Slow reaction time switching back to PM

[JAS Photo]

I love your program and how quickly you improve & fix stuff. My BIGGEST problem at this point is the amount of time it takes to get control of PM back after switching (multitasking) to any other program. I'm using 4.4.3.2 on a AMD dual core 3800 with 2.5 gb RAM. In the simple tests I just ran were with MS Word, PM, 2 windows of IE 7, and an Explorer window.
generally it takes 20-30 seconds to get back to PM - sometime PM draws the contact sheet in 10-15 seconds but I still get no reaction from PM for another 10 seconds.
All the other windows are active immediately. Any Suggestions?
Thanks
Joe

[Kirk Baker]

Joe,

I love your program and how quickly you improve & fix stuff. My BIGGEST problem at this point is the amount of time it takes to get control of PM back after switching (multitasking) to any other program. I'm using 4.4.3.2 on a AMD dual core 3800 with 2.5 gb RAM. In the simple tests I just ran were with MS Word, PM, 2 windows of IE 7, and an Explorer window.
generally it takes 20-30 seconds to get back to PM - sometime PM draws the contact sheet in 10-15 seconds but I still get no reaction from PM for another 10 seconds.
All the other windows are active immediately. Any Suggestions?

What kind of images are you browsing?  How many are there?  How are you sorting the Contact Sheet?

-Kirk

[JAS Photo]

I didn't factor that into my tests - I just tried a smaller folder 128+131 sorted by filename - NEF & JPG - 17 Seconds to get back to PM from this IE 7 window. When I went back to the folder I was using with 781 (NEF+JPG's) with 24 showing from my color coded selects. 15 seconds to get back but when I tried to add other colors to the group PM did not react - all seams fine but I can only see the 3 color codes (26 images)  I was working on I can't get the other color to be visible in the contact. (I've seen this before - when I restart PM it works again.) Didn't need to restart PM - Control came back. No difference wether all or just a subset still around 15 seconds.
Thanks
Joe

[Kirk Baker]

Joe,

I didn't factor that into my tests - I just tried a smaller folder 128+131 sorted by filename - NEF & JPG - 17 Seconds to get back to PM from this IE 7 window. When I went back to the folder I was using with 781 (NEF+JPG's) with 24 showing from my color coded selects. 15 seconds to get back but when I tried to add other colors to the group PM did not react - all seams fine but I can only see the 3 color codes (26 images)  I was working on I can't get the other color to be visible in the contact. (I've seen this before - when I restart PM it works again.) Didn't need to restart PM - Control came back. No difference wether all or just a subset still around 15 seconds.

I have reread what you have written above about three times and I don't really follow what you are saying?

You're filtering by Color Class?  Did you change any of the images when you were switched out of PM?

-Kirk

[JAS Photo]

Sorry I had a second problem while I was testing the first. - My point was it didn't seem to matter much how many images were were in the folder or if it was a large folder or only a smaller subset being viewed of a large folder. - I was looking at only the top 3 color classes - 26 images of 700+ NEF & JPG. I also the  full contact (all colors) & I tested a folder with only 20 images. similar times on all - 15 - 20 seconds. All sorted by filename.
Then My second problem was when I got control of PM back on at least one occasion it seemed to work fine except I couldn't get the color class filter to react. I would click on No color (Dotted Box) and still only see my top 3 color selects, I would click on the top colors to eliminate those from the contact and they would stay. I played with it for a minute or 2 and switched out (without closing PM & back once or twice) at some point it worked again.
Sorry about my rambling - now you know why I take pictures and don't write(right???- same difference).
Thanks
Joe

[HB]

I am also experiencing considerable slowness and was wondering if I have too many images in the folder I'm working with; there are about 700. I'm running PM 4.4.3.3 on a PC with Windows XP Professional (not sure how much RAM). There is a delay of 10+ seconds when I switch between PM and other programs and also between the preview window and contact sheet within PM. I'm going to try limiting the number of files/folder unless anyone has other advice.

Thanks,
HB

[Kirk Baker]

I am also experiencing considerable slowness and was wondering if I have too many images in the folder I'm working with; there are about 700. I'm running PM 4.4.3.3 on a PC with Windows XP Professional (not sure how much RAM). There is a delay of 10+ seconds when I switch between PM and other programs and also between the preview window and contact sheet within PM. I'm going to try limiting the number of files/folder unless anyone has other advice.

You have 700 images.  What kinds of images are in the folder?  Just JPEGs?  RAW files?  TIFF files?  How large are they?  When you switch back into PM from your other apps, have you modified any of the images before your return to PM?

You say that it is slow to switch from PM to another application.  When you switch next time, make note of any heavy disk activity (the hard drive light on the front of your computer is a good indicator.)  Heavy disk activity can indicate that your system is low on memory and is paging memory to/from disk.  Virtual memory paging is extremely time consuming if there is a lot of it going on.

What are your Caching settings inside the Photo Mechanic preferences?  Please list them.  Also, it would be really helpful if you would open up the System Control Panel, and click on the General tab.  At the bottom of the pane is a section titled "Computer".  It will list your processor speed and how much physical RAM you have.  Please tell me your CPU speed and how much RAM you have listed.

What are the other applications that you are running at the same time as PM?

-Kirk

[HB]

Kirk,

Thank you for your patience. Here are answers:

Image type: JPEG
Size: most are 1-3 MB
Am I modifying images outside PM? No

PM Settings
Disk cache size:? 512 MB
Reserve at least 100 MB
Empty cache on exit is checked
Memory cache size 64 MB

CPU speed: 1.61 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Other applications in use: generally MS Word, Mozilla browser, Mozilla e-mail, Open Office spreadsheet, Picasa

Have not been working much in PM today, so will monitor the hard drive light next time I do (though the setup of my desk makes that difficult).

Thanks,
HB

[Kirk Baker]

HB,

Thank you for your patience. Here are answers:

Image type: JPEG
Size: most are 1-3 MB
Am I modifying images outside PM? No

PM Settings
Disk cache size:? 512 MB
Reserve at least 100 MB
Empty cache on exit is checked
Memory cache size 64 MB

CPU speed: 1.61 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Other applications in use: generally MS Word, Mozilla browser, Mozilla e-mail, Open Office spreadsheet, Picasa

Have not been working much in PM today, so will monitor the hard drive light next time I do (though the setup of my desk makes that difficult).

You can also use the Windows Task Manager's Performance tab to tell if a lot of swapping is going on.

I can tell you reasons why PM would take some time to resume (it has to rescan the currently open folders to check for new, updated or missing files.  But slowness in switching out seems likely only to be caused by virtual memory issues.

Keep an eye on it.  You can also use the Processes tab to see how many apps you have running and see how much memory each is using.  The Mem Usage and VM Size columns are the most informative columns.  Check to see if any of them is using really large amounts of RAM.

HTH,

-Kirk