Installed version 18.5
Using focus merge with 3 photos it crashed straight away. Repeated with various photos but still crashed. Photos could load individually.
Then installed the beta version. An improvement as you could see things happening, rather than long pauses.
Photos are Nikon Z7_2 RAW 12 bit lossless compressed, photo size is shown at approx. 40.4MB. When selecting 30 photo files it shows 1.15GB
Computer has 32GB Memory
I have then run the focus merge with mixed results.
In preferences / performance RAM was set at 24575MB
15 photos successfully merged
18 photos crash at focus merge - colour
Hardware accelerator turned off
18 photos crash at focus merge - colour
In preferences / performance RAM was set at 11263MB, Hardware accelerator turned back on.
15 photos successfully merged
18 photos crash after loading and clicking ok
In preferences / performance RAM was set at 30720MB
18 photos successfully merged
In preferences / performance RAM was set at 65536MB
20 photos successfully merged
From task master memory, with program open, but no files 3.4 of 31.9GB ie the resting state.
14.0 during align merge sources
5.7 during focus merge - black and white
6.5 during focus merge – colour
The below results are with the RAM set at 65536MB, if I had forgot to change it, the program would crash and I repeated the test.
30 photos crash during align merge sources approx. 5th file
25 photos crash during focus merge – colour
25 photos successfully merged
25 photos successfully merged
30 photos crash during focus merge – colour approx. 9th file
30 photos crash during end of align merge sources
25 photos crash during focus merge – black and white
20 photos crash during focus merge – colour
15 photos successfully merged
20 photos successfully merged
25 photos successfully merged
30 photos crash during end of align merge sources
My conclusion was having the preferences / performance RAM set at 65536MB helped.
There is a limit on file size, but I could not determine the limit.
Hope this helps. Alec