How much memory / RAM does Softener need?

NB: Softener 2 has much more efficient memory use - we recommend upgrading if you haven't already. If you are getting a “Memory Access Violation” error instead of an “Out Of Memory” or “Not enough memory” error, you should look at this support document instead:

http://www.namesuppressed.com/support/plugins-memory-access-violation.shtml

The amount of memory that Softener 1.x requires depends on the size of the image you are editing. Softener 1.x requires up to 3 times the amount of memory of the current image. So where a 7 Megapixel image (3000 x 2400 pixels) normally uses 21 Megabytes of memory, Softener would need an extra 63 Megabytes of memory to process that image.

If you're encountering Out Of Memory errors, you might need to adjust Photoshop's memory usage settings in the Edit -> Preferences -> Memory & Image Cache menu option. It's actually best to leave this setting around 50% or 60% - setting it too high can actually slow down your computer and cause it to run out of memory.

The best way to save memory is to resize your image. If your final image will only be 640 x 480, you should resize the image down to that size before using Softener.