How to work with Preview in Lion (autosave, etc)

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Level 1

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How to work with Preview in Lion (autosave, etc)

Just installed Lion and am tweaking and adjusting.

Run headlong into Autosave/Versioning with Preview. Was very used to using preview to quickly look at and play with adjustments to images (but used Photoshop for heavy lifting). Most of the time, I discarded any adjustments that I made in Preview (i.e. I didn't save them).

Was surprised that Lion autosaves anything that I do to an image in Preview. So, how does one work in this environment. Avoid Preview? Always do the extra step of reverting to an older image before closing Preview (is it obvious which version to revert to?)? Something else? I don't see a way to turn autosave off. On first blush, this seems like a Misfeature. Not just for Preview, but for many things. Is no longer safe to just play because all changes are being saved.

I hope that I'm missing something that can bring back a more explicit workflow.

I also noticed that Preview is really sucking up memory. I opened a couple of images (small ones, < 1MB). After playing for a while, the Preview app used almost all of the available 10GB of memory on my system (the system became really sluggish). Is this a side effect of versioning? I quit and restarted Preview and it freed up memory.

Posted on Dec 11, 2011 1:03 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Dec 11, 2011 1:23 PM in response to jice0

The workflow is different. Either duplicate or save a version before making changes. Editing large documents with many versions might cause Preview to allocate a lot of memory.

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Answer 2

jice0 Author

Level 1

10 points

Dec 11, 2011 1:47 PM in response to Linc Davis

Wondering how general the above advice is. Only for preview, or all programs? Time will tell on how well this feature works; certainly different as compared to other OS's that I might use during the day.

In this case, I only opned a couple of small photos and made a handful of changes. So, I don't know where all the memory went. I'll be watchful.

I've now unchecked "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps". But, note that this doesn't affect audosaving.

Feels like initial startup of apps (incl. preview) is a bit sluggish under Lion. Perhaps due to checking saved state (a guess).

Apple isn't shy about changing things!

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