Comment 2 for bug 685885

Let's consider the "issue 2" as "fix released" and continue this discussion on "issue 1" as you call it.

restrictions that I know of right now, is 4Gb of pixel data for TIFF files and 64k pixels per side for JPG.

How about if we make this a warning.

if (((height * width * estimate_for_bytes_per_pixel) > 2LL^32)) &&
     (outputformat == TIFF)) {
    ..... WARNING: possibly generating more than 4Gb of pixel data. May not fit in output TIFF file.
}
if (((width > 65500) ||
     (height > 65500)) &&
    (outputformat == JPG)) {
   ..... WARNING: JPG format may not support the output image size.
}

Then it isn't as critical, and doesn't have to be 100% right. We can easily add checks for limits on other output formats as we go along.