On all three of my computers that my wife and I use Photo Mechanic on, we have issues with it "stalling" on us. For context: We view folders that are on our home server.
We have a Macbook, Macbook Pro, and a iMac. Anytime we go from one program back to photo mechanic, Photo Mechanic throws us the rainbow ball of death for a good 5 minutes. It eventually comes back to a normal mouse and lets us use the program again. Does anyone else experience this? What is causing it?
When you resume Photo Mechanic, it scans the folders that you are browsing to check for new files, deleted files, and modified files.
It sounds like your server is particularly slow at getting directory information back to Photo Mechanic.
If you know when your folders have changed and you want to control this manually (via the Rescan command on the View menu) you can force automatic rescans to not occur on resume of Photo Mechanic.
You need to create a plain text file named PMDebug.txt and it has to be in PM's Preferences folder.
PM's Preferences folder will be in the following location:
~/Library/Preferences/com.camerabits.PhotoMechanic/
Unfortunately Apple decided a few OS versions ago to hide the Library folder within your home folder. You can still get there though by using the "Go to Folder..." command on the Go menu in the finder. Enter the path above in the dialog that appears.
Create your PMDebug.txt file there and make it have the following contents:
NEVER_RESCAN_ON_RESUME ON
Save the file and relaunch PM. It should no longer automatically rescan folders that you're browsing when you switch back to it.
HTH,
-Kirk
