The software itself requires 262 MByte of RAM after a fresh start of Photoshop without any images loaded.
Your RAM utilization has increased to 369 MByte after viewing a 5MByte JPG 12MP 8bpc image.
Image Compression:
Any compressed Image File type may be decompressed by Photo Editing Software and made editable.
JPG, like PNG and GIF, is a compressed image file format. The Software can reduce file size without sacrificing quality by employing compression methods. An image, of course, may only be compressed to a certain extent before a perceptible decrease in quality occurs.
Because your photo modifications are done on a pixel level, needing to compress the Image after every pixel change will make the editing exceedingly sluggish and CPU heavy.
Bit Depth:
Bit Depth is another element to consider when determining how much RAM is required to edit an uncompressed image.
Typically, you edit images in RGB mode, which means you have three channels (R, G, and B) and each channel may save 8 bits or 256 possible values.
8bit 10bit gradient color bit detph8bit 10bit gradient color bit detph8bit 10bit gradient color bit depth.
256 values per channel, 8 bits per channel (or Color). Your JPG images are either 8bpc or 24bpp.
Resolution:
The second critical component is, of course, image resolution. Fortunately, the math is simple:
[Number of Pixels in Width] x [Number of Pixels in Height] x [Bit Depth] x [Number of Channels] divided by 8,000,000.
Why are there 8 million? Because 8 bits equal one byte and one megabyte equals 1000000 bytes.
This will provide the Uncompressed Image Size in MBytes that is currently stored in your RAM. If you have only one Layer!
Layers in Photoshop:
If you have several Layers, you may roughly increase the amount of RAM used per Image by the number of Layers.
Also, by checking at the bottom left corner of Photoshop, you can quickly see how much RAM your uncompressed image is now utilizing. The first number is without Layers, and the second includes all Layers.
How much RAM is required for Photoshop?
Let’s look at this table, where all the important factors above have already been considered:
RAM needs per Photoshop Layer:
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