might be a clue that there me be a related OS limitation/issue going on as well

2) Try doing the panorama step by step instead of the full automated approach e.g.
- bring in the images as Layers into Photoshop (similar to using bridge yet LR is left open
- Then use the command Edit > Auto-Align Layers
- Then use the command Edit > Auto - Blend Layers
- Merge down to one Layer
- Then select the transparent areas, increase selection by 3 pixels and then do the Edit > Content Aware Fill

If the above steps give you relief and not run out of memory, then after bringing the images in to Photoshop, the above steps could be done with an Action

The above approaches may give you workarounds to consider and may also help narrow down where running out of memory occurs, or does not occur for additional feedback to Adobe (which may help them fix the software issue of "out of memory"

Hope this helps with a starting point to consider
John Wheeler

ADDED EDIT - Once you successfully made a panorama (even it without the content aware fill), it would be good to know the "Document Size" as reported by PS in the lower left corner of the image with the "Document Size" option selected. This will give some clue to how much memory is being taken

Also, running in 8 bit mode vs 16 bit mode will cut memory use by 1/2 and may be plenty enough for panorama needs.

 

[GracieAllen]

Thanks for the feedback.

Yes, it’s the Edit In > Merge to Panorama

The images are verticals so it’s actually around 8500x 14,000. Significant, but shouldn’t be overwhelming.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be a panorama. I can open a single image, do selections and whatever, and it may eventually throw an out-of-memory error.

To me, it seems like Photoshop and/or Lightroom aren't playing nice, and instead of getting using the virtual memory, they just puke. I have no way of knowing this, but the Efficiency never visually goes below 100%.

As far as the panorama, yes, it will likely fail with the 5 layers, but when it does, the first thing I do is flatten it, then purge cache, so there’s one layer and the cache should be empty. It still throws the same error. I can also NOT have it fill the areas, then flatten it, purge cache, select the unfilled areas and fill and it'll STILL FAIL.

I figure there have to be thousands (ten, hundreds of thousands) of systems that are smaller or certainly no larger than this one, that run Lightroom and Photoshop concurrently and do tasks at least as large as a small panorama. And again, the same thing happens on a new Dell 7740. It also runs out of memory just doing normal processing.

This is why I'm trying to get someone who's an expert on setting up memory for these products to hopefully provide a configuration that WILL make them use the virtual memory, or fix whatever I've got configured wrong.

Actually, I've got the document size, dimensions, scratch size and efficiency open in the info panel all the time.
5-shot panorama, nothing else open in PS. Processed but NOT content-aware filled.
Doc: 684.3M/1.69G
14318x8352
Scratch 5.46G/24.8G -- the scratch disk I'm using has 1.3 TB of empty space. Why is this Scratch only showing 24.8 GB?
Efficiency: 100%

After Flatten:
Doc 684.3M/684.3M
Scratch: 6.32G/24.8G -- fewer layers, MORE in the scratch?
Efficiency: 100%

After Purge, first unfilled area selected:
Scratch: 2.85G/24.8G
Efficiency: 100%

But, Lightroom isn't doing anything so it's only using about 2.5GB right now. Which is WAY less than normal.

Yes, I can sort-of work around the limitations, but I can't imagine that if this is this big a problem, there aren't thousands of users hitting it. Which makes me think it's something in the configuration.

 

[thebestcpu]

Excellent summary with the stats you have provided.
From what you have shown, it does not make sense to me that your are running out of memory.
I also believe your problem is above my pay grade especially since it is a Windows based system.
The only other step I mentioned to help determine if this is specific to your setup vs a more general problem is to duplicate the workflow with your images on a Mac system or someone else's Windows system by using a file/image sharing site with the individual starting images provided.
That may not solve your problem yet help narrow it down.
Wish I could have been of more help.
John Wheeler

 

[GracieAllen]

Thanks for the info. It's more than I've gotten in the "official" Adobe forum.

I figure running the images on the laptop, which has the same amount of memory, faster processor, and so on, would count as another Windows system...

I may be able to find somebody with a Mac, but they're so drastically different in configuration that the outcome wouldn't mean much...

BTW: I had to process some image stacks yesterday and remembered that's always been a problem too - if I have Lightroom and Photoshop open, Helicon Focus won't render stacks. It blows up with a memory allocation error. I always have to kill Photoshop if I'm doing focus stacks. I'd forgotten that doesn't work either with the Adobe stuff open. I don't recall for sure, but Topaz Denoise and such may ALSO not work if Adobe is using a lot of memory.

Again though, if this was a fer-real, Adobe not playing nice, there should be thousands of people having the problem.

 

[polarwoc]

I have been following this thread with interest and would love to see any work-around or a solution. If you find one, please share it with us here, @GracieAllen

Though not a pleasant thought you can downsize you image by 2X and probably have a pretty complete workaround.

Did you try downsizing the image drastically - say, to one tenth the size and then merging the downsized images just to see if that is successful?

 

[GracieAllen]

Can you elaborate on what new, useful information would come from that? Presume it DOES work. It's never going to be used that way, just like it's never going to be used with Lightroom shut down. If there's a memory issue on the system, I need the "proper" memory configuration so things work. If it's a problem in Lightroom or Photoshop there should be thousands of people screaming, and apparently there aren't. I can certainly turn normal-sized images into smaller ones and keep shrinking them until Photoshop is successful, but will it tell me anything valuable? Since I have two systems, of significantly different ages and configurations, that do the same thing, I presume it's something I have set wrong. Just don't know what, yet.

 

[polarwoc]

Can you elaborate on what new, useful information would come from that?

If the downsized images merge well, it would prove to some degree of certainty that:

• it is probably a memory limitation on the machines
• it is probably a memory management mess up by OS/PS
• it is probably NOT an issue in the way "Merge to panorama" executes
• it is probably NOT an interaction issue between PS and LR

I can certainly turn normal-sized images into smaller ones and keep shrinking them until Photoshop is successful, but will it tell me anything valuable?

Assuming merging process works with one tenth the sizes, assuming it still works at one fifth, if it does not work with one fourth - then 'something' is facing difficulty with merging that particular sized images (2125 X 3500) and above but not below that size.

I understand it will not serve the purpose with downsized images, but it could assist Adobe with slightly more information if you are pursuing with them and they take it up seriously in identifying a potential bug.

 

[GracieAllen]

Yes, if I make everything extremely small, they work. Things work until the system is close to using all the real memory. It doesn't matter if it's panorama or a single image, or whatever. By FAR, the largest memory users on either system are Lightroom and Photoshop, and when they're running, things periodically compost. Purging cache doesn't do anything.

I can't say Adobe WOULDN'T pursue a problem, but in my experience over the last several years (since they moved away from people owning their software), they're VERY unlikely to care unless there are thousands of users hitting the problem.

I'm not sure it'll help, but today I was doing some image processing - NOT panos... D850 image into Photoshop, a couple additional layers with masks, and a second image overlaid to work on an altered reality image. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to memory and such, but the Doc size in PS was about 680MB/2.8GB, Efficiency was still 100%. Lots of scratch space. Tried to do some very basic operations in Lightroom, and IT flashed an error that I didn't catch. In the Task Manager it showed Lightroom having about 11GB but Photoshop was only about 1.5GB. As things composted, I tried to get Lightroom to build 1:1 previews on a couple dozen images and the Task Manager showed the system 100% busy, 90% memory and Lightroom never showed in the process list. Eventually, probably 5-10 times longer than usual, Lightroom finished, but doing a Save in Photoshop, even with ONE layer got to about 70% and sat there. It never finished. To get Photoshop to save I had to flatten the image.

I've done things at LEAST this intensive in previous versions of Lightroom and Photoshop (I've been shooting the D850 since early 2017) and I don't recall having problems like this in older versions. 2021 and 2022 both do the same thing, but I don't RECALL ever getting it back in 2018 or 2019...

 

[GracieAllen]

Well, at least the replies are getting shorter.........
One image open in photoshop, 2 layers
doc: 180mb/450mb
size: 6880x4584
Scratch: 5.7G/23.4G
Efficiency: 100%
Task Manager:
Photoshop 9960MB
Lightroom 5300MB
Firefox 840MB
Nobody else is over 100 MB
Memory 86% used
Perf tab says 27.4 of 31.9 in use

WHO'S USING THE OTHER 10GB OF MEMORY?

Tried to open another image from Lightroom. Failed with "not enough memory" in LIGHTROOM...

Purge All
Photoshop 6050MB
Lightroom 3580MB
Second image opened 186MB / 186MB
Scratch: 4.5/23.4GB
Efficiency 100%

Perf tab says 24.1 of 31.9GB in use

Somebody STILL seems to be holding onto a LOT of memory...

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi @GracieAllen
Good detective work.
Are you displaying all applications (including system applications) when looking for memory usage. Some utilities allow you to look just at your own user memory.
Assuming that you are looking at all system processes as well, there is always the possibility that you experiencing a memory leak: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2596992/memory-leaks-and-garbage-collection.html

I have not owned a Windows machine for 13 years yet way back then there were quite a few applications that were prone to memory leaks and it drove me crazy (actually it drove me to buy apple computers).

That memory leak could be caused by most any program, utility, plugin, etc even including scripts in Photoshop. In my case it was the anti-virus software by Norton in interatciton with the Windows OS that was creating a memory leak. I have not seen the problem with Lightroom or Photoshop proper yet it is always possible. How the programs interact with the OS changes as the OS evolves.

A bit hard to verify that is the problem and a bit hard to track down. Sometimes when an application is restarted, the memory is released at that point yet under some circumstances it is not release until you reboot.

I tracked down my problem with memory leaks by monitoring the memory usage constantly and one my one turning off applications until the memory leak stopped growing.
Tough problem (if this is the actual problem) to get root cause. Turning off all ancilliary programs and/or running in safe mode sometimes help reveal the problem.

Please share whatever you find out because even if boatloads of people are not having the problem, you can be sure you are not the only one.
John Wheeler

 

[GracieAllen]

Yes, though I was just using the Windows Task Manager, I displayed sorted by memory and ran down the list. There are a huge number of processes, but the one's eating massive amounts of memory are Adobe. Individually, nothing else comes close.

I also found last year, and forgot, that Helicon Focus routinely fails trying to allocate memory while rendering an image stack if I have both Lightroom and Photoshop open. It's allocating tiny amounts of memory - like 150 or 180 MB, and for it to even run I have to shut down Photoshop.

I also stumbled across an entry in the Photoshop forum that was having a problem with huge amounts of disk usage for temp files that he'd never experienced before PS 2021 (I think)... This was essentially the response he got:

Photoshop's memory management is optimized for speed, not space. As a professional-grade application, it makes no allowances (and no excuses) for users with limited resources. It's your responsibility to make sure Photoshop has the resources it needs.

Raster image editing, whatever software does it, requires huge amounts of memory. That's just the nature of the game. There is no such thing as "enough RAM", and disk space gets eaten up fast. 500GB or more is not uncommon if you work with large files.

I'm not likely to put another 32GB of memory into this desktop since it's a few years old, but I'd already figured when I build the next editing PC I'm going to HAVE to put in at least 64 GB of memory just to do normal edits on images. I can't IMAGINE what people with normal PCs and 8 or 16 GB of memory do when they need to run both Lightroom and Photoshop to edit average images of today...

I've also put this question into the Windows 10 forum where there may be people that can advise more on Windows memory handling...

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi @GracieAllen
I hope you can find the solution to your issue. A couple things:

- Task Manager is a good tool/resource to help find out what is going on. However, if some application, plugin, addon, etc is causing a memory leak, that leaked memory may not be logged down as belonging to any listed program. A program may not release it yet close and the memory is still not released. I am not an expert on this yet I have seen that happen. That fits with "who is using the extra 10Gbytes" and no program fesses up to being the culprit.

- Getting experts on the issue sounds very prudent.
- I do suggest trying and running your programs in safe mode and see if you have a problem. That shuts down all sorts of ancillary programs. Doesn't give root cause yet could be a big clue if it works in safe mode: Boot Windows in Safe Mode
- The biggest clue you have is an unaccounted for 10G in memory.

Hang in there
John Wheeler

 

[GracieAllen]

I put an entry in the Tenforums forum, and got this recommendation:

Try the OverridePhysicalMemoryMB registry fix . It appear that if this is SET they have you unset it, and if it’s NOT set, they have you SET it to the amount of physical memory – in my case 32768 (decimal)

Set the page File to a fixed sized as big as the memory. I did NOT do this yet, preferring to have Windows manage page files if possible…
Enable large system cache.
Disable paging executive.
Disable prefetcher.
Disable Superfetch.
I did all FOUR of the above things.
Force both application to use only the Main GPU if more than one is available.

If all that fails, it’ll have to be upgraded to 64 Gb of Ram

Once I did all the above I selected "automatically manage paging file size for all drives".

In THEORY, Windows will select the FASTEST storage device and put the page file there. In my case, INSTEAD of using one the SSDs where I WANTED it, Windows put the page file on a normal HDD. Bad choice.


I don’t know if it’s fixed or not, or which of the changes may have improved things, but the system SEEMS to be doing a better job of playing nicely.

I loaded about a dozen, large, multi-layered images into Photoshop from Lightroom. Photoshop got up to just under 20GB then backed down to about 18. Then I added another dozen from Lightroom just to see. LR was at about 3GB. I then had Lightroom start importing and building 1:1 previews on a few hundred D850 images. It started accumulating memory. And I had Lightroom start building a 9-shot D850 panorama.

I started Bridge and had it open and load a couple average folders - a few thousand images.

I started Topaz Denoise and had it open and process 5 D850 images.

At this point, the Task Manager showed the system having memory at 31.4 of 31.9 GB, CPU was 100% busy, HDD was 100% busy (that’d be the page file), SSDs were around 30% busy. The 26GB pagefile on drive "G" appeared to be getting its brains beat out.

During all this, Photoshop memory dropped from over 19 to under 10 GB, while Lightroom increased from 2 to 14GB. At one point, Photoshop wasn't processing anything, just sitting with a couple dozen very large images open, was down to less than 2GB.

I took one of the large, multi-layered images in Photoshop, did a select subject and pulled it into Select and Mask, did extensive edge detection and a bunch of adjustments. Photoshop processed but didn’t increase memory usage much.

Started doing brush tool and large spot healing areas and memory increased slightly - around 4GB or so.

For at least 20 minutes, with the system extremely overtaxed it processed and I could watch the amount of memory Lightroom (around 14GB) and Photoshop (2 when sitting, about 4-5 when doing a little, 18-20 when it was opening a bunch of huge image files) and other applications change up and down.

I FORGOT to look in Photoshop at the doc size, scratch size or efficiency – it never crossed my mind.

After a reboot:
On the “C” drive, the swapfile, which has always been right around 16 MB increased to 268 MB – still very tiny, but a WHOLE lot bigger than it was.

The System Managed Pagefile on drive “C” was GONE. It was 8.8 GB when I rebooted prior to testing, but windows replaced it with a 26GB pagefile was created on a HDD – NOT the fastest drive in the system. The 5 GB System managed pagefile that WAS on “Z” still exists, but it is NOT listed in the pagefiles on drives.

I had THREE Photoshop temp files totaling about 31 GB… During the processing I didn't look to see how much scratch drive space was in use, but I presume that Photoshop actually HAD to reduce efficiency below 100% and use the scratch drives. But again, I FORGOT to check.

I went back and recreated the pagefiles where I wanted them, rebooted to see if Windows would use them when set to "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" – it DIDN’T, it put the page file back on the hard drive. SO, I put System managed page files on “C” and on a different SSD in an 80 GB partition just for paging. That’s what I’m using at this point. If THAT doesn’t work I’ll make the paging files FIXED and see how that does.

Is this working? I only know what I saw while testing yesterday. I'll get back to doing "normal" stuff this weekend and see how it goes.

 

[thebestcpu]

That sounds very encouraging. Will be interesting to see with your normal work if you can avoid the out of memory errors.

 

[GracieAllen]

The changes have made the system better, though I still can't do a small panorama and have it do the CA fill. I ran an HDR/pano 18 D850 images, 3-each HDR, 6 per pano.
Sent the first 6 to Photoshop. It ran but failed on the fill. Ran the second and third panos and it used all 32GB of memory between Photoshop and Lightroom, but it didn't die.
Ran the HDR on the three panoramas, and that worked too.
Efficiency never got below 100%, even when it was using 31.9 of 31.9 GB.
Scratch disk usage got up to about 22.4GB of 23.4 available - FIRST QUESTION - WHY is it saying there's 23.4 GB of scratch available when there's 1.2 TB of free space on the disk?

It appears that if Photoshop SAYS it doesn't have the memory to do a fill, it NEVER turns that off again. Photoshop was sitting there with 20GB in use, Lightroom did an HDR and gobbled about 15GB, Photoshop dropped to about 14 GB, and when Lightroom was done, it gave memory back. So, with 52% OF THE MEMORY FREE, Photoshop STILL says it can't do a CA fill 'cause there's not enough memory.

Only cure I've seen is to shut it down and restart.

I got a recommendation to reduce the available memory for Photoshop. Dropped it from 96% to 65% and ran a pano set. Efficiency dropped to 80%. Increased to to 70% (which SAYS about 18GB), reran and efficiency dropped to 97%. Second and third panos stayed at 100%, but Photoshop blew through 18GB and up to about 20.5 GB.

I'm not sure WHAT it's doing but by and large it doesn't it successfully, other than the CA fill. I suspect there's a bunch of other stuff that'll throw this error, and once I get it, regardless of flushing cache or anything else, the only thing that clears the Out of memory seems to be shutting down Photoshop and restarting it.

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi @GracieAllen
I am sure this is extremely frustrating (at least it would be more me)
I only run Photoshop on Macs so I can't provide much help.
You may have already seen these links yet will provide them here:

https://windowsreport.com/photoshop-error-not-enough-ram/

https://windowsreport.com/photoshop-issues-windows-10/

Also, for scratch disks, not sure why it won't use more of that space.

Attached here is a link about scratch disks. Offhand I am not sure this will help yet noticed that Scatch Disks for Photoshop do not support all disk formats. Worth checking that the formatting of your scratch disks are ina a supported format. This may be a long shot yet I did not know there were limits on what formats to use.

They mention steps that I have not heard you doing as of yet. Not sure they will help yet through it was worth sharing.
John Wheeler

 

[thebestcpu]

Sorry, did not include the link about scratch disks and here it is:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/scratch-disks-preferences.html