iPhoto crashed, took my parent's Christmas present with it.

[gammamonk]

In a program where you don't have to save, (is there even the option?) I didn't worry about a thing until I was completely done with my album to get printed and iPhoto crashed. Now I have to start over! Geerrrrrr. My mac has been crashing a lot lately. If I send it in for service it will be the 5th time, and I'm trying to wait until at least January to see if I can get a replacement unit. I'd love a nice new shiney x86 powerbook.

</end rant>

 

[Applespider]

If you click out of the 'book' editing part of iPhoto every so often, it should save the progress you've made automatically behind the scenes. Alternatively, you could try quitting iPhoto after every 5 or 10 pages? It will save on quitting so you wouldn't lose too much if it crashed later?

 

[Zeke]

Run the Apple hardware test...you likely have some RAM problems. There's also a program called Rember that can discover problems AHT doesn't. When my computer started crashing all the time it turned out to be a memory issue. Once I pulled the bad one it's been heavenly. Stupid RAM...spend weeks getting mad at the computer to realize it's a stupid problem.

 

[gammamonk]

Run the Apple hardware test...you likely have some RAM problems. There's also a program called Rember that can discover problems AHT doesn't. When my computer started crashing all the time it turned out to be a memory issue. Once I pulled the bad one it's been heavenly. Stupid RAM...spend weeks getting mad at the computer to realize it's a stupid problem.

I downloaded Rember, I'll let it start and go to bed. (midnight here)

Thanks for the tip. I'll post an update tomorrow. ^__^;

 

[gammamonk]

No errors, but it could only lock in about half of my ram to test.

Hum...

 

[Zeke]

Try the apple hardware test while you're at it just to rule it out. Qhat kind of computer is this? If a laptop, you could try reseating the airport card as that can cause crashes too...

 

[gammamonk]

I haven't run the apple hardware test yet. I'm pushing too many deadlines.

Is there a way to tell what the problem is when you get the warning in iPhoto? They seem to just come up randomly.

 

[abrooks]

I haven't run the apple hardware test yet. I'm pushing too many deadlines.

Is there a way to tell what the problem is when you get the warning in iPhoto? They seem to just come up randomly.

That exclamation mark either means the image has been scaled to fill the space or has been distorted in some way.

 

[Applespider]

That exclamation mark either means the image has been scaled to fill the space or has been distorted in some way.

This is mostly true except that it appears when the image has been scaled in such a way that there's not enough resolution to print it at what iPhoto prints books at 150dpi. It means that at that size, the picture will print out at less than 130dpi and is likely to not look very good.

Incidentally, the guys on the Apple discussion boards swear by upping your resolution before you send the file to print. You need to download Prefsetter, come out of iPhoto, open up the iPhoto preference file and change the targetbook dpis to 300 rather than 150. Then save it and close.

If you started sending a book, you'd spot the size of file being transferred going from around 20MB to about 60MB.

 

[mileslong]

iPhoto crashed, took my parent's Christmas present with it.

i wish mine would crash and take my wife with it...

 

[gammamonk]

This is mostly true except that it appears when the image has been scaled in such a way that there's not enough resolution to print it at what iPhoto prints books at 150dpi. ...

All my pics are 5megapixel... 2592 x 1944. It should be plenty for just 150dpi. I'm not scaling the pics at all, just ploping them onto the page.

How long do you think it would take to get the book done? If I finish tonight, can I get it before Christmas? If not, I'll just give up. >__<

 

[Applespider]

You should be fine then - the other reason the ! appears is sometimes when there is too much text in the text box and there's a risk it won't print. It can be worth re-doing the page template to see if making the picture smaller will stop the ! appearing.

It is worthwhile upping the resolution using Prefsetter - printing at 300 rather than 150 does make a difference - and it will take you 5 minutes to download and make the change.

Before Christmas? You should get it back in time. I sent one off last night which I want for Christmas. It was suggesting shipping in 3-4 days (last time, it shipped in 2 days despite saying that).

It's the length of time in the post though that seems to vary, particularly at this time of year. In the UK, they come from Germany so I have my fingers crossed that it makes it in time for Christmas; I've posted it to the address where I'll be rather than my home one to give it an extra few days. Last time I ordered (in June), I ordered on a Sunday night and it was delivered a week on Tuesday (so 9 days but 7 of those were in the post!)