Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI Organizer

[BobShrader]

One of the problems with the initial release of PSP XI is the Organizer, formerly called the Browser. It uses an enormous amount of CPU resources, slowing down loading and general operation of the program. Until the bug is fixed, it is possible to disable the Organizer. I've tried the method below, and it works.

Here's how, as offered in the PSP XI Corel newsgroup:

Make sure Paint Shop Pro XI is not running.

Go to C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\Application Data\Corel\

Rename or delete the files "ImageDB.db" and "thumbnails.db".

Create two new (empty) files and name them "ImageDB.db" and "thumbnails.db". You can do this just by creating and renaming a text file, File -> New -> Text Document.

Go to properties on the new blank files and mark them "Read Only."

Result:
Paint Shop Pro XI will open without complaining but no longer maintain the
catalog. You cannot add folders to the catalog.

Note:
Before I did this, PSP was hammering my CPU at 20%-50% (50% being entire
utilization of one core) while it was open and I was not using it. Now that
the catalog is not maintained, it still uses 1%-5% (constantly) when idle.
I have yet to determine why this is. Watching the process with Filemon, I
have determined that it is *not* attempting to open the catalog files that
we have marked read-only nor is it cataloging pictures (there is no file
system activity). I did notice that it constantly queries the same registry
value over and over, I think there is a loop running that checks some other
things (very often) and never stops. (I really hope that Corel fixes this
soon, and also gives us a way to disable the cataloging.)

Note that if you are using the trial version, or you haven't activated PSP
yet, it also constantly checks *itself* (presumably to make sure that it has
not been tampered with or cracked) and this also generates CPU and disk
activity.

[BobShrader]

After using PSP XI with Organizer disabled for several days now, I have not had PSP crash. Before it crashed virtually every time I used it for an extended period of time.

Of course PSP XI still has the long list of other bugs, which I hope Corel software engineers are working overtime to fix in the first patch.

[RobertMarks]

Thank you! I had the same problem and your solution works perfectly. The residual CPU usage, which fluctuates constantly, is worthy of more investigation but at least the crippling effects are mitigated. I must believe that this is a pervasive problem for Corel and I hope they're working on it.

[wick]

I had the same high ~50% CPU usage-when-idle issue with Paint Shop Pro XI (v11.20). In researching this issue, I found the problem was described as PSP gets caught in an endless recursion when indexing files for the Organizer. See site link below. This was the problem too in my case - I had created shortcuts to other folders.

The fix above sounds great, but the way I fixed it was by going into PSP Preferences. In the Organizer section, Folder Exclusions, I excluded the folders where I had created shortcuts. That worked, but since I don't use Organizer at all, I excluded my entire C drive. Bingo, PSP starts faster & doesn't use any CPU when sitting there.

Here's the site where I found the Organizer bug info:
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/archive/t-14578.html
... scroll down (a bunch) to westguard's post from 09-26-2007, 06:54 PM, "CPU Issue Resolved"............

Hope that helps someone.

-Wick
http://www.CarComplaints.com

[novastar]

BobS - THANK YOU! You probably gave my PC some additional life by providing that fix

Corel PSP was previously hammering my CPU at 50% continuously!

[Trev]

In my case my images are on an external drive as also my documents are on a different part ion to the programs on c so I too have C disabled.
One think to watch out for is it will try to catalogue every image file and format that it can. I discovered this years back with Thumbs plus. There are an awful lot of images of buttons and icons in the program files that you don't want and in the temporary download files. So with any Media cataloguing application first steep is to point it to only the files and types you want and beware of PDF. Its an image format but could contain 30 pages in the one file Now that will slow PSP a little and do you want to use psp to read them any how

[Chickiepet]

One of the problems with the initial release of PSP XI is the Organizer, formerly called the Browser. It uses an enormous amount of CPU resources, slowing down loading and general operation of the program. Until the bug is fixed, it is possible to disable the Organizer. I've tried the method below, and it works.

Here's how, as offered in the PSP XI Corel newsgroup:

Make sure Paint Shop Pro XI is not running.

Go to C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\Application Data\Corel\

Rename or delete the files "ImageDB.db" and "thumbnails.db".

Create two new (empty) files and name them "ImageDB.db" and "thumbnails.db". You can do this just by creating and renaming a text file, File -> New -> Text Document.

Go to properties on the new blank files and mark them "Read Only."

Result:
Paint Shop Pro XI will open without complaining but no longer maintain the
catalog. You cannot add folders to the catalog.

Note:
Before I did this, PSP was hammering my CPU at 20%-50% (50% being entire
utilization of one core) while it was open and I was not using it. Now that
the catalog is not maintained, it still uses 1%-5% (constantly) when idle.
I have yet to determine why this is. Watching the process with Filemon, I
have determined that it is *not* attempting to open the catalog files that
we have marked read-only nor is it cataloging pictures (there is no file
system activity). I did notice that it constantly queries the same registry
value over and over, I think there is a loop running that checks some other
things (very often) and never stops. (I really hope that Corel fixes this
soon, and also gives us a way to disable the cataloging.)

Note that if you are using the trial version, or you haven't activated PSP
yet, it also constantly checks *itself* (presumably to make sure that it has
not been tampered with or cracked) and this also generates CPU and disk
activity.

Hello!! Brand new member as of 5 minutes ago I've been reading through the various posts on the Organiser issues. I have Ultimate 12.50 version. Because of the way the Organiser works, cataloguing all and everything it wishes rather than allow us to browse as needed, it really ties up system resources and slows the whole computer down to a crawl. I have a 2.66ghz core 2 duo with 2gb 800mhz ram so it's not a shabby setup, along with a 512mb Nvidia card, so to have my system resources so hogtied as to affect everything else on my pc is just not on. Thank you to Bob Shrader for the tip about renaming that file and making it a read only. That info sure got my butt out of a sling this morning when X2 decided to crash over and over again because the organiser refused to load properly. I had realised prior to this that the organiser was an issue so I always made sure to close it down prior to shutting the program down. However, this morning we had a power flick and of course X2 was open and being worked in, pc rebooted and the organiser had still been open when the power flicked Tried to open, nada...crash almost immediately, until I found Bob's post. Now I can open it just fine...however...

As I work in paint shop pro all day every day, I need to be able to view and select various items, many in pspimage format, .psd and .png so not very often I actually deal with jpegs. With the now 'read only' imageDB file, I can't have thumbnails of folder contents showing up at all, so I'm between a rock and a hard place here lol

What would be your advice for an alternative to browsing inside my folders for items I wish to use with or without (?) the Organiser please??

While I'm here, another quick/unrelated question about the organiser. A friend has the same version as me and for some reason all her folders and particularly sub-folders refuse to stay in alphabetical order, even though they are all in alpha order on her hard drive. They seem to be read in a garbled fashion once the organiser gets a hold of them. She has the 'sorting' set for Folders.

Thanks a lot for any replies to these rather annoying issues

[Trev]

Psp 9 introduced a Shell Extension Thumbnail handler. I was under the impression it was part of x onwards. This Will make PSP image Thumbs display in explorer windows One fo PSD is also available from MS Power toys and a Nef Cr2 also. for thumbnails of other Raw formats ARC SOFT have a free download.
Note thes are only for sowing the thumbs not opening the image.

Once PSP has cataloged the thumbs It will be relativly idel and the thrashing may have been coused by a corupt data base. You can allow or disallow Psp from cataloguing after you have close PSP in preferences. So making the database writeable and letting it run should get it over and done with providing you not letting it catalogue Multi page PDF files and a HDD full of movies

[OldRadioGuy]

The problem with the X.. Organizer is that by default it's set to scan for all images. If you have a lot of photos on your hard drive(s) to catalog, it bogs down the system when you first run PSP, and good luck accessing the PSP option to limit that scan during this operation.

Installation of Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X.. also installs an applet in memory that monitors for Organizer additions and changes.

Corel's decision to switch from the old Jasc (for newbies, the previous owner of PSP) Browser to the Organizer was likely a marketing decision to better compete with Photoshop Elements. Elements' Organizer, by the way, is much more manageable.

[OldRadioGuy]

What would be your advice for an alternative to browsing inside my folders for items I wish to use with or without (?) the Organiser please??

In Windows Vista, Explorer works very well viewing thumbnails. Two external programs that do a nice job are ACDSee Photo Manager and ThumbsPlus.