A bug & note on using .png graphics....

[Grant Hogarth]

The only problem with that is that if they are less than 24-bit, FM adds
all the colors in them to your colors list. :(  After taking them down
to 8 and saving them, you could probably take them back up to 24 with
out making them too much bigger.

Grant 

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+grant.hogarth=reuters.com at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+grant.hogarth=reuters.com at lists.frameusers.com]
On Behalf Of Art Campbell
Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2006 2:09 PM
To: List, Framers; Free Framers
Subject: A bug & note on using .png graphics....

I recently ran into a problem using .png graphics in files and after
kicking it around a lot, think I may have found a bug either in FM's
memory managment
(surprise!) or the
way it's handling graphics files.

* FM 7.2 / 158
* Windows XP SP2 with all patches
* Two machines, one with 2 M RAM, one with 3
* FM files and graphics on a network server

The symptoms were:
* Importing .png files by reference
* FM would occasionally display the "Gray Box" warning message
* It would always crash

It turned out the graphics I was using were big files that started life
on Nikon DSLRs, were massaged in Photoshop CS2, interpolated to size,
and were saved out as 300 dpi .png files for import.

The details are important, it turns out, because the files retained a
16-bit color depth throughout. And that seems to be the thing that
tripped FM up.

On a hunch, I knocked the .PNG files down to 8-bit depth in Photoshop
and resaved them and voila -- no crashes, no gray boxes, nothing at all
untoward.

I haven't tested this with other formats to see if the bit-depth is an
issue with other file formats, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were.

Cheers,
Art

--
Art Campbell
art.campbell at gmail.com