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65 points

Photo - Black Screen of Death?

For those that have not seen what Aperture looks like when you get "black screen of death", I post the following link: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3152/25828656846723f2bfd8b.jpg

This happens on occasion while making an adjustment. In the example above I was making an 'Exposure' adjustment via the Exposure slider. The 'Command' key was NOT pressed while adjusting.

Now once this black screen manifests itself, any adjustment leaves the screen flickering between a preview image or a black screen. In the sample above it happened to remain black. Other times the preview image will return once adjustment sliders are 'released' or let go. A reboot is required to get Aperture running again. Didn't BSOD used to mean something else?

Is this a failure of:
Graphics/video driver -or-
Code contained in Aperture itself -or-
A "Core" service of OS X. I.e a weak foundation.

I like Aperture enough that this maddening bug will not stop me from using it. It will stop me from recommending it. BTW I own both competing products of this type and prefer Aperture. Just a shame that Aperture is more buggy than the competing product. Where is the fault? Bad app code or bad foundation/OS or bad video drivers? I'm sure not equipped to solve this one.

Mac Pro 2.66 Dual Core, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 8800GT (Legacy)

Posted on Jun 15, 2008 7:47 PM

20 replies

Aug 10, 2008 2:13 AM in response to Deeepak

This happened to me for the first time today. I had just made a post in another thread about lack of camera preview images (Nikon D80 - RAW format). Got round this problem - kind of - by viewing images in iPhoto then importing into Aperture.

I set up a smart album which was to hold images with certain keywords from my last import and images with 5 stars. Went into full screen view, awarded a photo 5 stars and both full screen view of images and normal view gave me this black screen. I've tried restarting Aperture, adjusting preview size and lots of other things - all to no avail.

It would seem to me that now I have two bugs in the software. I rely on Aperture to get things done without fuss but now it's getting decidedly creaky. I don't understand error messages or logs - all I want to able to do is use this software.

I'm not happy at all about this.

Aug 10, 2008 2:19 AM in response to Old Man at the Mac

Further post - rebooted Mac and I still have the same problem. I can't get at the photos I've just imported.

WHAT GIVES!!!!!?????

Aug 10, 2008 7:45 PM in response to jbhmacpro

This happens to me all the time. I will check my logs next time.

G5 dual 2.5 GHz, 4Gb memory, X800XT video card. I never have to reboot, just stop and start aperture. It does seem to happen more often when memory is tight, but even with nothing else running, aperture chews up that 4G pretty fast.

I don't know how anyone could not know of this issue, it has been happening to me from day one with Aperture.

Aug 13, 2008 9:14 PM in response to Douglas Stetner1

Tested the same process on my laptop and it did not do this at all. I guess I may have to process all my images there before moving them to my desktop. Painful process though.

Aug 17, 2008 12:43 AM in response to jbhmacpro

I've also run into this I think after installing the 2.1.1 update - prior to (and after that) I am still getting the Unsupported Image format messages as well.

I'm currently running a Mac Pro with 8gigs of RAM, is it prudent to consider an upgrade to 16 or even 32? I can't afford to keep getting hit with these two very terrifying defects.

Will the upgrade to 16 make a significant overall improvement for Aperture?

Thanks!
Ted

Photo - Black Screen of Death?