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

[Grant Hogarth]

Sadly, FM "reads" the color list from pngs (and AFAIK, *only* pngs), and
adds the color definitions in the image file to the list of available
colors in the FM file.  It's very annoying. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Art Campbell [mailto:art.campbell at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 1:57 PM
To: Grant Hogarth
Cc: List, Framers; Free Framers
Subject: Re: A bug & note on using .png graphics....

Color list? You mean like FM's defined colors?
I don't think so. We're talking digital photographs here, with millions
of colors.
The 8-bit limitation is just the bit depth of the file. FM doesn't do
anything at all with the colors of graphics and the colors it
defines.... it's a graphic file format attribute.

Art

On 5/4/06, Grant Hogarth <Grant.Hogarth at reuters.com> wrote:
> 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