Grey previews & grey thumbnails

I bet it's a lot simpler than that!

Check to see if you have soft proofing enabled. And check to see if the profile is set to something like "Black & White" 🙂

a couple of questions:

are your images referenced to an external drive?

have you checked your activity monitor to see if it is generating or regenerating thumbnails.

i only ask because this is the same problem i have and i have been crying about on these boards for the past month. i have isolated the problem to the use of an external drive for referenced images (which i have no choice because my internal drive cannot hold all of my images).

i have reported the bug to apple several times. i would suggest doing the same.

the problem i have is caused by thumbnail regeneration. Thumbnails within projects are constantly being generated, even after they have been created, so scrolling through any project and selecting different images in a project brings up a gray box while the thumbnail (re)generates. has slowed down my workflow to the speed of molasses.

interesting. this may blow a hole in my theory since the only time i experience this problem is after relocating masters to an external. if i leave masters on my internal drive i have no problems. nor do i have problems if i disconnect my external and just cycle/scroll through refererenced images that are disconnected.

my hope is that apple will deliver a pro app support update soon to sort this out. once i relocate my masters its torture for me to go back into any of those projects. i've had to adjust my workflow to importing, doing all corrections, selecting, editing, etc..then relocating to masters..and once they're in masters i try to never look at them again in order to not deal with the dreaded gray box.

This problem occurred for me last night for the fist time. App 2.01 gave me problems re. thumbnailing but not 2.1.

Ap began generating a project's thumbs on its own (1000 pix, all previously generated), while no-one was using it. Selecting pix led to the grey screen, and any scroll led to all thumbs being regenerated. Took about a hour to sort out: after rebuilding lib I switched to viewer plus browser mode, and Ap recovered its dignity after a few minutes.

However....

Earlier in the day out in the field I backed up those same pix from card to laptop (which does not use Ap) and checked a couple using Preview. Grey screens appeared there too, and never have before, and the pix were mighty slow to display.

So am wondering if this is an occasional issue with the way NEFs are sometimes written or downloaded, or the time at which an uploading device is disconnected. Are others with this prob also using Nikon? Or downloading direct from camera instead of into a finder folder first?

best

Paul

No trouble ever emailing from Ap, and Ap2.1 was behaving itself again this morning. I don't believe the NEFs I shot yesterday included a proper embedded thumb, because Preview still displays a grey screen first, then the shot a while later - first time 'problem', no changes to the laptop's software or OS (10.4.11) etc. Card/camera probs, methinks.

((Ap does not appear FWIW if I try to use Mail's image browser - it only shows me iPhoto.))

dlt2006, are you saying the current Ap 2.1 demo won't install?

Do you upload from cameras, or cardreader? Do you put them into a folder first, or import into Ap direct?

best

Paul

i have not used email with ap, but if i export a gray box thumbnail to a jpeg file (i shoot all RAW) I usually end up getting the correct image exported. (fwiw i also have this problem with old scanned tiff and jpeg files, so im kind of baffled)

it appears that you guys are not using files referenced to an external drive, which is what i use, so now im not sure there's any rhyme/reason behind this thumbnail regeneration. i too have rebuilt my libraries.. i use two cameras, a 40D and a 5D, so I don't think the problem is the files...and again i do not have this issue with masters that are imported into and managed by aperture..only occurs when i relocate them.

and i know your questions are not directed towards me, but to answer i upload via cardreader, and import them directly in AP...

I think my grey box issue was a one-off problem with yesterday's files, because all is fine today. Sorry not to be helpful.

I let Ap finish making thumbnails before I try to do anything with it, and that, along with abandoning using referenced files, means 2.1 seems fine apart from the very slow adjustments on my home system. I just loaded 1500 pix (via an intermediate Finder folder) and it spent five minutes sorting thumbnails afterwards, then was alright. I've no plans to go back to using referenced files on the ext HD, after wasting much time wondering why it did not work right in my context.

FWIW last night I loaded some images into Ap library direct from laptop (in target mode). Long after Ap said it was done importing, the laptop drive would not eject from Finder or Ap. The OS said Ap was still accessing the drive, for another 15 minutes or so as it 'thumbnailed.'

Paul