quick thumbnail and full size views

[luciasur]

When I've processed raw images and converted them to tiff files, each image can be from 70-250mb apiece.  So when I pull up a contact sheet of a folder of these images, it takes forever to load the contact sheet and each image.

My workflow is such that I'll pull up the contact sheet and double click the first image, then forward through each image marking it with a grade/color for editing down purposes.  It's taking forever to get each large image up and viewable.

How can I get faster thumbnails and full scale images?  I've tried unclicking Edit/Preferences/Contact/Generate high quality thumbnails   to no avail.

I'd appreciate any advice on getting PM to quickly show large tiff files.

I use Windows XP with 2mb RAM.

Thanks
Paul

[Kirk Baker]

Paul,

When I've processed raw images and converted them to tiff files, each image can be from 70-250mb apiece.  So when I pull up a contact sheet of a folder of these images, it takes forever to load the contact sheet and each image.

My workflow is such that I'll pull up the contact sheet and double click the first image, then forward through each image marking it with a grade/color for editing down purposes.  It's taking forever to get each large image up and viewable.

How can I get faster thumbnails and full scale images?  I've tried unclicking Edit/Preferences/Contact/Generate high quality thumbnails   to no avail.

I'd appreciate any advice on getting PM to quickly show large tiff files.

I use Windows XP with 2mb RAM.

By asking PM to load up to 250 MB of data to render an image you're asking too much of it compared to loading a similar resolution JPEG.  There is just too much data to process in order for previews to be 'snappy.'

Photo Mechanic can load TIFFs faster than Photoshop but not by much: it is just a function of limited CPU resources against a large amount of data.

That said, increasing the RAM on your system to 4GB and giving Photo Mechanic a larger Memory cache will help somewhat.

-Kirk

[luciasur]

How do I give PM a larger memory cache?

And why today is PM allowing me to cycle through images by using the arrow keys in the upper left side of screen, but not via arrows on keyboard (as worked in past)?  I'm also getting some failure/error in copying messages. It's also occasionally not allowing me to select multiple images using shift, ctrl or alt (unless I reboot or shut down and reload PM).

I use XP with 2mb ram and have the latest version of PM.

THanks
Paul Sivley

[luciasur]

Figured out why the copy problem (nearly full hard drive), but the other problems persist erratically.
Paul

[Kirk Baker]

Paul,

How do I give PM a larger memory cache?

Open up Photo Mechanic's Preferences dialog and then click on the "Caching" tab.  Set the Memory Cache to a larger value.  Seeing as how you have 2GB of RAM, I wouldn't recommend anything higher than 300MB for the Memory Cache.

-Kirk