PM will not release RAM on a Macbook Aluminium

[east]

Hello PM Team,

PM 4.4.3.3 or 4.6.3 takes up all free RAM available on my MacBook aluminium running Mac OS 10.6.2, resulting in slowing down the computer to a point when it becomes unusable. After closing PM that amount of RAM still stays "inactive" in terms of the Apple's own activity panel, and cannot be used by other apps. So closing PM wont help either and even if, this would be only a second best solution. I have 2GB RAM on that laptop.

When using PM, I browse through local folders, each containing no more than 20 jpg files, none bigger than 3 MB.

Other than that, both versions are running fine under snow leopard. But using a PM and PS CS3 side by side, is a scenario leading into a catastrophe. And I need at least two more apps to be running, when working with PM and PS. PS has 30% RAM assigned.

As I recall, I had similar problems, may be not so pronounced, with my old iBook G4 and Mac OS 10.4, as well. So I think this could be something which is wrong with PM rather than with Mac OS...

Any help highly appreciated!

Thanks, Martin


PS. A completely different prob: According to my testing PM 4.6.3 does not support German letters called "Umlauts" anymore, as it used to do, up to the version 4.4.3.3. Even if supporting German language might be not on the features' list, it is still a huge problem for me...

[Kirk Baker]

Martin,

PM 4.4.3.3 or 4.6.3 takes up all free RAM available on my MacBook aluminium running Mac OS 10.6.2, resulting in slowing down the computer to a point when it becomes unusable. After closing PM that amount of RAM still stays "inactive" in terms of the Apple's own activity panel, and cannot be used by other apps. So closing PM wont help either and even if, this would be only a second best solution. I have 2GB RAM on that laptop.

When using PM, I browse through local folders, each containing no more than 20 jpg files, none bigger than 3 MB.

Other than that, both versions are running fine under snow leopard. But using a PM and PS CS3 side by side, is a scenario leading into a catastrophe. And I need at least two more apps to be running, when working with PM and PS. PS has 30% RAM assigned.

As I recall, I had similar problems, may be not so pronounced, with my old iBook G4 and Mac OS 10.4, as well. So I think this could be something which is wrong with PM rather than with Mac OS...

It is not possible for an application like Photo Mechanic to 'keep' memory allocated after it is terminated.  All memory allocated to a process is released back to the OS when the process is terminated.

Here is a link to a primer on what the various terms mean in the Activity Monitor application:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342

PS. A completely different prob: According to my testing PM 4.6.3 does not support German letters called "Umlauts" anymore, as it used to do, up to the version 4.4.3.3. Even if supporting German language might be not on the features' list, it is still a huge problem for me...

I'm not sure what you mean by not supporting umlauts.  Photo Mechanic is fully Unicode aware and any characters from any language may be entered into it.  Your choice of character set encoding in the legacy IPTC format will determine what characters can be represented.  If you want universal support for Unicode, please make sure you use XMP instead of IPTC, or choose Unicode as your IPTC encoding.

-Kirk

[east]

Many thanks for your kind and fast reply, Kirk!

Yes, I was wrong about the meaning of the "inactive memory" term, but the fact is nonetheless, that PM slows down my Macbook a lot. Add PS to it and no working possible. Would you say, as a rule of a thumb, that 2GB RAM could be way too little on my system, when using PM and a few other apps simultaneously?

Talking about umlauts (that would be for instance an "a" with 2 dots above it and a few other vocals): I use PM 4.6.3 to keyword and caption my jpg pictures (old IPTC standard, no side car or XMP) and when uploading these files to an windows server running 3rd party software, the umlauts get lost.

With PM 4.4.3.3 and the same workflow, umlauts stay in place. If I recall it correctly, my fellow IT specialist has had a look into it and told me with the newer PM versions the "code page" of the caption/keywords would get lost, so that it is no longer visible, that the file came from both a mac and from a "german" mac. I do not use Unicode, since Unicode wont work with my Windows server either. It is about Mac Roman German code page (if I recall the name correctly)

I think I have seen similar complaints about the lost German compatibility somewhere here on the forums form another user, so apparently I am not the only one affected.

Regards, Martin

Martin,

PM 4.4.3.3 or 4.6.3 takes up all free RAM available on my MacBook aluminium running Mac OS 10.6.2, resulting in slowing down the computer to a point when it becomes unusable. After closing PM that amount of RAM still stays "inactive" in terms of the Apple's own activity panel, and cannot be used by other apps. So closing PM wont help either and even if, this would be only a second best solution. I have 2GB RAM on that laptop.

When using PM, I browse through local folders, each containing no more than 20 jpg files, none bigger than 3 MB.

Other than that, both versions are running fine under snow leopard. But using a PM and PS CS3 side by side, is a scenario leading into a catastrophe. And I need at least two more apps to be running, when working with PM and PS. PS has 30% RAM assigned.

As I recall, I had similar problems, may be not so pronounced, with my old iBook G4 and Mac OS 10.4, as well. So I think this could be something which is wrong with PM rather than with Mac OS...

It is not possible for an application like Photo Mechanic to 'keep' memory allocated after it is terminated.  All memory allocated to a process is released back to the OS when the process is terminated.

Here is a link to a primer on what the various terms mean in the Activity Monitor application:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342

PS. A completely different prob: According to my testing PM 4.6.3 does not support German letters called "Umlauts" anymore, as it used to do, up to the version 4.4.3.3. Even if supporting German language might be not on the features' list, it is still a huge problem for me...

I'm not sure what you mean by not supporting umlauts.  Photo Mechanic is fully Unicode aware and any characters from any language may be entered into it.  Your choice of character set encoding in the legacy IPTC format will determine what characters can be represented.  If you want universal support for Unicode, please make sure you use XMP instead of IPTC, or choose Unicode as your IPTC encoding.

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

Yes, I was wrong about the meaning of the "inactive memory" term, but the fact is nonetheless, that PM slows down my Macbook a lot. Add PS to it and no working possible. Would you say, as a rule of a thumb, that 2GB RAM could be way too little on my system, when using PM and a few other apps simultaneously?

It depends entirely on how much RAM you've allotted to Photo Mechanic's Memory Cache, and Photoshop's memory usage.  You can control both applications and keep them in line.  How much RAM have you set Photo Mechanic to use for its Memory Cache?  How much RAM is Photoshop set to use?

Talking about umlauts (that would be for instance an "a" with 2 dots above it and a few other vocals): I use PM 4.6.3 to keyword and caption my jpg pictures (old IPTC standard, no side car or XMP) and when uploading these files to an windows server running 3rd party software, the umlauts get lost.

You need to use the same encoding that the third party software on Windows expects.  Likely 'Microsoft Latin1+Euro' or 'Latin1 Western European' is being used.

With PM 4.4.3.3 and the same workflow, umlauts stay in place. If I recall it correctly, my fellow IT specialist has had a look into it and told me with the newer PM versions the "code page" of the caption/keywords would get lost, so that it is no longer visible, that the file came from both a mac and from a "german" mac. I do not use Unicode, since Unicode wont work with my Windows server either. It is about Mac Roman German code page (if I recall the name correctly)

The older versions of Photo Mechanic always used MacRoman as the character set and had no facility to customize this behavior.

I think I have seen similar complaints about the lost German compatibility somewhere here on the forums form another user, so apparently I am not the only one affected.

That may be true.  But the solutions are the same.

-Kirk

[east]

hello  again,


I have allocated 32MB to PM for memory cache.  And I have 2GB RAM total on my macbook. Activity monitor says PM would use between 30MB and 150 MB RAM, depending on the folder opened. The amount of active RAM rises significantly as soon as I start PM and browse through my picture folders, but this is nothing I should be worried about, right?

Thank you for the hints concerning the language settings I will try them and report here.

Many thanks again + kind regards, martin

[Kirk Baker]

Martin,

I have allocated 32MB to PM for memory cache.  And I have 2GB RAM total on my macbook. Activity monitor says PM would use between 30MB and 150 MB RAM, depending on the folder opened. The amount of active RAM rises significantly as soon as I start PM and browse through my picture folders, but this is nothing I should be worried about, right?

Photo Mechanic's total memory usage will always be a bit higher than the Memory Cache size.  32MB of RAM is a very small size for the Memory Cache.  I suggest setting it to 128MB on your system.  Also you could trim down how much RAM Photoshop is allowed to use.  By default Photoshop wants to use up to 70% of your RAM and that is just too much.  Set it down to 40%-50%.

-Kirk

[east]

Kirk,

anything around 50% and PS knocks down my computer (CS3 on snow leopard). i tried 30% for PS - according to your hint elsewhere on the forums here - and the whole system stays responsive. I feel PM is runnnig pretty fast even with 32MB cache, so I wont change it for a while.

the bottom line for me is now, that 2GB RAM on a MacBook aluminium just won't cut it and I quite obviously do need more RAM. especially when I have other apps running along with PM and PS.

many things for helping me working this out! :-)
martin