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In PS CS Working with magnetic lasso, screen goes white

Rene F Granaada

New member
I am wondering if anyone has come across such an issue: I try in PS CS to select an area of a photo with the magnetic lasso tool, and after only adding 10 points or so at magnification 100%, my whole PS screen goes blank, just the outline of windows and pallets/tools are visible and the line created so far by the magnetic lasso tool... I have 2024Mb of RAM. I use PC, windows XP, any idea if a setting is set wrong? if i hit escape, the photo comes back, but the selection is gone.. Maybe i have some bug in the program...or some sub file of PS is damaged?

RFG
 

John Angulat

pro member
Hi Rene,
Which version are you using, CS3 or CS4?
I can't say I've seen this proble with PS SC3 but I'm having a heck of a lot of problems with CS4 myself. Mostly in the area of screen refreshes, etc. Mine's horribly slow. So slow and frustrating I'm seriously considering uninstalling CS4 and reinstalling CS3. I know it's not hardward related. I run a top of the line PC, Windows XP Pro, 4 MB Ram and a 256K ram Nvidia GeForce video card.
 

Rene F Granaada

New member
Hi Rene,
Which version are you using, CS3 or CS4?
I can't say I've seen this proble with PS SC3 but I'm having a heck of a lot of problems with CS4 myself. Mostly in the area of screen refreshes, etc. Mine's horribly slow. So slow and frustrating I'm seriously considering uninstalling CS4 and reinstalling CS3. I know it's not hardward related. I run a top of the line PC, Windows XP Pro, 4 MB Ram and a 256K ram Nvidia GeForce video card.
Hi john,

I am using an older version, PS CS, I have 2 Mb ram,use XP. As far as i know this started happening after I uninstalled PS 7 I also had .
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi René-Frank,

I don't know what's going on, but it seems to me that there's corruption somewhere. I don't remember how Windows handles PS, but if there are permissions, delete them and preferences too and reinstall the software.

I have Photoshop 7, CS and CS2 on Macs and never had that problem. Still, as time goes by, errors accumulate.

Do you ever use a disk utility to check for fragmentations of directories and files. Sometimes things get written on to failing parts of disks or even overwritten when many small spaces are bridged to write on large file.

Likely you are using a lot of the hard drive for extended/virtual memory. Eventually a clean up of your drives is a good idea!

In fact, every so often I migrate to new and larger drives and the files get copied and are all whole!

Asher
 

Rene F Granaada

New member
Hi René-Frank,

I don't know what's going on, but it seems to me that there's corruption somewhere. I don't remember how Windows handles PS, but if there are permissions, delete them and preferences too and reinstall the software.

I have Photoshop 7, CS and CS2 on Macs and never had that problem. Still, as time goes by, errors accumulate.

Do you ever use a disk utility to check for fragmentations of directories and files. Sometimes things get written on to failing parts of disks or even overwritten when many small spaces are bridged to write on large file.

Likely you are using a lot of the hard drive for extended/virtual memory. Eventually a clean up of your drives is a good idea!

In fact, every so often I migrate to new and larger drives and the files get copied and are all whole!

Asher
I managed to resolve the issue by allocating more RAM to PS, 85% of 2Mb, now the prob seems to have disappeared.

RF
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi René-Frank,

from talking to you earlier today, you are using the two SATA drives on your Dell PC in one RAID virtual drive so as to get superior performance. This is always a great idea in Photoshop for the repeated access to the drive. The RAID should be made for the scratch disk and not for the system software and the PS CS program.

What you have done is likely had Windows XT repair something when you rebooted. In any case, it's a great risk to have a RAID for you only copy of your files and your software!

My suggestion is to take advantage of your Dell service. With their guidance, (or the tech who is near you) add your new spare SATA drive to the computer and make that your system software and program drive. That means that Windows XT and Photoshop will reside there. Use the two raided drives for "scratch" for PS and virtual RAM.

Throw away whatever you don't need but make sure you have a backup of your pictures. As a start, you can keep one copy on a separate partition on your new boot drive. So you might allocate, for example, say 100 GB of your new drive just for storing copies of your precious files. At the same time, I'd burn DVD's, 2 copies and have them stored in two different places outside your home!

I was in San Francisco at the Shochet Photography Store. I met a long time photographer, a young middle aged fellow, who's apartment was destroyed by fire. He stored his DVD's on top of his computer. He lost his original film and the files from the hours spent scanning his life's work!

Asher
 

Rene F Granaada

New member
I will work on this today+tomorrow

Asher, thanks for your great advice... Will try and work on it today+tomorrow, it is quite a challenge and of course time consuming, but yes, security and back up above all...just look at the story of the guy you met in that photo store.

More later,

René-Frank
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Whatever you do, Rene-Frank, you must back up and get rid of that raid. Your work is too precious to be split over two drives that are repeatedly being written on! For now back up everything on DVD's.

Raid is for speed and redundancy only when you have more than two discs. I'd never count anything on the Raid as a copy for my precious images!

Once you are re-set up, you can have a raid if you wish for a fast Photoshop scratch disk but I'd really not bother unless things are too slow for you! A 3rd drive can be plugged in via USB or firewire, whatever you have. Cases which work with your removed SATA drive from the computer are very inexpensive.

Asher
 

Rene F Granaada

New member
Whatever you do, Rene-Frank, you must back up and get rid of that raid. Your work is too precious to be split over two drives that are repeatedly being written on! For now back up everything on DVD's.

Raid is for speed and redundancy only when you have more than two discs. I'd never count anything on the Raid as a copy for my precious images!

Once you are re-set up, you can have a raid if you wish for a fast Photoshop scratch disk but I'd really not bother unless things are too slow for you! A 3rd drive can be plugged in via USB or firewire, whatever you have. Cases which work with your removed SATA drive from the computer are very inexpensive.

Asher
Asher, Yes, you hit the nail on the head, in the next few days in between all other things that take up my time, I will take all these steps, after getting my newest files backed up to DVD. I was wondering if i can somehow find a seperate case to attach somewhere in my Dell Inspiron 9200, as i was told by the Dell tech that there are cables inside the box to attach a third hard drive, the slot is just not fitted.
So after the back up procedure, I will configure the machine to a non raid config. , take out one of the 2 250 Gig SATA drives, repalce one with the spare 320 Gig SATA drive I have, instal windows XP and photoshop on that drive, make a seperate paritition if i can, to have extra back up there of my photo files, but put the original photo files on the second internal (250 Gig) hard drive. As I mentioned if I still feel the need I will try and fit the 3-rd hard drive for more back uo or more disk/scratch space.

This is the address of a sites that tells about reinstalling Windows XP
http://www.windowsxpprofessional.windowsreinstall.com/

Rene-Frank
 
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