I have a bunch of JPG-files which I want to stitch together with Photoshop's Photomerge function.

I choose File → Automate → Photomerge... and browse for the files. Photoshop opens the files and starts analyzing. I see the process bar filling and different phases are mentioned on the process bar. Nothing weird there.

When the merging is done (and if I don't blink my eyes), I can see layers-palette is populated with the chosen files and, by quickly judging from the layer thumbnails, they're properly aligned. Sometimes the image window itself can be seen, but not always.

Problem is that the layers and the image disappear in a flash. There is no error message. Everything is like prior starting the photomerge. No file has been changed. I could continue to use Photoshop normally.

This is what I've tried so far:

• Loaded folder which has 38 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file
• Loaded the same files, but chose Use Files instead of Use Folder in the photomerge's window
• Loaded 19 JPG images, 4272 x 2848 and ˜ 5 megabytes per file
• Loaded 10 JPG images, ⇑ see above
• Loaded 5 JPG images, see above
• Loaded 3 JPG images, see above
• Scaled the images to 2256 x 1504 and ˜< 1 megabytes per file
  • Loaded in a set of 38, 19, 10, 5, 3
    Following steps are tested with these smaller files and with a set of 5 images
• Read Adobe's forums and reduced the amount of RAM Photoshop uses gradually from ˜ 80 % to 50 % (though I didn't understand the logic behind this)
• Would've reduced cache tile size to 128K, but it was set so already
• Disabled OpenGL
• Scaled the images to 800 x 533 and ˜ 100 kilobytes per file, loaded a set of 5
• Read more unanswered threads around the internet

In between each test I closed and reopened Photoshop. This is the first time I've even tried using photomerge.

Am I doing something wrong? How can I locate what is the problem? How do I fix this?

Photoshop is 64 bit Extended CS5 version. I'm on a mid-2010 quad-core (i5) iMac with up-to-date Mac OS X 10.6.6.

Edit: Weird. First loading the images into one file via File → Scripts → Load Files into Stack… and then using Edit → Auto-Align Layers…, which, effectively, is the same as photomerge (even the dialog looks kind of the same), works! Even with the original JPGs without any issues.

This doesn't fix photomerge, though.