liquid colour crashes prog.

**frightful** · 25 July 2016, 10:17 PM

Hi
I have never been able to use the liquid colour live effect in Xara without it hanging and eventually crashing. Many of the live effects are slow but this one just wont work. I have tried it in the past using various versions of the programme and never had it work. I just had another try on both my laptop and desktop computers with no luck. For me it isn't the end of the world because the same effect in Photoshop works perfectly but it would be nice to be able to complete all the parts of a task in my favourite graphics programme.

My computers have 12GB Ram and more than enough space on the hard drives.

Can anyone make a suggestion of an answer to this please.

David

**zaphodeist** · 25 July 2016, 10:29 PM

Never had a problem with Liquid Colour. Just tried on DP12 and it's fine. You could try locking the effect via the button on the toolbar and/or setting locked as default in the Page Options>>effects dialogue box.

**frightful** · 25 July 2016, 10:50 PM

Thank you zaphodeist but have tried that and it made no difference.

**angelize** · 25 July 2016, 11:04 PM

I'm sure you probably already know this but have you tried running as administrator? If it works you should only have to do it once.

**handrawn** · 25 July 2016, 11:22 PM

you are running the 64bit version of the program? if you are only running the 32bit version then 12 GB is no help at all, the program will not see most of it

**frightful** · 25 July 2016, 11:24 PM

Originally Posted by angelize

I'm sure you probably already know this but have you tried running as administrator? If it works you should only have to do it once.

Yes I have tried this and again the same result: the dialogue opens and I see a preview as I use the various brushes but when I click ok the dialogue closes and the prog hangs. I see the message to 'click the object to see the live effect'. the prog hangs at that point and if I click again it crashes. If I leave it and have a coffee break it is still sitting there waiting for me when I return.

It's late now but I'll have a look back tomorrow to see if there's any nocturnal notion from anyone... thanks again.
David

**frightful** · 26 July 2016, 05:23 AM

Originally Posted by handrawn

you are running the 64bit version of the program? if you are only running the 32bit version then 12 GB is no help at all, the program will not see most of it

Yes I am running the 64bit version but I wonder if there is a memory allocation problem here. How do I go about allocating memory to Xara.

**handrawn** · 26 July 2016, 07:23 AM

the interesting thing is that this is happening on two different computers, so I think you should be looking at what they have in common

what are you applying this effect to; have other effects already been applied, and if so are they locked; has it been photo-manipulated in xara, would it be better to use a bitmap copy; is the object grouped?

in short - does it work if you use a very simple bitmap [such as the default one supplied with the program

**frightful** · 26 July 2016, 01:30 PM

Thank you Handrawn.

In this instance, size doesn't seem to matter. I've imported to 'new blank photo' at 96 and imported to an A4 page at 360 or so all with the same crashing result. Looking at the detail in Task Manager it looks like Designer or CambBridge hangs before closing.
I've taken a quick look at the Event viewer but life's too short to summon up the long term attention span grey cells to make any real sense of it.

I have used 'detail' in the Task Manager to let both Designer and CamBridge use more RAM but they don't use any more than usual. Many of the live effects work okay, albeit very slowly but the liquid colour crashes every time when the ok button is used after seeing a preview. For this effect there is no progress bar shown, indicating that the effect isn't taking place. Maybe it's a problem with CamBridge32.exe, its name suggests that it is bridging the differences between the plugins and the system.

So... what I did was to download the 32 bit version onto my laptop and it works perfectly. As most of what I do with Xara is lightweight I can manage quite well with 32 bit. In fact, at my age I shouldn't really be allowed to use anything with that amount of speed. I consider the question answered and shall hurry back to catch up on my lazing about.
Thanks everyone for input.
David

**wizard509** · 26 July 2016, 04:59 PM

David,
The 64 bit version should work I think, but, I don't know for sure because I do not have pro.. It could have been a bad download the first time. You might try again just to be sure. Of course if you are happy with the 32 bit version then my all means stick with it.