I'm returning Painter 7

[jaz]

What a piece of !@#$!@#$

It crashed again while saving and I lost 2 hours worth of work. I guess the only way to really use it is to save as a different name every time you save .

I can't put up with this. Hopefully, I can return the $50 Painter 7 WOW! book I bought from Borders...

(P.S.)

Before folks start getting on my case about not saving as I was going along, I do. I save about every 15 minutes. The problem is that on one of the saves, it crashed while saving, ruining the file...

Jaz

[T Paul]

You have probably done all these tips, but perhaps this link may be useful to others.

Your graphics software is crashing, displaying error messages, hanging your computer, or otherwise not functioning properly... so what can you do?

Click here

~T

[T Paul]

Jaz,

Sorry to hear that you are having so much trouble. I haven't played with my copy of Painter yet and I hope my luck is better than yours. Out of curiosity, is your version 7.0 or 7.1.357? The latest update version should be 7.1.357.

Also if you have applied the update did you uninstall Painter first? According to the update instructions you must uninstall Painter. Then reinstall Painter, but do not open the application and then apply the update over the freshly installed version of Painter 7. I don't know if this will resolve the crashes or not. I hope it does, as I will be very upset if I have as much trouble with it as you have described.

~T

[jaz]

Originally posted by T Paul
Jaz,

Sorry to hear that you are having so much trouble. I haven't played with my copy of Painter yet and I hope my luck is better than yours. Out of curiosity, is your version 7.0 or 7.1.357? The latest update version should be 7.1.357.

Also if you have applied the update did you uninstall Painter first? According to the update instructions you must uninstall Painter. Then reinstall Painter, but do not open the application and then apply the update over the freshly installed version of Painter 7. I don't know if this will resolve the crashes or not. I hope it does, as I will be very upset if I have as much trouble with it as you have described.

~T

The CD I installed was already version 7.1.357

I've tried running mine in win2k compatibility mode. I may give it one more try in win98 mode and see if that makes any difference...

[Andrew B.]

Jaz

I assume you have tried this, but if you have not, don't save or load a PSD with Painter. Use only TIF to pass files back and forth with Photoshop, and only single layers. And when working in Painter, use only RIFF to save as you go along.

I hope you solve this problem because I admire the way you have just dived into Painter with those pictures I saw. I like the one of the woman sitting in front of the water.

[jaz]

Originally posted by ugot2bkdng
Jaz,

Just out of curiousity, what hardware configuration and operating system are you running?

chuck

2 month old Dell Latitude. 1.8gz, 512mb memory, 40gb disk, GeForce video card, windows xp pro.

[jaz]

Originally posted by Andrew B.
Jaz

I assume you have tried this, but if you have not, don't save or load a PSD with Painter. Use only TIF to pass files back and forth with Photoshop, and only single layers. And when working in Painter, use only RIFF to save as you go along.

Mostly I'm loading jpg files to start with. I'll try saving tif files. I'm also currently running in Win98 compatbility mode and so far, no crashes in the last several hours of running...

I hope you solve this problem because I admire the way you have just dived into Painter with those pictures I saw. I like the one of the woman sitting in front of the water.

Thanks Andrew,

I appreciate the feedback. :-) I'm hoping I can stick with it. I really like the program but losing work while saving is the worst kind of bug. I'm an engineer so I'm pretty meticulous about periodically saving my work but corrupting the file when you save is kind of harsh! :-)

[jaz]

If you're willing to work with smaller images, it seems to work more
reliably. Here's what I have done which seems to have me covered...

1) Resize to a maximum size of 2000 by X...
2) Always copy current changes to clipboard and paste into ACDSee and save
there.
3) Then, I perform the save from painter. This has saved me several times
when painter crashes while saving and I lose the file.

I shoot mainly with a Canon D60 which produces 3072x2048 24 bit files. With
WinXP and 512mb of memory, painter just cannot handle the file sizes. It was
crashing about every 15 minutes with this arrangement. With the smaller
resolution files, it's only crashed twice today...

I'm going to keep it after all...

Jaz

[jaz]

A very interesting discovery. The crashing is also related to whether or not you save to the same file name or not. In every other application, once you save a file, the app remembers the file name and subsequent saves go to the same file without a filename prompt. In painter, this does not happen. It defaults to the same file name but continues to prompt every time. I have found that when I save to the current file I am working on, it crashes quite often. When I save to a new file each time, it rarely crashes. Since I have started this new techinque, it has only crashed once in 5 days...

This should to be reported and fixed ASAP!

Jaz

[jeaniesa]

Thanks for the update Jaz. I received Painter 7 before Christmas, but haven't had a chance to play with it yet, so I'm following your experience with lots of interest.
Jeanie

[jaz]

Man, It just crashed doing a save to an 80k 640x480 jpg. When I save to a different file name it works fine. I wonder if it's an XP/Painter bug?

[platscha@cs.com]

I use xp and huge files and rarely do they crash, I know I told you this before, only if I accidently try to do something way over size, like a huge oversized brush by accident, also I save as the first time and then just save there after.
I just think it has to be something with your computer.

[jaz]

Originally posted by platscha@cs.com
I use xp and huge files and rarely do they crash, I know I told you this before, only if I accidently try to do something way over size, like a huge oversized brush by accident, also I save as the first time and then just save there after.
I just think it has to be something with your computer.

I doubt it has anything to do with my computer. No other program crashes like this. I'm a software engineer and I've been running XP since the Beta days. I'm loading 100mb files into PSP and PS7. It's only Painter7 which is crashing. Face it, it's a poorly impmlemented and buggy program. The manual even mentions the possibility of it corrupting it's own files.

Jaz

[platscha@cs.com]

It isn't that I doubt you but it is hard for me to accept because of my experience, I use the program for many hours every day and it doesn't happen to me, and at school for the last 1 1/2 it hasn't happened and also I have several friends, one who is a teacher and fine artist doing huge giclee prints from painter and she has only in several years had 2 crashes. I do know that in the cd I am sending you she mentions an inherent problem with crashing.
Guess I better knock on wood.

[jaz]

Originally posted by platscha@cs.com
It isn't that I doubt you but it is hard for me to accept because of my experience, I use the program for many hours every day and it doesn't happen to me, and at school for the last 1 1/2 it hasn't happened and also I have several friends, one who is a teacher and fine artist doing huge giclee prints from painter and she has only in several years had 2 crashes. I do know that in the cd I am sending you she mentions an inherent problem with crashing.
Guess I better knock on wood.

Are you running XP Pro? Maybe that's the diff?

[platscha@cs.com]

I have reg xp, home maybe it's called but not professional.
At school we are on G4's and my teacher friend uses a G$ but 2 other friends that use it all the time (daily) are on PC, one I know uses win 98 or Me

[jaz]

Originally posted by platscha@cs.com
I have reg xp, home maybe it's called but not professional.
At school we are on G4's and my teacher friend uses a G$ but 2 other friends that use it all the time (daily) are on PC, one I know uses win 98 or Me

Not sure what's causing the problem but saving to new file name each time works for me...