A multicoloured Spinning Wheel and Photoshop

Hi Guys,
Been playing around with Photoshop lately and thought I would try out a focus stack, used only 8 images

During the last part of the process, "auto blend layers and stack images"
I got the multicoloured spinning wheel, didn't worry me too much at first as I always get it when I am updating vaults in Aperture

What was confusing was when the spinning wheel stopped and was just a circle of grey dots that were not moving?

When I moved the cursor the wheel started spinning again for a short time, the "snake" would show the progress a bit further then stop again?

Each time I moved the cursor, it got going again, eventually, the process did finish and I got the result I wanted, Photoshop aligned the images perfectly and stacked all 12 into one image without artefacts

Is the above normal? or would dedicated software work a lot easier?

My Mac is a 2012 iMac
3.4 Ghz i7
750GB SSD
32 GB ram

Would have thought the above would speed through the above with ease
....Gary

GLXMAN said:

My Mac is a 2012 iMac
3.4 Ghz i7
750GB SSD
32 GB ram

Would have thought the above would speed through the above with ease
....Gary

Click to expand...

Yes...I would have thought the same thing. That's a pretty powerful setup!

- What version of Photoshop are you using?
- What Mac OS is on your iMac?

Lastly...just out of curiosity. If you:

- Open up "Activity Monitor" (Applications Folder > Utilities Folder)
- click on the "System Memory" tab near the bottom
- What size are your "Page Outs" and "Swap Used"?

* Nick

Hi Nick,

Tks for popping in,
My computer knowledge is poor!

I am using the latest OSX
The Software is Photoshop CC (creative cloud), I'm new to this also but @ $10/month could not refuse the offer

Now,
I found the activity monitor
but couldn't find the applications folder or utilities folder
Sorry, I'm very good at Aperture but hopeless at anything else
....Gary

Latest OSX? 10.9.2 (Mavericks)?
Click the "Apple" logo extreme top left - then the top option on the drop-down, "About this Mac"
You will see the Apple logo and immediately under that OSX version.

Yep! thats one! 10.9.2

cheddar-caveman said:

Latest OSX? 10.9.2 (Mavericks)?
Click the "Apple" logo extreme top left - then the top option on the drop-down, "About this Mac"
You will see the Apple logo and immediately under that OSX version.

Click to expand...

Yes, thats the one, 10.9.2
....Gary

Here's a useful description of the Spinning disc.....
http://www.macworld.com/article/1151583/spinningbeachballofdeath.html

You can also install Onyx to "clean up" your computer, note, it is OS X version specific.

Thank you,

Good read,
Starting to think, software glitch

How long is it since you shut the computer right down and re started, I mean turn off for a few minutes and then turn on again? This can resolve quite a few glitches.
Also the OnyX will clean it up for you.

Not being familiar with creative cloud but would your internet speed be causing an issue since your not really loading the entire suite on the computer or am I missing something.

osxx said:

Not being familiar with creative cloud but would your internet speed be causing an issue since your not really loading the entire suite on the computer or am I missing something.

Click to expand...

Thats good
Adobe basically just gets a log in once a month, you don't have to be on the net for it to work
,,,,Gary

cheddar-caveman said:

How long is it since you shut the computer right down and re started, I mean turn off for a few minutes and then turn on again? This can resolve quite a few glitches.
Also the OnyX will clean it up for you.

Click to expand...

Tks for the heads up on Onyx,
I turn the Mac off about once a week
....Gary

Progress so far,

A friend pointed out that there is an option in Photoshop Preferences re performance,
I checked that and found that you can set how much of the ram is used with Photoshop!

It was set to 60%,
Now set to 100% and should be using all those 32GB now

Will do another test of that script in PS with stacking this morning and see what happens
....Gary

GLXMAN said:

A friend pointed out that there is an option in Photoshop Preferences re performance,
I checked that and found that you can set how much of the ram is used with Photoshop!

It was set to 60%,
Now set to 100% and should be using all those 32GB now

Will do another test of that script in PS with stacking this morning and see what happens
....Gary

Click to expand...

Sounds like an interesting test. Please post your findings.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Sounds like an interesting test. Please post your findings.

- Nick

Click to expand...

Will do, as always, did not forecast busy morning, all clear now, about to set up shortly,
If it does the same trick and freezes with the SBBOD, I suspect just a PS problem in that particular process

Here goes.
Back soon!
As they say, "watch this space!" ;D

All good news!
Well,
Ran a new set of 8 image stack,

The spinning grey wheel stopped a little but soon got going again and the 8 image 16bit psd files finished and produced another perfect image without the dreaded SBBOD!

Thank you all for your support

32GB ram is being used now!
....Gary

GLXMAN said:

All good news!
Well,
Ran a new set of 8 image stack,

The spinning grey wheel stopped a little but soon got going again and the 8 image 16bit psd files finished and produced another perfect image without the dreaded SBBOD!

Thank you all for your support

32GB ram is being used now!
....Gary

Click to expand...

Thanks for the report . . . good to know about the settings in Photoshop. Have to remember to check mine.

Happy to pass on my news,
Everybody else here has helped me here when I got my first Mac
....Gary