Unable to rename individual images in contact sheet

[nmf]

Photo Mechanic Version 5.0, build 13915 (a16ea99) on Mac 10.6.8

I have been trying to individually rename some images in the contact sheet but am unable to get changes to stick.

I find that after double clicking the filename to select it and making changes when I press the Return key the name reverts back to before my changes. If I press the Tab key which used to commit the changes and move to the next image for renaming now goes to the next image but keeps the previous frame selected and when I press Return to leave the cycle, or Tab to go to the next image and then any key to exit the process, all the renamed images revert back to their previous filename. In effect it appears that the filename box is not being deselected when the Tab or Return key is pressed so preventing the changes from becoming permanent.

Somehow I have the previous version still on here so tried the same process using that and it worked fine.

Any suggestions to the cause please ?

Thank you for your assistance.

[Hayo Baan]

Rename works fine for me so my guess is there's something wrong with your file access rights. Do you have write access to the files and directory?

Are you perhaps trying to change files on a mounted NTFS (windows) partition on e.g., a USB external drive?

Hope this helps,
Hayo

[nmf]

Thanks Hayo.

Unfortunately the files are on a laptop and as the only user do have write access (I would though have thought any such issues would have shown up when I tried the same process with the previous version of PM in any case ?)

Cheers

[Kirk Baker]

Inline renaming is working fine for me in build 13915+ on my Mac.  I do not know why it wouldn't work for you.

Please give me an example of a before file name and an after file name.  Is there anything unusual about your contact sheet (multiple folders, path to folders have accented characters, etc.)?

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

In addition to Kirk's questions, are you perhaps trying to rename to an already existing file name? That's the only case I can think of when it would fail if access rights are ok.

[nmf]

I'm coming to the conclusion it could be a system issue.

Just opened PM5 to test renaming the images again and whilst I could successfully make a change to a single image using the Return key to close the action I found that using Tab to select the next image was then replacing that images file name with the file name of the following image.

I then tried shutting down completely and restarting my whole system and when I repeated the renaming test I then found that not only was the name being moved across but so was part of the image as shown in the attachment.

I have tested the process in PM 4.6.9 and that works fine though.

I don't think there is anything strange about how things are set up but I may be wrong.

Filenames are as shown in the attachment so for example in the simplest form :

BIO-gbr_14.jpg

I tested to see what would happen if I changed BIO into lower case and I was unable to do that unless I made BIO something totally different then renamed again.

The folder is in the sub folder of a desktop folder but I did a test when I saw your message with the folder on the desktop and I am seeing the same issues. None of my folders have any unusual characters and I have used the same file management system for a while when working on images with previous versions of Photo Mechanic with no issues.

Hayo, thanks for the thought, and I had intended to mention that I'm not trying to rename using the name of an existing file. Been there and done that so many times in the past it was my first thought. At present though I am just trying to add a few letters to the beginning of file names as I sort some images.

Thanks for your help.


[attachment deleted by admin]

[Kirk Baker]

I'm coming to the conclusion it could be a system issue.

Just opened PM5 to test renaming the images again and whilst I could successfully make a change to a single image using the Return key to close the action I found that using Tab to select the next image was then replacing that images file name with the file name of the following image.

I then tried shutting down completely and restarting my whole system and when I repeated the renaming test I then found that not only was the name being moved across but so was part of the image as shown in the attachment.

I have tested the process in PM 4.6.9 and that works fine though.

I don't think there is anything strange about how things are set up but I may be wrong.

Filenames are as shown in the attachment so for example in the simplest form :

BIO-gbr_14.jpg

I tested to see what would happen if I changed BIO into lower case and I was unable to do that unless I made BIO something totally different then renamed again.

The inline renaming does not rename to a temp name before renaming to your desired name so a case-only filename change is not possible with inline rename.

-Kirk

[nmf]

Thanks Kirk. Got that bit solved at least.

In case I haven't explained myself properly I am trying to add and actually change names and not just the case of any of the existing text.

Thanks.

[Hayo Baan]

Wow, really weird things are going on on your system. Your contact sheets gets garbled somehow, I have never seen this before.

Have you already tried reinstalling PM completely? Simply remove it from your applications folder and then drag it back in from a freshly downloaded disk image.

Hope this solves your issue,
Hayo

[Kirk Baker]

Thanks Kirk. Got that bit solved at least.

In case I haven't explained myself properly I am trying to add and actually change names and not just the case of any of the existing text.

Understood.  I was directly addressing your last concern.  I agree, something odd is going on with your system.  What needs to be done to solve that, I do not know.

-Kirk

[nmf]

Thanks to you both for your thoughts.

They got me thinking more about the possible causes and I went into the Preferences and checked my cache settings (512 and 128 in case there is something wrong there) but also, despite being set up for emptying the cache on exiting PM, I tried the Empty Cache button. Maybe tempting fate but the situation seems to resolved itself.

If that doesn't work I'll try reinstalling as you suggest Hayo. Thankfully having the old version still on my system has been useful and gives me an alternative option if the same problem arises again but it has opened a couple of times when I have been expecting PM5 to open (such as when I added the "Browse with Photo Mechanic" option to the context menu after adding the latest update) so maybe there is a conflict there that is causing the problems.

Have a good weekend.