Torraccia:Jen, I'm not yet too fluent in computerspeak, so I guess I haven't been clear. May I try again?
My Painter program was going very, very slowly and crashing alot, and thanks to your help sheet on keeping it running smoothly, I went out and bought an external hard disk, 300 g. I now plug this into a port on my laptop (not much RAM!) any time I am using Painter, and as everything is going much better now, I assume it is absorbing the big memory-gobblers.
Hi Torraccia,
The scratch disk is virtual memory used by the program when there's not enough RAM (random access memory) to perform an operation.
What I don't understand is this: once a file is saved, even" iterative save", is it saved on the scratch disk, or the internal hard drive?
Again, Painter files are not stored in the scratch disk. Similar to system RAM, the scratch disk is temporary, used to "remember" things while we work so Painter can perform operations we ask the program to perform or that are automatically performed when the program is being used. The scratch disk is virtual memory used when we run out of system RAM, to allow us to continue working.
Would it not be smart to set things up so that Painter files ARE
saved on this external hard disk, freeing up my limited internal memory
for things like photos?
Memory (system RAM and virtual memory, or scratch disk) and hard drive space are two different things.
If you save files to your external hard drive or to a CD or DVD rather than to the computer's hard drive you will save space on your computer's hard drive.
I am not sure if "scratch disk" is special
terminology relating only to Painter,....
Scratch disk is not terminology related only to Corel Painter. It's used for other programs as well.
,,,, or if this entire external disk,
which I have told the computer is named "scratch disk", can also be put
to use for other things, like storing my finished Painter files.
Others may share how they save their files or where they back them up. Here's how I do it:
I've specified my external hard drive, also 300 GB, for the Painter IX.5 and Painter X.1 scratch disk, and also use my external hard drive as a place to back up files.
You
are obviously a very smart computer wizzard--what do you say?
First, thanks, but I would not call myself a computer wizard, not by a long shot. There are many who are much more techie oriented than I am and I can only share what I've learned from years of using Corel Painter and other graphics programs.
As outlined in my Sticky thread at Conceptart.org's Painter forum, use File > Save As for the first save, then use File > Iterative Save for following saves and Painter will automatically save the file to the same location where you saved the first time using File > Save As and add a series of numbers at the end of the file name you gave it when saving the first time. The series of files will look something like this:
- my_painting.rif (first save using File > Save As)
- my_painting_001.rif (second save using File > Iterative Save)
- my_painting_002.rif (third save using File > Iterative Save)
- my_painting_003.rif (fourth save using File > Iterative Save)
- .... and so on.
When I'm working on a project, I save the file this way, first using File > Sava As, then using File > Iterative Save every few minutes or when I make a significant change to the image (whichever comes first). Then I have a series of versions of the same image as it is developed. If anything goes wrong, I don't lose much work as I can always go back to a previously saved version and continue working.
In order to keep things organized, I usually create a new folder somewhere on my computer's hard drive (or on my external hard drive). I create the new folder somewhere outside of both the Corel Painter application/program folder and the Corel Painter User folder. Then I use that folder to save all of the files related to the specific project, including notes when I want to remember the process in order to explain it to others or to use when writing a tutorial. Sometimes I take screen prints of dialog boxes as an easy way to remember the settings I used, then save those screen prints in the same folder. Examples might be settings I used in the Effects > Surface Control > Apply Surface Texture dialog box, or settings used in the Effects > Surface Control > Woodcut dialog box.
Hopefully, we've been able to give you enough information to make the difference between memory and space clear, and to help you understand what a scratch disk is used for.
Jinny or Jin with an "i"... nickname for Virginia (not Jenny or Jen, or Jennifer))
Cheers!