PSP Pro X4 Crash - Repeatable

[wolfpackmars2]

PSP crashed on me while working on an unsaved file. I realized I had accidentally grabbed a group layer and dragged/dropped it inside of itself. The program crashed with high CPU usage and had to have the process terminated.

I tested the repeatability of this error by opening a PNG image, duplicating the background layer several times, creating a new layer group, moving a couple of the copied layers into the new group, then trying to drag the layer group and dropping it in between a couple of its child layers - program crashed instantly.

Now, it was obviously not my intention to drag a layer group into itself. I think it was a case of working too late and accidentally clicking on the wrong layer (I tried to move a layer and instead clicked on the group the layer was in). Possible ways to fix this bug is to handle the problem gracefully or better - not allow a user to drop a group layer into itself.

[flagpole]

i would advise against trying to reproduce this error

it's definitely there. on my 7/64 system it maxed out one of my cores, peaked at 2.4GB or RAM and thrashed the hard disk, ultimately corrupting the MFT

i don't work with grouped layers, but if you do it would be an easy mistake to make. it's a simple lack of error trapping causing an infinite loop. sloppy code.

[LeviFiction]

Assuming it produces a trappable error of course. Considering some of the errors PSP manages to create it's entirely possible it's more a logical bug.

So if you haven't already, it's time to be making big reports to Corel in hopes of getting this fixed soon.

[flagpole]

i think you can see what's happening as it does it.

it obviously shouldn't let you copy a group of layers into that same group of layers so it's untrapped in the sense that it shouldn't be initiated by the UI. but then as the group begins to be copied into the group, that which has just been copied has to be copied too. hence it becomes infinitely large.

edit: i should also add that next time i ran PSP it failed with an error un able to create empty workspace or something like that.

[LeviFiction]

Forgive me I take Error Trapping to mean Error Handling which means when the procedure produces an error the code determines how to proceed to prevent a crash. However, this requires an error to be produced in the first place. You're talking about additional logic checking to make sure the values don't produce an error at all.

[wolfpackmars2]

Well, good. Glad others can reproduce it. I was working on a file for 4 hours - my dumb self for not saving it (wayyyy too much faith in corel ) But I was able to reproduce easily and figured it should be fairly easy for the coders to fix in the next patch, soo....


I have reported the bug through the "ask a question" portion of my corel account - not sure if there is anywhere else I should be reporting it.

Yes, the logical fix is to prevent a user from accidentally dropping a group into itself (or recognizing when the user does it and backing out of the operation gracefully)

When it happens, you can almost see the gears in the computer turning (grinding) as it tries in vain to deal with the event...

[LeviFiction]

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PSPX4 That link goes to a survey where you can report specific problems directly to the development team of PSP. You probably won't get a response but it'll be sent.

You know I never tried to replicate this problem. But it will probably be fixed in SP1 as it appears to be one of many problems with how the layers palette works that were discovered during the beta-test. The developers had a long list of desired fixes and improvements when they were forced to release early so I look forward to seeing how X4 evolves before X5.

[wolfpackmars2]

Well, I just confirmed - X3 Does have layer groups, but it prevents you from moving the layer group into itself... so this bug is new for X4.

I am kinda disappointed actually - I wanted an easy way to crash X3 to see how it recovers... guess I'll have to find another way to crash it.

And, I may look into getting a refund for x4 (only using the trial as I am waiting for the discs to arrive...) Teach me to upgrade to the l8est and gr8est

[LeviFiction]

I definitely recommend waiting on all new products regardless of whom they come from there will always be bugs either not caught during the beta or unfixed since the beta that will be accounted for later.

[JStanley]

deleted

[wolfpackmars2]

You can always follow the IT Professional rule of thumb to wait until at least Service Pack 1 is released for any OS or program before running anything mission-critical.

Early Adopters = Unpaid BETA testers with no say in the finished product that pay a small premium for the privilege

Actually, I got a pretty good deal on the package. For what it includes and the research I have done for competing products that offer similar features, I can offer no complaint for the deal I got. I got video and photo editing software for a small fraction of the price I would pay for just a competing photo product. I've just had bad experience where the developer of a product I really liked started to not care about their customers or the quality of their products. Their solution to customer problems was to not provide any kind of support whatsoever - in order to receive bugfixes you had to purchase a new version of the software. Of course, the company I speak of is Nuance and the product is PaperPort. PP12 was so buggy they released version 12.5, which they initially charged for the upgrade just so you could get the bugfixes. Eventually they backtracked and PP12.5 could be downloaded free, but still. I really don't want to see Corel go that way. They aren't there, yet. At least Corel has forums. And they seem to be pretty good about releasing updates.

[39_Steps]

I have had Corel PSP X4 (download retail) installed for less than 24 hours, but have managed to get it to repeatedly hang and crash on bootup just now. I somehow got it into Corel Media thumbnail creation mode in my User doc files (default is offlimits to thumbnails if I remember what I saw in Preferences a couple of hours ago).

My background: I had Corel Media One installed in conjunction with a newly? released boxed copy of PhotoImpact X3 on this same Vista Laptop 3 years ago. I came to understand how Media One worked, and that it was almost necessary if the user wanted sidecar thumb files for PhotoImpact UF0 galleries. But I uninstalled Corel Media One anyway, while, of course, keeping PhotoImpact X3.

Using Notepad I had studied the metadata appendages and prependages (if any) installed on jpgs by various apps, in the time period of the switch from Win XP to Win Vista. I didn't want to tag anything, I just wanted to see how it worked.

I concluded that if I did want to put a few "simple" tags and a caption in Adobe XMP format on jpgs, I preferred using Windows Live Media Gallery, and not Corel Media One. I would not pony up the money for PhotoShop or other expensive editors, and found that the then current Adobe Elements had a far less than adequate stand alone database that did not even use Adobe's own XMP metadata tagging.
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[Time Lapse]
Which brings me to this morning when I first poked around in PSP X4 Preferences, and may have enabled thumbnails for all files in my User Documents. Note: Image files in User Picture(s) folder are automatically thumbed by PSP X4, as in Corel Media One.

But yesterday I had tagged (populated) one single new jpg with every IPTC field, as well as adding Caption and key word tags in PSP X4. Today I opened that file in Windows Live Photo Gallery, and did not see the caption. Instead it said, "Status Title". So thinking that I might have typed that into a PSP X4 IPTC field, I changed the focus back to the still open PSP X4 app, which was in the process of going nuts creating thumbnails in my User Documents on a computer that already had too little memory on the C:\ drive.

Each time I tried to reboot PSP X4 it crashed again while in thumb creation mode. So I rebooted the entire computer and tried again. I'll get PSP going again, possibly by going into the registry, but just wanted to pass the info along in case anyone was bored and had nothing else to do but read of a new way to crash this application.

Update: After uninstalling and reinstalling PSP XP4, the program no longer crashes at default settings upon bootup. I took another look at the metadata issues of keyword, IPTC, and captioning fields, and see nothing (that I remember) different from the way Corel Media One worked three years ago.