PSPimage file makes PSP hang. Can't open it afterwards

[jbyard]

I wasn't sure how to title this, but this has happened to me twice. I have PSP 2020.

I was filling in colors in a stained glass window picture (basically black and white line art, and then filling in colors. It is a fairly large picture, but not something that PSP shouldn't be able to handle. I saved frequently, plus had autosave on and merged layers frequently so that I only had 2-3 layers at any given time. When I am about half way done, PSP gets really slow, and then hangs suddenly. I have to quit task to shut it down, but then when I go back in and try to let the autosave reload the picture I was working on, PSP just hangs and hangs and hangs and won't load it. I have tried not letting autosave load it, and just go "File/Open", and I get the same thing...it just hangs and spins and won't open the file and I have to quit task to shut it down. Any ideas what the problem is?

[Ravelli]

Hello jbyard

Welcome to this forum!

I had the same issue with with PSP 2019 and a file of two layers, layer effects and 66.55 MB - nothing complex. It was a "Hello Word" cut out of leather with a used look: https://snipboard.io/rTwROA.jpg - So I contacted the Corel support in June 2019, which was no help. They just asked, if I was asking about the file I did send them. And later they said, they couldn't open it either and that the file must be corrupted.

Today I opened this file again, but with PSP 2021, and it opened, but showed an empty image with just one layer 'Vector 1', but no items in it. Then I opened the window with the Image Details/Data (CTRL+I), which made PSP hanging. After a minute I could select the tab "History". PSP was again hanging a bit. The shown history was ultra long, and it contained the hex code of the pattern image(s) used. Then I saved the history as log file, which has 59.23 MB. So, PSP stored image data into the history, which is much likely a bug, maybe related to high-res patterns: https://snipboard.io/ZbGgia.jpg

Btw, PSP stores this history into our files on default, but we can disable it in the settings. There is also a privacy issue about this history, which I explained here. There is no direct way of deleting an existing history from a file, but LeviFiction wrote a script, which saves a copy of a file without the history. I mention this for the sake of completeness, unfortunately this script will not repair your file, but maybe you want using it for other files.

There could be other reasons for your file not opening, maybe you will get more replies later on.

Friendly greetings
Ravelli

[LeviFiction]

jbyard if you're willing to share the file we might be able to take a look at it. I agree with Ravelli that the slow down probably comes from the history. Almost any repeated task can begin building up a lot of history content. From textures and patterns like Ravelli mentioned, to even lots of brush strokes. As brush strokes save as long lists of x and y values with long constants to describe how to move from point A to point B.