PSE5 actions in effects folder loosing alphabetical sort

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imatechguy
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PSE5 actions in effects folder loosing alphabetical sort

Post by imatechguy »

Distro: Archlinux 2.6.38
Wine version: 1.3.17
(The system is fully updated)

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Affected folder: 
~/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Application Data/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/5.0/Photo Creations/special effects/photo effects/CoffeShop Actions

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Unaffected folders:
~/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Application Data/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/5.0/Photo Creations/special effects/photo effects/frames

~/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Application Data/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/5.0/Photo Creations/special effects/photo effects/image effects

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Equivalent Window XP path of affected folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\5.0\Photo Creations\special effects\photo effects\CoffeeShop Actions
Problem:
I am trying to migrate my wife's PC to Linux and doing that requires she retain access to PSE5 (Photoshop Elements 5) so using another program, like GIMP, is unfortunately not an option. PSE5 installed and starts flawlessly and all the generic actions that came preinstalled with it seem to be fine. However I have a few folders with custom actions that are “loosing” the alphabetical sort when Photoshop builds the Artwork and actions databases when PSE5 is started. If I use the file manager to browse to the folder everything looks as it should. However when PSE5 starts and we use the Artwork pallete to navigate to the Photo Effects folder the actions are displayed in jumbled order and the thumbnail images are in an even different order so nothing is sorted and nothing matches.

I've checked the thumbs.psd stack and the images are properly ordered alphabetically from bottom to top. I tried changing the order of 6 of the images in the stack to match the order the actions in the pallete window and that worked on those I tested to get the images to match the actions, however the order of the actions in the pallette window is still wonky. I also tried renaming the action files to get rid of spaces, exchange the underscore “_” for spaces, remove extra words/letters and though sometimes the display order would change it sill wouldn't be alphabetical as expected. I've also tried multiple copy/pastes of the folder and even just the files within as well as multiple deletes and rebuilds of the Media and Thumbs databases.

Please note this all works as expected if I boot into XP so I know all the files are capable of functioning as intended. Also note there are numerous other custom actions in various other paths that are displayed in alphabetical order as expected so it's not a global problem with actions. I'm thinking the problem is in how PSE is building the MediaDatabase.db3 and ThumbDatabase.db3 files when it is launched but why these specific actions are affected is what I'm stumped on. Since I know this is occuring in at least one other folder I am hoping there is a single fix to the problem.


Here are a few of the 23 total actions in the affected folder and where they fall in the displayed order. As I said above I've tried renaming them in various ways but and while it will change the order it never fixes it to be correct, alphabetically. I can provide a few more, or even the full list if needed but this short list will at least highlight the problem.

CoffeeShop Baby PowderRoom.atn - should be 1st but is displayed 6th
CoffeeShop Moody Pop.atn - should be 10th but is displayed 1st
CoffeeShop Vintage Blush.atn – should be 20th but is displayed 5th
CoffeeShop Eye Bright.atn – should be 5th but is displayed 11th.



Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated,



The part that just adds insult to injury in all this is that PSE5 normally takes 2-4 minutes to launch when booted into XP Home but will launch in about 30-45 seconds using WINE. This PC is running a C2D 6420 @ 3.2Ghz with 4Gb of RAM (4x1Gb of DDR2 800) so it's shouldn't be a hardware issue that's causing the slow load time in XP.
oiaohm
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Post by oiaohm »

XP low performance is simple to answer. XP memory management system is slow. Linux memory management is faster that much faster in fact that the wrappers in wine to still leave Linux way ahead. Also Linux disk IO is faster in most cases enough that even with wine operation wrappers its still ahead of XP. Lets just for niceness say XP is not the best built program.

Where Wine go splat is particular areas of graphical support are slow due to complex mapping to make X11 happy taking the data and there are a lot of Linux video card drivers that are slower than their windows relations. Basically if wine did not have that issue it would run rings around windows in most cases.

I will tell you 1 other programs you should added to your image altering kit. http://www.digikam.org/ .

digikam is deceptive. Reads like a basic album solution until you get to what editing features it directly supports include Template Superimpose. I have found people who were quite heavy Photoshop uses find digikam quite a useful tool. So reducing how much they do in Photoshop. For the simple reason for a lot of alterations digikam is faster. digikam is one of the programs that is great on everything bar windows.

When run from terminal is wine complaining about anything when that directory is accessed. Problem I have this is the first time I have heard of a bug anything like this.

So the action files still work even that they are in the wrong order?

The wine install with them would be on ext3 or ext4. Some strange things have been known to happen on NTFS and sometimes with directories copies from NTFS to Linux.

Also ls -al from the command line on that directory listing normally?
imatechguy
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Post by imatechguy »

Thank you for the response oiaohm. Digikam is actually loaded on my wife's PC but as I initially indicated other programs are unfortunately not an option at this time. Anyway, everything looks normal with

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ls -al
and I also checked those folders where actions are displayed properly and the permissions are the same in all folders and the order in each case alphabetical, in the folder. Yes the action files all work each doing what it is supposed to do but as you can see from my initial post the order in which the actions are displayed are grossly out of any logical sort.

Wine from the terminal doesn't seem to complain about anything new but I'm not sure I'd recognize something that could specifically be attributed to this issue and these aren't really “folders to be accessed” in the typical sense. These are action files that do specific things to an image, in this case effects like making the affected image look B&W, give it a golden hue or make it look like a vintage photograph. These are all based on a Media database that is built when PSE starts and used via drop-down boxes in the pallete window. These action files are placed in folders and when PSE launches it reads them looking for new media and if there rebuilds the appropriate database files. Its the database files that are then drawn from to build the pallete menu's. At least that's my understanding of what happens. Here's a few cropped down images pallete window area showing the menu that's borked and ones that work. I am hopeful this will help my explanation of the problem.

This first image is just to show the menu's how's these actions are accessed. (Note it also happens to be the actions that are not sorting properly.)
Image



This image shows default actions that were loaded with PSE5 and the proper display sorting. Note the cursor is being held over the middle action icon to show the tool tip that pops up matches the action name under the icon and the icon shows the correct image for the action.
Image



This next image shows the unsorted data being discussed. I am holding the cursor over the top left-most icon and the tool tip matches the text at the bottom but the icon is for some Baby Powder effect thing. If you look through what's visible you will see that the icons are being loaded in correct alphabetical order but the actual action files are not.
Image



Finally here is one last image that shows another cutom folder that has the actions sorted correctly and they match both the tool tip and the icons. Again I am holding the cursor over the top left-most icon.
Image


Thanks,
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