My photoshop oversight

[LS-Jebus]

I have been working on a large map in photoshop that is mostly depicting political divisions and hundreds of cities, which I intend to replicate on a large board to be hung on a wall in my room. Currently the photoshop version is 9748 x 7664 pixels. While working on the map, the program was slow, saving took too long, and it just made the process frustrating.

When I tried to copy the file to an external backup drive down in the basement, I discovered that it was 812mb.

Well, no wonder my computer was having problems.

So I went into the file and tried to see what I could do to reduce the size. The resolution could not be changed for practical reasons, and every layer in use was meaningful and could not be merged. Until I realized that every twelve or so layers had an invisible layer between them with outdated information. And at the bottom of the layer list I still had some lighting effects and terrain detail layers that weren't in use and were left over from when I was working in a dfferent style. And at the top of the layer list was my "overlays" folder. Five of the six layers there were now unnecessary because they were from yet another map style I tried that I decided against for practical reasons (since I am going to hand draw this).

So, after cutting out the now redundant layers, unused blank layers, obsolete details, unneeded effects and overlays, my project was cut down to a mere 95.3mb. Now I can edit with ease and save quickly. And copying the file to the drive takes seconds instead of an estimated time of 28 minutes.

People invented the facepalm smiley for exactly these kind of events.