creating psd image

[Phila]

Hi, I"m using ArtRage 6 / Mac High Sierra. Now trying to convert a ptg file (612 Mo) to psd. It worked well with other files until now, but for this one Artrage still indicates " Artrage is busy" and the Mac wheel is still turning for 24 hours ! The psd file now is still charging very slowly (the size is presently 5,3 Go ...). Is that normal ? (just wait is the solution, but it looks a bit long ...) or not ?
There is apparently no possibility to suspend or stop the process on Artrage (just the Mac wheel turning).
Thanks for your advice and help

[markw]

Hello Phila,
No, 24 hours and counting dosn’t sound normal to me at all nor why the resulting psd file is getting so large (I assume when you wrote 5,3 Go you meant, 5.3GB)
I just tried converting a 527MB+/- file to .psd and it took 20sec at most.
If you have backups of the .ptg file in question or one you can retrieve via Time Machine, I would Force Quit ArtRage and restart your system.
I ask about backups because there could be a risk of the .ptg file being corrupted when forced to close.
I would think that in theory the .ptg file is only being read by AR, and not written to, while making the .psd file, so it should be OK to force it to close, but you never know…

[Phila]

Hi MarkW, Thanks for your reply. Yes Go is french version of GB. Yes I could force Artrage to quit but I didn't do it because of a bug in Artrage causing the loose of all stroke layer effects (a lot in this file) when the file is reloaded. I point out this problem a few months ago in the forum. So, if I quit artrage, a lot of work is lost ... And the fact that the ptg file itself could be corrupted after restarting the application is another problem ...
I just copied the ptg file to a usb key, but apparently all the stroke effects appearing now on ArtRage desktop do not appear in the copy !.. So the situation looks bad if the psd saving doesn't work. Actually, this psd file was created to save the stroke effects that Artrage cannot save for the moment.

[markw]

I just found your previous posts about the Layer Effects Stroke being lost.
I also just tried a very quick test and have also found that the Stroke effect is always lost when saving on my system running Mojave.
Interestingly I also found it was lost when exporting as .psd and opening the .psd in Affinity Photo and Designer and Pixelmator.
I don’t have Photoshop to see if it would be kept when opened with that, but my gut feeling is it that it wouldn’t be.

I can’t think of an easy solution for you right now I'm afraid other than avoiding the Stroke layer effect until such time as there is a fix for it. Not what you want to hear right now I’m sure, sorry .
I would strongly suggest that you contact Ambient Design directly about this via their Support page here: https://www.artrage.com/get-support/
Or via email here: [email protected]

[Phila]

Hi MarkW, thank you very much for the tests you made. On my system the stroke effect is not lost on the .psd, but I had the bad surprise to see that it was finally lost when opened by another user with Photoshop on a Window 10 system (while it works with Preview between 2 Macs ...). Only solution I think ... to use export to tiff image, but layers are lost ...
Unfortunately, I've lost all the stroke effects on my .ptg file (hours of work) as I had no other solution than force to quit ArtRage.
I think the stroke effect is a very useful and satisfying tool (except for saving !...) so very sad not to use it for such reason.
Yes, I already contacted Ambiant Design. They are aware of the stroke persistency problem and it should be fixed with a next update. I asked how long it could take, but no answer yet. I hope it will be soon as the problem is not a confort one, but an essential lack. For me, a priority as the tool is presently almost unusable or very risky ...

[Somerset]

Hi!

I already reported the Layer-Effects-Stroke-Bug some month ago. I think in August. As I found out, it can't be saved in a *.ptg, but you can export it in every other data format (png, jpeg, tif, psd...). Possibly it's a vector-based function, that gets rendered if you export it, but it's not saved in the *ptg, because the vector gets lost or so. I don't think that it's important what image editing software you use to open the file.

@markw: You work with Affinity Foto and Designer? Is it satisfying, can you commend it? I'm thinking about to by some of the Affinity Products. Especially Publisher. Looks verry god on their website.

[markw]

Hi Somerset,
Are you on a Mac? If so which version? As I posted earlier, I couldn’t get any .psd export to open in another app with the Stroke effect intact.

Yes, I use all three of the Affinity apps. I found them to be the perfect fit for my needs out side of ArtRage, which is still my go to app for raster based painting.
In general, though not restricted to;
Photo for image restoration and editing.
Designer for all things vector and two page layouts i.e front & back.
Publisher for larger multi page documents.

[Somerset]

Hi markw!

Thanx for your reply! No, I am on Windows 10 and Ubuntu Studio. I tested the exported *.psd in GIMP and even in Krita, and it worked correctly. It even worked to open the *.psd-file in ArtRage. But, of course, it's no longer a layer effect than.

I had a professional training as a media designer many years ago, and learned all those things like Photoshop, Quark XPress and a little later InDesign, Macromedia Freehand and than Illustrator and Corel Draw, and I love that stuff verry much. But I never liked doing commercials and want to try to go in a more independent artistic direction now. Since some years I use to work with Open Source Software like GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, Krita and MyPaint on Windows and Linux. I also like that stuff verry much and the idea of Open Source, but there are some important things you can't do with it. For example, GIMP can't handle the CMYK-Colorspace. So I'm searching for affordable software that fits professional standards. And if possible an alternative to Adobe, because it's too expensive and I don't like the Creative Cloud. So I heard about Affinity that looks all verry promising. Think I'll check it out. Thanx again for your informations.

[Phila]

Hi, just a few details on my recent experiences about the stroke effect question : exporting and saving the stroke effects on a .psd : apparently it works more or less according to the system used (OK with Mac High Sierra), but in any case the stroke effects saved in psd will be lost if the .psd is imported in Artrage, so impossible to add or modify anything on the project (without loosing stroke effects). The second point is that the .psd created on my macbook also lost the stroke effects when opened on photoshop by a window 10 user, so based on my recent experience, the .psd solution is not efficient. Apparently a .tiff works better (stroke effects are kept) but layers are lost.
If anybody has a better solution, until this bug is fixed ? ... thanks

[Somerset]

Hi Phila!

It's not unusual that layers get lost if you export an image. Depending on the software, many programs don't export tiffs with layers. Photoshop does, but that may be because tiff is an invention of Adobe and Apple, as far as I know. GIMP, for example, also should do that in its new version, but a bug impeds it. Normally the most image editing programs have their own file formats for saving images with most of the features you work on it - like layers, selections. guides, masks and so on. The native file format of Photoshop is the *.psd, ArtRage has the *.ptg, GIMP the *.xcf... As long as you work on an image, you should alway use the native formats to save your work. Unfortunately it doesn't work satisfying in this case.

As I said, on windows 10 the stroke effect can be exported with every file format I tested (psd, png, tiff, jpeg). But it can't be saved with the *.ptg. Think (hope!) this will be fixed with the next Update or ArtRage 7.