Dave Hartley

When buying electronics or digital cameras etc, you usally get asked whether you want to purchase an extended warrenty. Normally I don’t bother with these but when I bought my Apple Macbook Pro over a year ago, I decided to get the AppleCare protection plan as the laptop used the new LED backlit displays and I erred on the cautious with the new technology.

In April this year, I had the screen replaced as I had a few stuck pixels. Yesterday, I went to boot up my Mac and had the unfortunate experience of seeing it fail to switch on, not even the startup “bong”. I could hear the disk being accessed, but had a black screen and no sync on my external monitor.  This was about fourteen months after the date of purchase, and hence for the normal warrenty of twelve months, I would’ve been out of luck. As I had the AppleCare, I was able to call up the phone support (normal phone support is only 90 days!) and went through a bunch of procedures to try to get the machine back to life. None of these were sucessfull, although we were at least able to get the startup “bong” but no life on the displays. So, we booked an appointment at the Genius Bar. Unfortunetaly they couldn’t fix it either as it looks like it needs a new motherboard. Hopefully, I’ll get a fixed computer within a week. I’m sure glad that I decided to buy the extended warrenty this time.

There seems to be a major bug in the Lightroom dual monitor support. with the primary screen in loupe view and the secondary screen in either loupe view or grid view, the application will produce the infamous spinning ball. Occasionally, this will fix itself after a minute or so, but more often than not, a force quit is required. In all cases, the Lightroom cpu load is ~98%. This is running on a Macbook Pro, 2.4GHz, 4G ram and 10.5.4. The bottom line is dual monitor support is not stable.

Update: since I was having problems with dual monitor mode, I went back to using just the one. I’ve had one hang using normal loupe view whilst doing simple reject editing on folders. I’ve also seen the system hang for a minute or two whilst it Lightroom thinks about things.

In Library mode, grid view, use command-click to select a number of images that you want to put into an instant slide show. For example, if you have four pictures, select pictures 1, 2 and 4. Then do command-return for the instant slide show. All four images are displayed, not the ones you selected. This is quite a basic bug and you wonder how the software ever got through quality control.

My advice is to wait for the next point release before upgrading. I broke my own rule with respect to buying software when it has just been released as I was getting frustrated with the clunky key-wording & search functionality offered in 1.4.1.

Update (one more bug):

I just found another bug. When in Library mode, grid view, I was applying a metadata preset by selecting all images (123 images). I applied the preset but with all images selected, the preset says “None”. If I select a single image, it indicates the correct preset name. I found that if I select up to 25 images, the correct preset name is shown, but as soon as I select a 26th image, the preset indicates “None”. If I just select the 26th image, it correctly indicates the preset name.

I upgraded my 1.4.1 release of Lightroom to the new version 2.0 last night. Today was the first day that I really got to play with it. Somethings I like, some I don’t; I’ll post a blog on my initial thoughts after I’ve played around with it some more.

One thing I have noticed is that it’s given me the spinning ball of death on my Mac twice tonight (please read the full post as I’m updating whenever I get a hang). Both times, I was in the develop module. The first time I was using the dust spot removal tool and had just typed “N’ to come out of the tool… spinning ball hang. The second time, I had used the graduated filter tool, went to the saturation control and pressed down arrow key twice … spinning ball hang. Both times the cpu was at 99% and I had to do a force quit. This is on a 2.4HGz MacbookPro, 4G ram and 10.5.4.

Luckily my catalog was ok after each force quit, and it’s a reminder to ensure that you backup your catalog just in case.

Update: I just had another spinning ball. Again in the develop module; this time I was in the Detail -> Chromatic Aberration panel and had just hit the up arrow key + shift twice on the Red/Cyan adjustment. Again, Lightroom not responding and cpu load is 90% with a force quit required.

Update: Another spinning ball. In the Library module, Lightroom was in grid view and generating thumbnails in a set of folders (over 4000 images in about ten folders). I selected one image and pressed ‘E’ to go into loupe view… hang, spinning ball. CPU load was zero, Lightroom was not responding, and I had to do a force quit.

Update: Another spinning ball. Dual monitor mode. Loupe view on monitor 1, grid on monitor 2. Hit X to flag a photo as reject… hand and had to force quit. CPU load for Lightroom was 98%.

Update: Another spinning ball in dual monitor mode. This can occur when we have loupe/grid view on the different monitors and also when both are in loupe view. Sometimes, the spinning ball comes back to life after several minutes but sometimes it locks up and force quit is required.

Update: Another spinning ball. In develop mode using the gradient tool. I had just made an adjustment to the clarity and got the infamous spinning ball, Lightroom was not responding with cpu of 24%. To make matters worse, I took a snapshot screen grab of the activity monitor showing the Lightroom hang and then pasted it into a new Photoshop file … my whole computer froze up requiring a hard reboot.

Update: Another one. In loupe view, I was zoomed in and hit X to mark as a reject… spinning ball, 98% cpu and force quite required.