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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
The Black Curtain
Joseph D. Sullivan, Photographer
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Shoreham | NY | USA | Posted: 9:27 PM on 03.20.05 |
->> I've had this unusual (for me at least) experience a few times while using photoshop7's browser on both my iMac and iBook. While downloading images from my card and scrolling to the bottom of the page, the browser window turns solid black, right near the end of the download. Most of the download is visible, but then, near the end...zap...solid black. Today, I downloaded again and...nothing, no problem. Here's what I have noticed.
The first time was with a Lexar 512mb 40x.
Yesterday, it was a new Lexar 1gig 80x.
The problem occurs with Photoshop7's browser but when I looked at the same images with a trial 'Photo mechanic' software. Nothing...no problem. Same card, same download, same day.
Even though the area is blackened on the surface, the image is still below it...somewhere. When I move the mouse around the 'black zone', boxes containing the pix info appear so I know I am centered on the image. I click on it and voila...the image appears.
I thought I hit on something once. While the images are downloading, sometimes I am impatient and click on an image to enlarge it. It works but.... I can see the frame numbers at the bottom of the browser clicking away then, it says: 'writing cache to disk'. Then I can do nothing until the operation is finished.
My thought is that I will not have a problem, like today, if I do nothing until ALL of the card is downloaded and written before I try to select and adjust images.
If I reload the card and wait till it's completely downloaded...too late, it's black to stay, even if i save it to disc.
I am going to be ordering Photo Mechanic soon anyway but...any comments? |
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George Bridges, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 10:46 PM on 03.20.05 |
->> What amount of RAM do you have in your Macs?
Just a theory, but Photoshop is a RAM hog and when you get a full disk the computer may be running out of memory to display the thumbnails. PhotoMechanic and Photoshop may look at the thumbnails differently, and PM probably does not use as much RAM, which is why you can see all of them with PM. |
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Joseph D. Sullivan, Photographer
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Shoreham | NY | USA | Posted: 10:58 PM on 03.20.05 |
->> George
I hadn't thought of that possiblity.
My iMac is running 640 mb of RAM and my iBook some 700+mbs. I am shooting with a Canon 1D set to 'Large, Normal' quality. I have not counted the number of images downloading when this happens although, I have shot more images on the 'Large, Fine' setting and not had the 'black curtain' effect.
Both machines were 'maxed out' with RAM when I bought them new. I would hope that isn't the problem. |
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Greg Ferguson, Photographer
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Scottsdale | Az | USA | Posted: 11:08 PM on 03.20.05 |
->> The described problem doesn't sound like a low disk or RAM issue.
If a Mac running MacOS X runs low on RAM it will begin swapping the application memory in and out and will go to a crawl - a very SLOOOOOW crawl to do anything. You will hear the drive being thrashed.
If the disk is full you'll get warnings from the OS saying so.
To me it sounds like there is a problem with the installed version of Photoshop 7. I never encountered that situation with PS 7, even when I had too many apps open and was running low on RAM and experiencing the slowdown.
Photo Mechanic is a great tool. I almost NEVER use Photoshop's browser anymore. |
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Matthew Rosenberg, Photographer
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Croydon | PA | United States | Posted: 11:17 PM on 03.20.05 |
| ->> I have encountered that exact error using PS 7 on my TiBook. I haven't had enough money to upgrade the ram beyond the factory 512mb so that could be the culprit. Since upgrading to CS I haven't had a repeat of that error. Though I could still definitely use more ram. |
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Larry Clark, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Falls Church | VA | USA | Posted: 10:54 PM on 03.21.05 |
| ->> In the WIN world, I found PhotoShop 7's browser to be a dog. I just use ACDSee to browse, sort and cull, and set the editor for PhotoShop. |
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Joseph D. Sullivan, Photographer
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Shoreham | NY | USA | Posted: 8:29 AM on 03.22.05 |
| ->> Thanks for your replys. I've never had a problem writing the cache to disk as I seem to have more than enough space with both machines. I figure the problem is with the Photoshop7 browser itself and I'm in the process of ordering a stand alone browser. |
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Chuck Steenburgh, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Lexington | VA | USA | Posted: 8:39 PM on 03.22.05 |
| ->> PS7's browser can only handle like 400 or 500 files. More than that and you get the black window problem. |
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