---
title: "How Photoshop solved working with files larger than can fit into memory"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-photoshop-solved-working-with-files-larger-than-can-fit-into-memory-wszpmxgfz
source_url: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/how-photoshop-solved-working-with-files-larger-than-can-fit-into-memory
type: article
source: "Community Picks"
published: 2024-03-28T07:40:19.679Z
updated: 2024-05-09T09:06:08.895Z
tags: ["webassembly", "photoshop"]
reading_time: 5
upvotes: 6
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# How Photoshop solved working with files larger than can fit into memory

**[Community Picks](https://daily.dev/sources/community)** · 5 min read · 6 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Adobe Photoshop engineering solved the challenge of working with files larger than can fit into memory by implementing a software virtual memory system (VM) and using a mipmap representation for image data. The VM manages document data, undo history, and working storage, while scratch files provide disk-based backing for VM pages.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://developer.chrome.com/blog/how-photoshop-solved-working-with-files-larger-than-can-fit-into-memory>

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---

Tags: [#webassembly](https://daily.dev/tags/webassembly), [#photoshop](https://daily.dev/tags/photoshop)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-photoshop-solved-working-with-files-larger-than-can-fit-into-memory-wszpmxgfz)