PROBLEM WITH FILES ADDED TO MY COMPUTER

[johnboy Profile]

I am experiencing an issue that is frustrating. Love Smart Photo but every time I edit a picture I find that about a thousand junk files are added to my computer. There is nothing in them. Has anyone else experienced this? Can it be avoided? Any help would be appreciated.

John

[eadams Profile]

No junk files are added to my computer when I use SPE. New effects are automatically downloaded to my computer when I exit the program, but that isn't junk.

What files are you talking about? What kind of files are they and where are they located?

[johnboy Profile]

These are not the effects that are added from the community. I find them in my "all files" list and they contain nothing relevant. When I open them many will have a message that says, "3400X6000" or something similar. I wrote to SPE and they said they are temporary files. If they would just go away after a short time there would be no problem. But they don't. At one point they accumulated until I had over 45,000 of them. I spent hours deleting them. SPE said they would notify the developer of this issue. That doesn't really help me now. I am wondering if there is a setting on my computer that could be changed that would solve the problem. Any help?

[eadams Profile]

Hi again johnboy,

I would love to look and see if I have such files as you describe on my computer, but I don't know where to look. Are you using Windows? I am not familiar with an "all files" list, just locations on my hard drive. Also, you didn't mention what the names (or at least the extensions) of the files were. If the extensions are not shown, you can change that and make them visible. If I know the extension, I can search for files with that extension.

[johnboy Profile]

Hi again... I so much appreciate your willingness to try to help. I am running the SPE on a Mac. I am not all that computer savvy so I am not familiar with what the extension would be. I tried to copy and paste what I was getting but it wouldn't let me. The "all files" is a category I have when I go to Finder on my computer. It lists every file I have on my computer. It usually includes about 3000 files. But, if I do a SPE and really work on it and try a number of different effects it will add about 1000 of these files that contain basically nothing and have to be deleted. Last night I ran a test. I loaded a photo in SPE and then clicked on just one effect and applied it. I then saved the edited photo. I then went to my "all files" and checked. 80 of these files had been added. !!!!!! I am clueless as to what to do.

[eadams Profile]

I finally found on my own computer what you are talking about.

Under Windows, I found a folder called images at the location USERNAME\AppData\Local\PhotoEditor.

This folder contained over 55,000 files and took up 2.83 GB space on my hard drive. The files in question are not real temporary files because they are not deleted when you exit the program.

I observed that simply browsing through the Effects Gallery causes new folders to be created, namely when an effect is displayed in the Effects Gallery that contains some kind of image or texture. The folders that are created contain that texture in different sizes plus an info.txt file that gives the width and height of the largest of the images. The folder looks like this:

SPE folders.JPG (47.19 KiB) Viewed 9064 times

I assume that these folders are created on-the-fly to enable SPE to quickly display and apply the effects that use them. For that reason, and because they don't bother me (I have plenty of hard disk space) I will just leave them be. If you want to, you can, however, delete the entire images folder. As soon as you start the program and start browsing effects, a new images folder will be created and new files will be placed there. I'm sure that the Mac will let you set up a boot macro that will delete the folder each time you start your computer, but you'll need a Mac user to tell you how to do that. The first step for you is to use your finder to locate the images folder on your computer. I highly recommend investing a little time in familiarizing yourself with your computer's operating and file system. In the long run that will save you a lot of time.

[johnboy Profile]

WOW! Thanks so much. I am sorry you are experiencing the same thing but I am also glad to know it is not just some dumb thing I have been doing. My kids use Macs so I will take what you wrote and run it by them to see if they can help me get the problem solved. There has to be a solution. This whole thing is compounded by the fact I just updated my computer to Mac OSx Sierra and I am still trying to get familiar with the new system. This may take a while seeing as I am going out of town. But, I promise to get back to you when I finally get around to working on it. Thanks again for your help. I am sorry to say that I didn't get any help from SPE. They sent me an e-mail that they said I should not respond. In it they said they had made the developer aware of the problem. That did not help me at all. Thanks again. I will be in touch. John

[admin]

Hi John,

Sorry we've been unresponsive, it's been a busy week, but I hope to make up for it now. Short version: we're working on a fix and hope to have a new version out soon that means that you don't see lots of pictures in the 'all files' category on the Mac.

Long version: SPE has a lot of effects which use pictures. Rather than repeatedly download the pictures all the time, which would be very slow, it keeps them on your hard disk. At any time you can delete any of the images and SPE will just automatically download them again if they are needed. The problem, which I believe has come about from a change in MacOS, is that the pictures have started showing up in the 'all files' list because it indexes where we were keeping them (on the PC you have to hunt around to find them). We are trying moving the files to a different place so they don't show up there anymore. I'll let you know as soon as it is tested and you can download a copy.

Hope that helps.

Kind regards

Tony

[johnboy Profile]

Thanks for getting back to me. Here is my latest update. I have found that I can go to "documents", click on "Photo Editor", open it and then click on "images". I then click on one of them, then go up to edit and select all. I then move all the images to the trash and BANG, they no longer show in my "all files". The whole thing takes me about 30 seconds and the problem is solved. There may be a better way to do this but what I am doing is easy and I don't mind the slight inconvenience. Hope this helps someone else. Also, thanks to eadams who jumped in and gave me some advice. It was his info that helped my figure out the method I am using. All is good.