Hello, can anyone tell me what to do about Painter 6.03 crashing when working on files larger than 1 meg.? I am running on a P3 PC with windows 98 se.
When I try to reopen the file I get a message saying "Bad RIFF Data.
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Hello, can anyone tell me what to do about Painter 6.03 crashing when working on files larger than 1 meg.? I am running on a P3 PC with windows 98 se.
When I try to reopen the file I get a message saying "Bad RIFF Data.
Hello, can anyone tell me what to do about Painter 6.03 crashing when working on files larger than 1 meg.? I am running on a P3 PC with windows 98 se.
When I try to reopen the file I get a message saying "Bad RIFF Data.
Hello!
I have Painter 6.03, Win '98 SE, 128 MB of RAM, and an AMD K6-2 350 processor.
<ul>
<LI>I opened a .bmp that was 2.72 MB in size. (Incidentally, in geekspeak we type the letters MB as shorthand for MegaByte --- what you called meg.)
<ul>
<LI>I had no problem opening a 2.72 MB .bmp[/list][/list]
<ul>
<LI>Then I saved the .bmp as a .rif file.
<ul>
<LI>The size of the .rif was now 1.49 MB in size.[/list]
<LI>I then opened the 1.49 MB .rif -- no problems
<ul>
<LI>Since this is larger than 1 MB in size, if this were a problem inherent in Painter 6.03, then I should have had the same problem.[/list][/list][/list]
This leads me to suspect that you have something else going on here. If you are unfamiliar with computers, and if no one else maintains your computer for you, you may need some digital spring cleaning in your computer.
One thing I always do, especially when programs misbehave, is defragment (or if you have Norton Utilities it's called Speed Disk) my hard drive.
<UL>What does defrag or speed disk do?
<LI>The short answer: it sorts out your digital files on your hard drive.
<LI>The long answer: over time, your hard drive can become like my physical desktop --- cluttered and unorganized. I have jumbled stacks of papers, disks, books, pens, pencils, in very disorderly stacks and piles.
<LI>Disorderly is the operative word here. Defragment or Speed Disk both take the time to bring order to your digital files on your hard drive.
<LI>Disk Defragmenter comes, "free" with MS Win '98 SE (goto Start Button, Programs-->Accessories -->System Tools -- >Disk Defragmenter ) everyone I know hates this program because it is slow [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_mad.gif[/img]
<LI>
Speed Disk from Norton Utilities is far faster (and to my mind) does the job just as well as defrag.</li
[/list]
That is the best info. I can offer at the moment. If you give us more details, then maybe someone else will be able to jump in with better advice.
Good Luck,
Athena
;
[This message was edited by T. Athena Hatton on August 28, 2000 at 01:30 AM.]
Monastic Bat,
if your file isn't gargantuan like 4.5MB, (if it is more like 1.7 MB or 2.5 MB) you could send me the problem rif and I could see if I have any problems opening it here.
how much RAM do you have?
how much space you do have left on the drive that you installed Painter to? is it the same drive that Windows is on?
Just some ideas
Athena
Athena,
Please bear with me if my syntax is not entirely correct. I am a Lunatic Artist not a computer person.
Thank you for your suggestions and offer to try to open the Riff files but I have already deleted them. Let me give you some additional Info. regarding my machine and what I have done already.
I am running a Pentium 450 PC. I have 64MB of memory. I have about 7.6 GB of free disk space on drive C. Painter is on the same drive as my operating system.
I run Scan Disk, Defrag and Disk Clean on a regular basis. I have deleted the Prebuilt brush file (as suggested by someone else) and cleaned out my E-Mail folders. I am ordering another 64MB of memory today.
Again thanks for you help. I will let you know what happens after I get the new memory installed.
xxx
[This message was edited by rosebytes on October 12, 2000 at 04:16 PM.]
Rosebytes,
You are absolutely correct! I was leafing through the Painter 6 manual and there in black and white, on page 49, they said that
Painter does not support LZW compressed TIFF file format. Only uncompressed TIFF files open into painter.
I wonder what would happen if you opened the LZW .tif in photoshop and saved it as a.psd, then opened the .psd in painter and saved as .rif -- I wonder if that would re-open then?
Monastic Bat,
While I was sitting there, bored, waiting for my computer to finish a weekly virus scan, I also noticed that the back cover of the manual said 64+ MB recommended. (yep, I was really bored)
Hopefully the extra RAM will help. The rest,of your computer sounds great 450 mHz PIII, 7.6 GB hard drive. . . better than my machine. I've got to get another year out of this machine (at least).
I remember that last autumn, before I bought Painter 6 for Christmas, I asked the forum if the bugs had been fixed and one of the people who had many problems with Painter said that she solved her problems with painter by getting herself a Wacom Tablet and everything was fixed.
Bizzare, huh?
Anyway, I'm going to write to her and see if she can shed any light on the issue (since I don't recall what problems she had with painter).
Re: Syntax
I understand. Myself, I like to be corrected. When I was learning spanish, I used to hate it if the native speaker just smiled and nodded that they understood -- instead of correcting me. I figure geekspeak is a completely different language for most people -- so I try to help when I can.
I hope when it comes to art terms, you'll jump in and correct those of us who might use a stray term in the wrong way.
Best Regards,
Athena
I know that this is a Windows driven site and all, but if anyone can offer up advice to us macweenies I'd be much obliged. I've got many of the same problems (don't dare touch that camel hair round!) and have tried most of the solutions that I'm reading about. Hopefully that 6.1 upgrade that's coming will tend to some of this as it seems to be universal... . [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_razz.gif[/img]
Michael
I am not a Mac user but you might try the House Cleaning tips that Athena gave me also try cleaning out you E-mail folders and reduce the number of installed Fonts on your system.
Don't know if any of this will help but good luck.
Michael,
I read your first post and racked my brain over how to answer. I finally decided to offer some generic Troubleshooting questions that you can answer and maybe a fellow Mac user will be able to help or maybe we'll get an answer this way (at least we'll give it a sincere try [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] )
[/list][*]How much RAM do you have? Since you mentioned RAM Doubler in your first post, I suspect your "old" Mac may be low on memory (but we'll only know when you tell us [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] )
- Question
- What System are you using, System 6, System 7, System 8, System 9 ? These Macs last forever so that would be helpful to know.
- how old is old?
<ul>- you say you are having problems on an old Mac. Are we talking pre-PowerMacintosh??
- If so, we may be severly out of luck here.
- The Painter 6 program needs:
<ul>- Power Macintosh
- System 8 or later
- a minimum of 32 MB of RAM
- (64 MB of RAM recommended) I have 128 MB but I could easily see where more could be much better. Felix, I am soo envious. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
- 24 bit color display recommended (I don't know how you adjust that on Mac but I will bet almost anything that the Mac has some help files on that)
As a general rule in computing (PC or Mac) software emulation(like RAM Doubler) is always slower than actual hardware. so if RAM doubler only costs $40 or $50 (I really have no idea how much it costs) you may think it is worth the gamble but I think you could put that same money toward the purchase of some actual memory chips and the money would be better spent.
Thinking back, in '95 when RAM Doubler made a big splash, I remember hearing good things about it. (OK I'll be specific -- 1 sales person told me it was good and 1 person who had actually used it to run win '95 on a 386 -- a machine that win 95 was not supposed to work on -- does that make a majority? of course not. )
You'd have to make sure that the current version of RAM Doubler runs on the version of Apple's System you have.
[*]if you really had your heart set on RAM Doubler, I'd definitely check the box and see if they have a 30 day money back guarantee (but even those are a pain to follow up on)[/list]
That's the best I can offer 'til you tell us what ya got in your "old" Mac [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] .
Athena
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
PS In case you dove straight to this posting because of the Mac title, do read Felix's post above. It may give you a better feel for how much RAM you need.
xxx
[This message was edited by rosebytes on October 12, 2000 at 04:17 PM.]
Felix,
You certainly have answered my question. Thank you.
Hellooo Felix!
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> All fluff, no substance.
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] Au Contraire, your messages were sooo packed with information -- I was coming up with probably 50 to 100 questions and comments I wanted to make about all the great stuff you posted! I've been coming back and re-reading them just because they were so well said.
You may want to save some of these great postings of yours to disk "just in case" something should ever happen to this data. This is just too good to leave to chance.
The time you spent putting these postings online is very appreciated. I want to second Monastic Bat's sentiment -- Thank you Felix.
And let me also add to the thank you, Welcome! please make yourself at home here. And please feel free to share whatever images, tips, or advice you can spare.
Thank you again,
Athena
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Rosebytes,
This story might be remotely related. Hopefully, some of the hocus-pocus I've gone though might give you an idea of what to try.
<ul>Driver Story 1
<LI>I bought a great plug-in called SPG WebTools. It is a wonderful plugin and it has a fabulous section called Flare FX renderer (just awesome stars and Plasma Clouds -- I'll try and find some samples).
<LI>I have an All-In-Wonder-Pro 8MB AGP video card. But that part of the plugin (the Flare FX renderer) won't work when I have the special ATI video driver installed. If I un-install the ATI video driver and just use the driver that Windows 98 SE first selected for my video card, then I can use the Flare FX renderer.
<LI>I wrote to ATI about this driver problem and they said they'd never heard of this particular program or the problem that I had. They also said that based on the error I got when running the Flare FX Renderer, I needed the latest BIOS for my motherboard and the newest GART driver for my chipset (I have an AWARD bios and an MVP3 Chipset from VIA. I built my own computer so luckily, I knew where to look for this stuff.) As it turns out, the latest BIOS and the newest GART driver didn't change the problem with the plugin at all. So I just un-install the ATI driver for Flare FX and re-install my ATI video driver when I want to see TV on my computer.[/list]
<ul>Driver Story 2
<LI>I just got Corel Draw 9 (since I guessed they'd finally gotten the bugs out) and right out ot the box, my Corel PhotoPaint 9 was crashing.
<LI>My trusty Wacom Art Z II was hypersensitive in PP9 and I couldn't even use the tablet setup within Photo Paint to try and adjust that. <LI>Michael Cervantes of the Corel PhotoPaint Forum here at I-US suggested that I have both the Wacom control panel open and the Corel PhotoPaint 9 open and make adjustments that way. I was skeptical but I tried it.... The man is a genius! It worked!
<LI>I have also decided that it is best to follow Felix's advice (at least I thought I read this in one of his posts) about re-starting between using programs. In my case, Corel PhotoPaint 9 and Painter 6. It seems to clean up any sloppiness that one program may leave behind as far as how stable my Wacom is after using one or the other. (I just discovered this worked last night)[/list]
just trying to offer any morsel of info that might help. If it doesn't help you, it might help a Lurker. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
Good Luck,
Athena
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
[This message was edited by T. Athena Hatton on September 07, 2000 at 03:33 PM.
[This message was edited by T. Athena Hatton on September 07, 2000 at 03:39 PM.]
I once got a 'Bad RIFF data' message also. I think it is just a corrupted file. Awhile back I completely reinstalled Os 9 on my Mac and erased the hard drive. All my Painter files were transfered to my iMac then moved back to the G4 after the reinstall. In the process nearly all the .rif files were corrupted in some way. Some would not open while others had defects in the image. I now save my images in both .rif and .psd
stecyk66[/LIST]
stecyk66,
Welcome to the painter forum!
Saving in both .psd and .rif format to avoid data corruption is an excellent idea. I had certainly never thought of that solution.
(but your .psd files survived the round trip from G4 to iMac back to G4? mind boggling)
Speaking of data corruption, trial and error (in other graphics programs) has taught me to save the same file under two (or more) different names just in case one of the saves gets corrupted.
And if some people are thinking that saving one image under different formats or different filenames is extreme, . . . think of the time you might lose if you don't. Disk space is cheap -- time isn't. (Especially in something like painter, sometimes you just can't duplicate that perfect combination of strokes.)
Athena
[This message was edited by T. Athena Hatton on September 09, 2000 at 03:43 AM.]
Stecyk66
Thanks for the advice, I generally save as PSD most of the time. I go back and forth to Photoshop with most of my work. I am just now figuring out the way Painter 6 uses plugins. I guess I am relearning Painter since I gave up on it after the sell out.
PC 100 ram vs the old EDO Ram
Painter 6 worked better with the old EDO RAM, however will now get rid of the 100 MHz RAM and put in 133 MHz next week when I upgrade the motherboard. Some motherboards specify a particular brand of ram, but I failed to read the manual (sound familiar?)regarding the "suggestion." got rid of one 128 mb. stick and that improved the performance - hmm, 384 mb RAM to 256 MB improved the performance. egads! the manufacturer was actually correct! amazing.
"Computers and software are all buggy and should be avoided as much as possible" said Sue. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]
Also, I didn't have a Wacom tablet, then finally bought one, and *that* helped nearly eliminated the locking up. Removed the tablet, kept the drivers, Painter didn't seem to know the tablet was gone. hmm, code must stipulate a tablet?
I have never had a graphics tablet and this is the first version of Painter to keep locking up on me. Kinda of annoying since this also is the first version to claim new and improved support for the mouse. I notice the lockups only happen when I am using some brushes freehand style--they don't happen when I use the brush in a straight line or when using any other tools. I put in a new mouse but that didn't help.
Am considering a Wacom graphics tablet just to get past this lockup problem. And your post along with some others here is now reinforcing this idea with me. Kind of an expensive solution for me though cause I draw with lines and Bezier curves and moving nodes around and a mouse is fine for that.
Can you or anyone tell me if your lockups only happen when using brushes freehand? This would cinch it for me that I needed a graphics tablet to get Painter 6 to work for me.
Has anybody else had problems with using the text tool in P6? I've never been able to use it. When I press the text tool button the program freezes and I have to reboot. I hoped there would be a fix in 6.01 or 6.03 but no such luck. I've never seen this particular problem mentioned anywhere. I can use Dynamic Text so it's not a big deal, I'd just have more confidence in Painter if it was a little more robust overall (like Photoshop - a dream program). I am using a Celeron machine with plenty HD space and 192MB RAM. Are there any more patches or upgrades in the works? Will there ever be a Painter 7?
Timbre2,
This may have no bearing on your problem in Painter 6 but I remember in Painter 5, if my program took a long time to load, it was because I had many more fonts than 300 fonts loaded. My point is that maybe too many fonts are interfering with the Painter's text tool. If you have some kind of font manager, you could remove your less essential fonts and see if that helps. (This is just a guess.)
I also know that Painter seems to enjoy being the star of the show. Meaning that it works best if you only have Painter running. (And to make certain Painter's feelings aren't hurt, I will re-start the computer so that Painter is the first program I run in a given computing session -- no internet, nothing -- just Painter. Computing has gotten so complex these days, you just can't tell what is the culprit sometimes).
And finally, always take time to speed disk or defrag your hard drive. That will also help Painter run better.
Re: Painter 7
I have no contact with Corel but from what I've read and from the fact that a month or so ago they (Corel) had a live chat with program developers that was open to the public. I would expect that a Painter 7 is in development. We'll have to see.
Good Luck,
Athe