I realize no one reads bug reports, but…

Dude, sorry about the data loss man, I know, it can be bloody freaking frustrating. 8 hours??? The worst for me was a 3 hour job, and I was already screaming bloody murder. Can’t imagine your frustration, Ray. Actually, I can. My pc died recently and I lost everything, so that’s that.
So I guess that could explain the Painter X vs. Manga Studio 3 question I posted to you earlier then, eh?

That sucks… time to resurrect Manga Studio EX!

Seriously, though… that sucks.

God, crashes during saving are the worst. The absolute worst! Sorry to hear, man.

As you know I’ve been trying to get into the PX inking game, but haven’t even been able to get the .1 patch to update my fresh install of X, so Painter has been really slow and really difficult to work with. Reading up on the matter, I’ve found no answers, but have seen a lot of complaining that Corel isn’t maintaining this application like the professional piece it should be.

I had been wondering if you had ever had any problems with it, and I guess now I know. Sorry about the lost work – we always learn the hard way to save all the time, but then somehow it still comes back to bite us, right?

Painter is buggy. Manga Studio is gimped on Intel Macs. Photoshop’s brush algorithms stink. I think I am going back to traditional inking!

Ouch! Although it sounds like a bit of schadenfreude on my part, I hear these stories and I’m so glad I never got an Intel Mac. :(

Hey Frenden,

I’m sorry your having problem’s with your mac. I know you probably have thought of this, but a quick genius bar appointment could fix your problem. They will take older macs even if you don’t have apple care. I took my old eMac and were able a few issues i was having, and didn’t charge me a dime.

http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/

-AppleGuy

*and they were able to fix a few issues i was having*

GC, it has nothing to do with Mac as a platform. I have encountered the same problems all the way back to Win98. Painter is, and always has been, a buggy mess. But, an incredibly charming, really suave, super useful, buggy mess.

Are you using tons of layers? I used to set up character inks for John K. to paint and found that using channels instead layers helped a bit with the crashes. Also, saving your files as .psds helped. I don’t know why, but it did.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you. You crashed while saving and lost 8 hours of work. Please don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to sound like a jerk here. I can totally empathize with you. However, why would you wait 8 hours to save. Either way, I have learned the hard way to save after every little change that I make to a project. The first time that happened to me was the last.

I distinctly used the verbiage “iteratively” to describe my saving methodology in the above post. IE, I save out the file regularly in different versions. I use a naming suffix like file_001, file_002, etc.

I was indicating that, since it crashed during a save, the file itself, no matter how many times I saved it from start to finish, had become corrupt. Luckily, since I DO save iteratively, only the last version’s revisions were lost.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that if I did a lot of delete layers or channels that if I did a quick “Save As” (not an i-save), the resultant file would be noticeably smaller. Also, with the save as, you can check the “uncompressed” check box and in some cases that helps prevent crashes.

Also there’s the Corel’s Painter Factory site, which has a forum that you can post these bugs at and have the developers/programmers read them.

Hope that CCI (Comic Con International) has some good news about MS 4 — like an universal binary.

No UB at ComiCon. MS4 is going to be Windows long before it is Mac. :\

How is Manga Studio “gimped” on Intel Macs? I have it installed on my Intel mac and it works fine. Now, I know there was a problem for a while with it not being compatible with Leopard–which I have on my MacBook, but I haven’t upgraded to it on my desktop Mac–but supposedly the recent upgrade patch made available allows Manga Studio to function on Leopard.

Have you tried it, or having tried it, does it give you problems?

It is not a Universal Binary. It does not run at native speeds even with the patch. In Boot Camp/Windows, for instance, I can work on multi-layer, 1200 dpi files till the cows come home. In Leopard, running on the same hardware, with the OS even recognizing all my ram (as it is a 64bit OS capable of addressing it all whereas XP is 32bit), 720-600 dpi files are the max I can work with and expect the same performance.

Obviously, if you have an older, PowerPC Mac, this does not apply to you. But, if that’s the case, you likely aren’t able to run at 1200 dpi resolutions anyway. Since you’re on an Intel Mac as well, the bottom line is as follows: it runs faster on Windows.

Okay, thanks. Never having used MS on a Power PC Mac, I don’t see any performance slowdown…it seems fine to me, as fast as any UB program I use…but then, I don’t normally work with 1200 dpi files.

Some years back I had to do a poster for an event where I work, and it was going to be printed fairly large. I had a 500mz G4, which, when new, was a so-called “supercomputer,” but in recent years it was underpowered even compared to a Mac Mini. I worked on the file at a small dpi, say 300 dpi, at fairly small size. Then, when done, I autotraced it in Adobe Streamline and increased its size to the poster’s final dimensions. I then rasterized it in Photoshop–at the larger size–and did the coloring on the larger file. When it was printed, it looked sharp and fine, but most of the work had been done at a smaller original size.

I think it’s a situation where my expectations were set to a certain level. Despite 720 sufficing for most things (but not, say, tracing and then turning the piece into a 4′x8′ image), I’m used to 1200. And, any time you take a feature away, it stings.

When shit like that happens, i’m so glad i’m using timemachine.

Me too. I recently deleted my entire movie collection to make room for a large, temporary file. I restored my movies after I was done with the space. Score.

I run Painter on my PC and Mac and they both occasionally crash. Oddly enough, it seems like some tools initiate the crash more than others. Compared to some of my 3D programs it is still fairly stable. But yeah, I end up with a million Saves just in case.

Painter is just less stable than most of my other productivity apps. I’m looking to upgrade to a MacPro in a few weeks with a mass of RAM. Hopefully I can throw a lot of hardware at this software problem.

Didn’t get to see you at the 8 Bit show. Maybe next time!