Out of memory error

[Russell]

Good evening folks. I can't believe I am here again.

My brand-spanking new Xara 6 is reporting Out of Memory error on a file that is 29.9 Mb big. I optimized the photos & graphics down to 300 DPI, which is what I need for quality printing. The original was 47 Mb big, so, this was a substantial reduction. I chose PNG because quality matters for this client.

When I try to drag'n'drop a PNG of moderate size, say 6-8 Mb into the document, Xara tells me there is a "read error". The file is a perfectly good PNG, nothing wrong with it. When I try to import the file, it tells me "Out of Memory error".

This is not that big a file. What gives? I thought Xara was supposed to be super-advanced and all that. My old InDesign CS 1 (yes, 1) handles files bigger than this, though it is a pig on memory, very slow.

[Russell]

Okay, update for you. I optimized everything down to 14.1 Mb and it still show same errors: "read error" on drag n drop, and "out of memory error" when importing. Something is seriously wrong here. It is late at night, this project is now overdue, and I am more than a little grumpy.

[handrawn]

have you tried closing down designer and then restarting - this will clear from the bitmap gallery all bitmaps that are held [in memory] but no longer in use in your document [you can do this manually of course if you wish]

I have to say [though others will maybe disagree ] that Xara is and always has been first and formost a web oriented program
lots of large sized print resolution bitmaps is not it's speciallity [unlike some other programs]

[Russell]

Thanks, handrawn. That helped. I also made sure everything was optimized one more time, discovering 1 very large file I'd missed. And then I went into bitmap gallery and found all the duplicates and duplicates of duplicates that comprised my work history, and then deleted everything that was not in direct use. Re-saved under a new name, exited and started again. The file is substantially smaller and loads quicker too. And I got it all to work again. The PNGs import fine, and when I've imported a new one, I immediately optimize it to 300 DPI (down from usually 2000+ or higher), delete the imported image and on to the next one.

Perhaps in a future iteration of the help files, some thought might be placed on articulating a good work flow for those of us who work in longer documents (and who thought this was a graphic design program, not just a web design program) .

Thanks for your help. I am on my way.

[gwpriester]

A Best Publishing Practices section. I agree Russell it would be nice.

What would be even nicer, and this is not beyond the scope of the latest version of Designer Pro, would be to treat images the same way Adobe InDesign does. InDesign posts a preview image at screen resolution and places the original files in a different folder and links to those images. Upon publishing, the actual images are included. But not until then.

I would think that we could see such a feature in the next release. OTOH I was sure we would see support for Pantone spot color monotone and duotone photos in the last release and I was WRONG!

[handrawn]

.....(and who thought this was a graphic design program, not just a web design program) .

oh its certainly a graphic design program

but its a vector one - and [IMO], as a web oriented one, it is not too great at handling bitmaps above 96dpi at normal screen size in any quantity.

I have a couple of books made in xtreme, each with about 40 A5 300dpi images - the files are both around 350Mb in size

it worked, but rigourous houskeeping of the bitmap gallery was necessary, [and they were made in version 3 as I recall...]