PictureSnap maximum image sizes

[Karsten Goemann]

The maximum size of images that can be loaded into PictureSnap depends on the video memory of the PC, see here:http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=14.msg513#msg513

In our case, PictureSnap will load a 10,000x10,000 pixels image, but display an "out of memory" error message for a 12,000x12,000 pixels image. So the memory limit seems to be somewhere in between.

In the "Full Image Picture View" it displays the whole 10,000x10,000 pixel image, but if the image is larger than around 3400x3110 pixels, PictureSnap will truncate it to those values in the main window, which means registering it to the stage coordinates is difficult.

So my question is - as it seems capable to load the 10,000x10,000 image in general, would it be possible to remove the truncation in the main window, so it can be used for registering to the stage coordinates?

This would be useful for example to load large mosaics from automated mineralogy instruments (such as SEM-MLA) and use those for navigation. We often use MLA to find for example monazite grains in a rock section and create a combined BSE-monazite overlay mosaic for the whole sample to be used for navigation on other instruments such as EPMA or LA-ICP-MS. If this image could be loaded into PictureSnap and we could just drive to the monazites by clicking on them programming spots would be much faster. I know that QUT, who also have both PFE and MLA, would also be interested in this. At the moment we have to scale the images down quite a bit, although we can use a downscaled image for registering and navigation, and have the full resolution image open in a separate image viewer to look at detail.

[Probeman]

The maximum size of images that can be loaded into PictureSnap depends on the video memory of the PC, see here:http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=14.msg513#msg513

In our case, PictureSnap will load a 10,000x10,000 pixels image, but display an "out of memory" error message for a 12,000x12,000 pixels image. So the memory limit seems to be somewhere in between.

In the "Full Image Picture View" it displays the whole 10,000x10,000 pixel image, but if the image is larger than around 3400x3110 pixels, PictureSnap will truncate it to those values in the main window, which means registering it to the stage coordinates is difficult.

So my question is - as it seems capable to load the 10,000x10,000 image in general, would it be possible to remove the truncation in the main window, so it can be used for registering to the stage coordinates?

Both of these controls are limited by available video memory. I can't create more memory for your video card unfortunately, but they are really inexpensive these days so should be easy to upgrade your video card.

I suspect that you are seeing that the 10K x 10K images gets loaded in the main PictureSnap window, but then when you try to load it a 2nd time, it uses up the remaining video memory.

How much video RAM does your current card have?  Why don't you upload the large images to the probesoftware beta testing site and I'll download and play with it myself a bit.

[David Steele]

I too have had the same problem as Karsten after loading, in my case, a 7168*7680 pixel BSE montage collected on the Thermo NSS system on a 30mm MLA block.  The image appeared to load without issue but I found I couldn't scroll around to locate the fiducials for conversion to 'real' epma stage coordinates.  Like Karsten I've resorted to seriously downsizing the collected images to less than 2000*2000 pixels then importing into PictureSNap.  When it works it work very well!  So the present non-scroll/memory issue is an irritation.  But it would be nice to have the higher resolution available.

The graphics card in our PfEPMA PC is an NVidia Quadro K4000 with 3GB of memory.  I've been advised by our IT people that that card isn't exactly inexpensive either (some AUD$2000!).

What puzzles me is exactly how much on-board graphics card memory is required to handle these seemingly large images Karsten and I (and presumably others) want to use?  I'm interested to hear from Karsten re the memory on 'his' graphics card because he can apparently handle a 10k*10k pixel image, but not 12K*12K.  I haven't attempted to work out 'my' current import pixel limit other than it's between 7168*7680 (doesn't scroll) and 1760*1920 (scrolls)....

I'll post a semi-related Thermo-NSS memory issue separately.....

David
QUT     

[John Donovan]

The graphics card in our PfEPMA PC is an NVidia Quadro K4000 with 3GB of memory.  I've been advised by our IT people that that card isn't exactly inexpensive either (some AUD$2000!).

Hmmm, I guess I assumed the boards increased linearly in price based on the memory, as a 1 GB board is only $54 US:

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/PNY-GeForce-8400GS-DMS-59-Commercial-Series-1GB-GDDR3-PCIe-x16/2566744.aspx

Here's a 2GB video card for $1.7K US:

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Matrox-M9188-Video-Card/1949757.aspx

 

[Karsten Goemann]

OK, I've uploaded PTE-1b_BSE.tif, a 12210x11800 pixel BSE mosaic, to my folder on the beta testing site. It's 8bit greyscale LZW compressed. I have plenty of these images in all shapes and sizes. Does colour vs greyscale make a difference?

This image will produce an out of memory error in PictureSnap on our PFE PC, but If I scale it down to something like 10k x 10k pixels it'll load it.

Our video card is a Nvidia Geforce 9500GT which is over 4 years old, and the info in the control panel says:
Dedicated video memory: 512 MB
Shared system memory: 1791 MB
Total available graphics... (memory I assume): 2303 MB

And to be more clear, PictureSnap will load 10k x 10k pixel images in our case, but truncate anything larger than around 3400x3110 pixels in the MAIN PictureSnap window (the one with the menu bar) to 3400x3110 pixels.
With that 10k x 10k image loaded and truncated in the MAIN PictureSnap window, if I then select "Full Image Picture View" from the menu it opens a separate window where it displays the whole image (untruncated), but I've found no way how to use that separate "Full Image Picture View" window to register the image to the stage coordinates.

So being able to load 10k x 10k images is not too bad, I was just wondering if it was possible to remove the truncation to 3400x3100 px for the main Picture Snap window, so I can register the image to the stage coordinates. If it can open the full image in the "Full Image Picture View" (which is not truncated) after having loading it into the main window (which is truncated), this truncation doesn't appear to be a memory issue to me. But I obviously don't quite understand how it works "under the hood"...

Cheers,

Karsten

[Probeman]

OK, I tried Kartsen's ginormous image on two computers. One with 512 MB video RAM and another with 5.8 GB video RAM. Surprisingly the computer with 5.8 GB video RAM  (and two 24" monitors), only shows a bit more of the full image.

See attached screen shots below.

I not sure what causes the scroll bars in these controls to not display the full image at a 1:1 pixel display, but I will look into it.

[John Donovan]

I figured out that we can load very large images into PictureSnap and see the entire image area at full 1:1 pixel resolution, by a tweak to the scroll event codes.  Here is an example of a 12210 x 11800 pixel image (from Karsten Goemann) displayed in PictureSnap:



There are still going to be possible memory issues on older computers with limited video memory, but most computers today have 1, 2 or 3 GB of video RAM and that is more than enough for images like this. The complete image file (a large mosaic) is linked here if anyone is interested in playing around with it (it's too big for an attachment, even when compressed!).

http://probesoftware.com/download/PTC-1b_BSE.png

Please update to Probe for EPMA v. 11.6.9 to get this new capability.

[Karsten Goemann]

Nice! I'll give that a try!

[Karsten Goemann]

We've been using this for some time now with images up to above 15k x 15k pixels and it works great!

[John Donovan]

We've been using this for some time now with images up to above 15k x 15k pixels and it works great!

It is very nice to receive positive feedback!   

I wonder what the image size limit is? 

[Paul Carpenter]

John,

I returned to the issue of what the maximum size image which can be loaded into Picturesnap. This has been tested on two PCs both running W7 64 bit, with 16 Gb ram. Both PCs have 1 Gb video cards and give similar, but not the same, results.

I have been able to load images up to about 225 Mb into Picturesnap.  It apparently does not matter what the image resolution is. Testing using .bmp vs. .jpg images reveals that a large resolution .jpg image (say 16500x16500) can be loaded as a jpg, but not as a .bmp image. The largest .bmp image I can load is about 8500x8500. Repeated testing shows that it is a Mb limit, not image resolution.

I observe that when the images do load, they load in entirety. The behavior in the past was that the image would load up to a certain point and then clip along the bottom strip; I don't see that happening now.

The resulting error is Out of Memory in the routine PicturesnapFileOpen.

I am interested in other users attempts to open large files. The point here is that it does not look like using a video card with larger RAM makes a difference, and monitoring the Task Manager shows that PFE is not attempting to use significantly more memory.

It would be nice to know in advance what the image limit is.

I should mention that we run the video cards in max color depth mode 32 bit.  The images being loaded are 24 bit deep.  This is what I expect users to come to sessions with, so trying to use a 16 bit image is not realistic. So the problem here is that nowhere near the video card limit is being used by the load procedure. Even if, for example, three planes were being loaded for a ~225 Mb image, that is still less than 1 Gb.

Cheers,

Paul

[John Donovan]

Hi Paul,
I can confirm that it has nothing to do with the amount of video memory.   Loading an image utilizes system RAM, but it has to be contiguous RAM.  If your system memory is close to the limit or locked in various places, a very large image may not load.

If you want you can try re-starting the computer as this will re-load everything into memory and make it more likely you will have enough contiguous memory for really large images.

Because of the requirement for contiguous RAM, the loading of very large images is difficult to predict.
john