Green Box Problem in Aperture

Sounds fair enough! I'll test it on my more recent MBP and compare it to the iMac. Does it make sense to you that in my case things really improved when I switched to 32 bits mode? Would that affect the use of the VRAM?

I've used it some more (on the older iMac) and it stay perfectly usable but I can still spot it e.g. when I switch the loupe on and of. The difference is that it is now just a flickering of green and that th green blocks never persist (which they did before.

Has anyone else on this older Macs had any luck with this after changing to 32 bits?

Gerard Klein wrote:
Sounds fair enough! I'll test it on my more recent MBP and compare it to the iMac. Does it make sense to you that in my case things really improved when I switched to 32 bits mode? Would that affect the use of the VRAM?

I've used it some more (on the older iMac) and it stay perfectly usable but I can still spot it e.g. when I switch the loupe on and of. The difference is that it is now just a flickering of green and that th green blocks never persist (which they did before.

Has anyone else on this older Macs had any luck with this after changing to 32 bits?

Hi Gerald,

It is possible that the lower rate of transfer to the GPU in 32 as compared to 64 did not fill the VRAM as fast. Again, you really have to monitor this in atMonitor, and it becomes obvious when it happens.

What is your MBP config? (Model Identifier, CPU speed, video card type, amount of VRAM and RAM, drive size)

K.J. Doyle

I reported the problem few months ago, but no feed-back.

@Kevin J. Doyle
I tested A3 on my MBP no sign of any problems, not a hint of green blocks. Aperture 3.0.1 runs nicely and seems better en snappier than A2. Not a big difference but I seems to struggle less. I used the same library on both cases (on an external disc. Connected via a FW400 cable to keep things even)

So to recap:
- On an iMac 20" 2.16 2GB Mac OS X (10.6.2) with Aperture in 64 bits mode: loads of green blocks and quite unusable
- On the same iMac with Aperture in 32 bits mode. Some artifacts but not a problem.
- On an MBP 2,4 4GB with the dual GPU (10.2.2) (both 256 MB) Aperture in 64 bits mode with external screen: not a problem.
So this is all consistent with your hypothesis. 🙂

After some testing would agree that it's a system level problem. Apple, when moving to Snow Leopard, re-wrote a lot of CoreGraphics to make use of the GPU horsepower. Seems likely that the system is not robust enough to deal with low memory conditions with VRAM. Either a leak in the drivers, a bug in the GPU hardware (ATI X160 in my case), assumption of a minimum level of VRAM, whatever. If the new SL routines don't fly with installed video card, the system should revert to giving the load back to the CPU. Things would run slower, but at least Aperture would be useable.

Switching Aperture to 32-bit mode did nothing to eliminate the issue.

FWIW, I have noticed the same thing happening when editing in iPhoto (again most noticeable when modifying the tonal range of a photo), further supporting that the problem is at the OS level not confined to Aperture. Or there is something other common to the editing code shared between Aperture and iPhoto.

In case it helps anyone, some of my machine details:
Model: iMac5,1, BootROM IM51.0090.B09, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.16 GHz, 4 GB, SMC 1.9f
Graphics: ATI Radeon X1600, ATY,RadeonX1600, PCIe, 128 MB

Running all the latest updates as of 06.Mar.10.

Agreed. I first saw this issue in iPhoto and I'm now using Aperture 3 trial and the problem is even worse. This is on iMac 2.16 Ghz from June 2007. It does appear to be related to the hardware of our machines, but it was kicked off by Snow Leopard. iPhoto worked fine on this machine prior to Snow Leopard. There are long threads about this issue here as it relates to iPhoto.

Going to 32-bit Aperture doesn't seem to fix the problem at all for me either.

Message was edited by: switcher98223

Add me to the list of people who can not use Aperture 3 because of the green box problem. It was a pain in Aperture 2; it's a killer in Aperture 3.

If anyone finds a work-around, please post.

Thanks.

Gerard Klein wrote:

- On the same iMac with Aperture in 32 bits mode. Some artifacts but not a problem.

After more work done with A3 on my iMac, the green blocks did return in some cases. It is still usable (in 32 bits) but it is also a bug that needs a fix. So "not a problem" was called too soon.

Having exactly the green-box-replacing-the-photo issue being discussed here. 15" MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM; OS 10.6.2; Aperture 3.0.1, all software up to date as of today (and previously).

A couple of you have mentioned running Aperture 3 in 32-bit mode. Could you please say where or how one can make this adjustment? I would like to see if that helps any in my case, as there don't seem to be any other avenues at this point.

Thanks very much.

Same thing for me, A3 crashes constantly when doing some adjustments. And now and then also just when browsing through the images. A2 was fine A3 is a disaster.

Message was edited by: Aldrx

Same issue here. First noticed with Aperture 2 after upgrading to Snow Leopard. The Aperture 3 trial is practically unusable. Every brush stroke creates that green overlay. Over the weekend I downgraded to Leopard. The issue disappeared with both A2 and A3. Looks like the majority of affected users have the same graphics card – ati x1600. There is obviously something not working between this card and SL.

I sent feedback to Apple at least two times. It is a big shame that the company doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that there is a problem. In the end of the day, it affects many of its customers. Eventually, this will result in a negative impact on the company’s income. I won't buy Aperture 3 until the problem's fixed. There is also no way I'll buy a new mac computer as the existing machine is more than capable for my day-to-day requirements. And all new iMac's have glossy screens 😟

Looking at the number of "views" this thread has generated compared to other issues, this appears to be a pretty serious problem for a lot of people. Apple needs to address this.

Hi switcher98223;

If you sincerely feel that Apple should address this problem, then maybe you should tell them using the Aperture Feedback page.

Allan

I have sent multiple feedbacks to Apple.

I also took the machine in to the genius bar on friday as my Applecare expires in a month.

I spoke to them this morning. They believe it may the the GPU overheating and causing the problems. They cleaned the machine out (dust etc.) and replaced the logic board (integrated graphics card). I don't have the machine back so I don't know if this solved the problem, but I thought I would share what is happening to solve this.

For what it's worth:

If you keep the Aperture window small on your desktop, you can mitigate the problem, but not get rid of it entirely.

Also, resizing the window after the photo turns weird colors sometimes restores the photo.

Finally, keeping it in Browser view (not Viewer) as much as possible also helps.

Not a solution, but better than downgrading to Leopard (in my opinion).