Secure Saving and Auto-Backup features

[toastyovens]

Yeaa? I've been wondering about that too.

My take is, it's the same thing that you get with Painter IX.5's when something goes wrong and a dialogue box will pop up and tell you to save to a different folder.

Or.......







you've been had... ;)

[steve_szoczei]

I can see in preferences that I can make backups on save, but where can I instruct painter to "Secure Save", which I assume is something like Auto Save. I checked the help, this forum, Google groups but couldn't find an answer. I cancelled the Painter process while I had a file open, to test whether Painter might reopen the file, which it didn't.

So where/what the heck is this "Secure Saving"? :D

'Secure Save' is a new way of saving files that is not an option, but the new default way of saving in Painter.

The method is to save to a 'temp' file while actually doing the save process, then once the process has completed and the file has been verified, the file is renamed to what it should be replacing the older version.

Here's the flow of it....

Start a new painting.... save it as "New Painting.rif" (or .psd or whatever)... work on it for a bit... hit Command/Control S to save changes... file "New Painting_temp.rif" gets saved in same location as original file... once complete and verified.... "New Painting.rif" is removed, and "New Painting_temp.rif" is renamed to "New Painting.rif"...

All done behind the scenes, and everything is tickety-boo...

Why is this done?

This allows Painter to ensure that the file saved correctly before removing the older version, thus severely decreasing the chances of file corruption on save, as was seen by some folks in previous versions.

Hope this helps...

cheers


steve

[BlueFlare]

Pretty much useless feature then, at least for me. I had hoped for an auto save every x minutes and I think that Corel tries to sell it that way by using some cryptic features. :D

Thanks!

[Hecartha]

Pretty much useless feature then, at least for me.Pretty much useful in my opinion :)
I lost 2 sketches this month because my system crashed during the last step of saving process, it could be avoided with painter X.
I had hoped for an auto save every x minutes and I think that Corel tries to sell it that way by using some cryptic features. :D

Thanks!An auto save? It means you will lose the control of the program few seconds every x minutes while you are painting, pretty annoying when you just need to think to push the save or iterative save after each major step of your work.
What non annoying method are you thinking to implement that?

[workbench]

What non annoying method are you thinking to implement that?

How about Corel actually fixed what causes the crashes instead of coming with these half-assed workarounds? Just sayin'

[Hecartha]

How about Corel actually fixed what causes the crashes instead of coming with these half-assed workarounds? Just sayin'I've seen crash in any program i can use more than one hour so in any way this feature can be useful. My last system crashes was due to old crappy soundcard driver...

Now i haven't so many stability issues with painter, just sometimes with the clipboard painter can freeze my system till i force the end of the process. But i agree with you about fixing what is causing the crashes.
Anyway i would prefer a lot that Corel fix this issue (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=112&t=469864) before anything else~

[workbench]

I've seen crash in any program i can use more than one hour so in any way this feature can be useful. My last system crashes was due to old crappy soundcard driver...

Now i haven't so many stability issues with painter, just sometimes with the clipboard painter can freeze my system till i force the end of the process. But i agree with you about fixing what is causing the crashes.
Anyway i would prefer a lot that Corel fix this issue (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=112&t=469864) before anything else~


My PC is pretty stable, I only run work software and a couple of reliable programs and Painter is the only one that crashes at random specially the later releases. Adobe Photoshop is my main work program and it never crashed or corrupted a file nor have I've seen the same volume of complaints as Painter gets for crashes and corrupted files. I can see your point, if you have an unstable computer that feature can be helpful, if it actually works that is.

Yep that's a major annoyance too, it's been with Painter since the first days and they just ignore it or simply aren't up to the task.

[Hecartha]

I can see your point, if you have an unstable computer that feature can be helpful, if it actually works that is.I'll change completely my poor so old computer soon, i wish everything will be as stable as your PC with the next one :)

[genocell]

Pretty much useless feature then, at least for me. I had hoped for an auto save every x minutes and I think that Corel tries to sell it that way by using some cryptic features.

I think the auto backup feature as you suggested is not, in my opinion one of the top features that we really need. I think one of the biggest problems is what Lunatique addressed in his post here. (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=4503401#post4503401)

From my observation using Painter IX.5, the file only gets corrupted when a crash happens at the time when you are saving a file. And believe me, I get about one power outtage a day where I live and not once was the file corrupted when the crash happens at the time when the file was not in the process of saving (with the status bar is going 'ditditditdit')

So what steve_szoczei (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=203324) said is correct in that it solved Painter IX's "corrupt file" problem.

[BlueFlare]

Pretty much useful in my opinion.

I lost 2 sketches this month because my system crashed during the last step of saving process, it could be avoided with painter X. Corel doesn't know how to make a substantial part of any application like save more reliable so they add a feature like that? I speak with several years of experience as application programmer (not web applications) when I say that this is like carrying water to the ocean. I also can't come up with the name of one single application that crashed on me during a save in almost 30 years of computing, so obviously it should be too difficult to fix this problem.

Bad saves are another issue, I had a few of them in the past, but crashes during save… mmm, like I said, never had to deal with that, maybe I’m just lucky.
Btw, if you lost 2 sketches because of this, then you should look at your workflow instead. Important is not just to save, but to save often.

Let’s go back to Corel’s solution as explained by Steve:

Start a new painting.... save it as "New Painting.rif" (or .psd or whatever)... work on it for a bit... hit Command/Control S to save changes... file "New Painting_temp.rif" gets saved in same location as original file... once complete and verified.... "New Painting.rif" is removed, and "New Painting_temp.rif" is renamed to "New Painting.rif"...

Now let’s assume you work on an image for an hour, forgot to save earlier (happens to a lot of us, right), but once you do decide to save the program crashes. I don’t see how Corel’s method will guarantee that in this case Painting_temp.rif will be available too.
The whole solution doesn’t make sense. To me it seems that it can only guarantee that Painting_temp.rif will be available if you’ve saved successfully at least once.

Corel should make the save more reliable, instead of using all kind of workarounds and give it a nice marketing name. But then again… Corel doesn’t have a good name when it comes to reliability and I don’t see that changing very soon. That’s one of the reasons why I’m so interested in those 2 new “features”.

An auto save? It means you will lose the control of the program few seconds every x minutes while you are painting, pretty annoying when you just need to think to push the save or iterative save after each major step of your work.
What non annoying method are you thinking to implement that?You lost two sketches by not having such an “annoying” feature, so what is more annoying? I do think that users should be given the choice to use it in preferences.

My PC is pretty stable, I only run work software and a couple of reliable programs and Painter is the only one that crashes at random specially the later releases. Adobe Photoshop is my main work program and it never crashed or corrupted a file nor have I've seen the same volume of complaints as Painter gets for crashes and corrupted files.That's exactly my experience too workbench. ;)

[Hecartha]

Bad saves are another issue, I had a few of them in the past, but crashes during save… mmm, like I said, never had to deal with that, maybe I’m just lucky.
You are not lucky, it is a new feature in my system :) , i don't know why everything worked before but now for any reason there is something unstable, soundcard driver+process+program...surely something new but i don't care my whole system will be changed soon.

Btw, if you lost 2 sketches because of this, then you should look at your workflow instead. Important is not just to save, but to save often.
Well, it seems you did not understand correctly what Steve described. It isn't a problem about how many times i saved my work. If the saving process cannot be completed because the crash, you lose your file. In my case with the secure saving i would lose only the "myfile_temp.rif", not the "myfile.rif" which is the original file. So i'll lose some minutes of work instead of the whole work.:shrug:
Now you wrote about my workflow without knowing my personal choice in this situation :rolleyes:. For some kind of sketches (those with lineart) i use usually a high res file, sometimes more than 6000x4000 px and i can make many sketches in a day with 3-4 layer (or more) per sketch. At this resolution the file become pretty big for just a sketch so for this kind of work i didn't use the backup files i use for an illustration or a colored sketch. This is my choice, there is some risk I've accepted but thanks...

Let’s go back to Corel’s solution as explained by Steve:

Start a new painting.... save it as "New Painting.rif" (or .psd or whatever)... work on it for a bit... hit Command/Control S to save changes... file "New Painting_temp.rif" gets saved in same location as original file... once complete and verified.... "New Painting.rif" is removed, and "New Painting_temp.rif" is renamed to "New Painting.rif"...

Now let’s assume you work on an image for an hour, forgot to save earlier (happens to a lot of us, right), but once you do decide to save the program crashes.Once you have lost 1-2 hours of work, saving often began a reflex. Now it depends mostly of personal taste about making again what was ever made before and i hate that!! If you can spend one hour without using the save perhaps you didn't like really much the latest step in your work, it can happen, it is also why an autosave is "useless" if it replaces the original file.

...but once you do decide to save the program crashes. I don’t see how Corel’s method will guarantee that in this case Painting_temp.rif will be available too.
The whole solution doesn’t make sense. To me it seems that it can only guarantee that Painting_temp.rif will be available if you’ve saved successfully at least once.
The solution is really common, it is pretty close of how microsoft word document works with a temp file until you close the program, the temp replace the original. In painter the secure saving is not here to protect the temp file, it is here to protect the original file till it is replaced by the new working file.:shrug:

Corel should make the save more reliable, instead of using all kind of workarounds and give it a nice marketing name.In my opinion (if the secure saving works like Steve said) that the save is now more reliable because reading what Steve wrote it is now impossible to save a corrupted file over a working file.

You lost two sketches by not having such an “annoying” feature, so what is more annoying? I do think that users should be given the choice to use it in preferences.

...you really need to take a second to read what Steve said, an auto save did not prevent the corrupted file...Now if the auto save could be deactivated, why not but i can already imagine how many critics i could read about this feature "damn, Corel should work on stability instead of making new crappy feature blabla bla".

[genocell]

You are not lucky, it is a new feature in my system :) , i don't know why everything worked before but now for any reason there is something unstable, soundcard driver+process+program...surely something new but i don't care my whole system will be changed soon.



Now that you mentioned it, I forgot to mention that my PC restarts everytime I save a file in painter X. BUT the save feature worked fine before when I first installed it. I don't know what triggered it. :shrug:Now I just use Painter IX.5.

On a side note I made a mistake in my last post about the autobackup program. Now I understand what BlueFlare meant.

[Hecartha]

I'm using painter IX.5 :D not painter X and since i use it it is the first time my system crash during saving process.
I've a question, when your pc restart when you save your file in Painter X, does it corrupt your original file or does it corrupt only the temporary file?


On a side note I made a mistake in my last post about the autobackup program. Now I understand what BlueFlare meant.Yes BlueFlare means an autosave like in 3d program~, but in 3d program you have to deal with small file (ie 5MB file depending of your work~) where in Painter you can have to deal with 200MB file or more. I hate this feature in 3d program because it breaks my workflow less than a second :D when i'm adjusting precisely some vertex, i can't imagine to play with that in 2d program when the saving process will spend few seconds.
To be acceptable this kind of feature should allow something like "save every x minutes when Painter is idle during x seconds" and also with that it can be still annoying if the saving process start just when you decide to add detail in your work.
But as BlueFlare suggested this feature could be deactivated so everyone could use it or not.

For me, saving often is a reflex just like painting the foreground on a layer when you need to work on the background later. With experience, you should not need that...i thought but perhaps i'm wrong.

[genocell]

I'm using painter IX.5 :D not painter X and since i use it it is the first time my system crash during saving process.
I've a question, when your pc restart when you save your file in Painter X, does it corrupt your original file or does it corrupt only the temporary file?

It corrupted both of those files. The system restarts AT THE MOMENT I touched the save menu. Fortunately, I always saved a copy of the file I'm working on.



Yes BlueFlare means an autosave like in 3d program~, but in 3d program you have to deal with small file (ie 5MB file depending of your work~) where in Painter you can have to deal with 200MB file or more. I hate this feature in 3d program because it breaks my workflow less than a second :D when i'm adjusting precisely some vertex, i can't imagine to play with that in 2d program when the saving process will spend few seconds.
To be acceptable this kind of feature should allow something like "save every x minutes when Painter is idle during x seconds" and also with that it can be still annoying if the saving process start just when you decide to add detail in your work.
But as BlueFlare suggested this feature could be deactivated so everyone could use it or not.

For me, saving often is a reflex just like painting the foreground on a layer when you need to work on the background later. With experience, you should not need that...i thought but perhaps i'm wrong.

I also agree. In my opinion, there is really no need to have such a feature. It is also like a reflex to me. I have been around numerous buggy softwares for years that I sometimes think I can psychically sense when something is about to go wrong. :eek:

In my opinion, there are bigger deep reaching fundamental problems to tackle for Corel. The white/black 'pick up underlying colors' brush artefacts, the brush 'banding' problems and the effects preview. Of course, bug problems are and always prevalent. Right now for me, Painter IX.5 is as stable as granite.

[Hecartha]

It corrupted both of those files. The system restarts AT THE MOMENT I touched the save menu. Fortunately, I always saved a copy of the file I'm working on.
Both of them??!!! Damn, it doesn't work as it should!
Normally it should be impossible after reading carefully what Steve wrote...

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p76/hecartha/_Secure-Saving-Tumb.jpg (http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p76/hecartha/_Secure-Saving.jpg)
Did you try again using the latest patch?



I also agree. In my opinion, there is really no need to have such a feature. It is also like a reflex to me. I have been around numerous buggy softwares for years that I sometimes think I can psychically sense when something is about to go wrong. :eek:
Too bad, i have not this kind of capacity :D

In my opinion, there are bigger deep reaching fundamental problems to tackle for Corel. The white/black 'pick up underlying colors' brush artefacts, the brush 'banding' problems and the effects preview. Of course, bug problems are and always prevalent. Right now for me, Painter IX.5 is as stable as granite.Yes Painter IX.5 is pretty stable :)

[genocell]

Both of them??!!! Damn, it doesn't work as it should!
Normally it should be impossible after reading carefully what Steve wrote...


Did you try again using the latest patch?





I have installed it. But I haven't got around in testing it yet. It still restarts my computer, but I haven't found out if it corupted any of my files yet. Right now, I'm scared crapless at attempting to do it again after it screwed my download.

I will get to the bottom of this once I'm finished downloading stuff so I can use Painter X again...

[Hecartha]

ok, i wonder how many people have problem with the saving in painter X.

[genocell]

Sorry I haven't gotten to that yet because I was busy. I'm going out for a few hours when I get back and I'll give it a test. I PROMISE. :)

[Hecartha]

no problem genocell, I'm not in a hurry :D

[genocell]

Hi again. I tried saving and it did restart my computer again. I'm not sure if the update helped in not corrupting the file or not but the file wasn't corrupted this time.

I cannot investigate further as I had an "unmountable boot error" after Painter X retstarted my computer two times and I had to run scandisk/r from the recovery console so I can boot into windows again. Also my hardisk sometimes 'freezes' and I had to manually reset my computer, probably a bad sector.

Let me tell everyone that this did not happen the first time I installed X. It was likely a sytem change that trigerred it. There are many variables involved and I am not putting the blame on Corel.

Well at least I still have my Painter IX.5

[Hecartha]

I cannot investigate further as I had an "unmountable boot error" after Painter X retstarted my computer two times and I had to run scandisk/r from the recovery console so I can boot into windows again. Also my hardisk sometimes 'freezes' and I had to manually reset my computer, probably a bad sector.ouch, what a bad news

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