[weblacky]

I thought I'd ask this in the beginner's section because it feels like a beginners question. I've heard rumors that a combination of software and the Irix operating system allowed people to open enormous image files that PCs of the day not only couldn't open but still have trouble opening today. I'm talking about files that might be a gigabyte or more in size.

Making the assumption you're dealing with an Sgi Octane level system or higher and you have more than one gigabyte of active memory installed in the system. What applications would you all recommend for somebody attempting to view, zoom, potentially crop and even resample from very large image files?

I haven't even tried whatever the default viewer is in the operating system. I thought I'd come here to ask what everyone's opinions were. I'm not against starting Photoshop and that kind of software but I'm more talking about viewing than professional editing. However if one of the editing software packages is incredibly good at working with very large files I'd still like to know that.

Also a bonus question. I remember in the 90s when Photo Mosaic creation software became available (making a large picture of say a person out of many many smaller individual pictures) and when panoramic stitching software became available. Any of that available to a package on Irix that works pretty well?  These would've been developed during SGI's hay day when it was king of the roost. So I assume these techniques were pioneered on graphics intensive platforms like SGI.

Thanks!

[Shiunbird]

You made me curious.

I can open TIFF files from my Nikon D850 in Photoshop and they work OK.
The largest file I have is a photograph in Lisbon and used (modern) Photoshop camera RAW to upscale the original NEF file from my D850.

The resulting TIFF file is 16.512 x 11.008 pixels, 2.54 GB.
The original PSD file, saved in Photoshop 2021(ish), is 1.93GB and my Octane opens it fine, too.

My Octane is a 1x400 MHz with 1.5GB of RAM. Opening the file always takes a while because it comes via NFS 100Mbit.

Changing from 48 to 24 bits so I could try filters took 60s. I tried applying a zigzag distortion. It took a good while for the preview window to appear, but when I tried to run it, it complained it had not enough memory.
Gaussian blur 48px ran in 2:30 mins.

So I tried the standard imageview and it opens the image fine. Scrolling is surprisingly speedy, better than photoshop. But when I tried to open the histogram, it complained it had no memory. I am happy that imageview is up to the task of at least opening the file.

Then I tried to convert the PSD to JPG using image independence and it didn't even try, complaining it had no memory.

So yes, I doubt my Pentium 500 with Windows 98 would manage to do any of that! =)))
I am also curious to what kind of software was used to process the really really huge image files back in the day - I always think of stitching lots of satellite photos for a high res printed map or the sort.