Since beginning to use Nik HDR Efex Pro, Aperture 3.1 has started crashing several times per day. I emailed Nik, and they said a small number of users have had this problem, and that the problem was due to a corruption in their user folder that was created when they upgraded from Mac OS 10.5 to Mac OS 10.6. Since I am having no other problems running Aperture or running any other programs, this does not sound like the solution. Does anyone else have this issue or any suggestions?
Thanks -
The workflow with HDR Efex Pro that seems to work consistently is if I roundtrip images from Aperture to CS5, and then into HDR Efex Pro, and back into Aperture.
Dudley Warner
WARNER Photography
Dudley,
What a drag. How about a reinstall of OS X just overwriting the existing OS? It’s painless and fairly quick, and just as long as you run Software Update immediately after, everything should just go back as it was. I find when I’ve done that in the past, it fixes a multitude of problems, and rarely do I have to reset more than a few preferences here and there.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Guys,
Thanks for sharing the info you’re getting from Nik and your experiences.
Dudley, it’s worth creating the new user account just to try it. That in itself only takes a moment, then at least you’ll know.
Moving to a new user account is not trivial. Only one account will ever have the original permissions and some things will never be quite right again as the master account… at least that’s my experience and what I recall from the early days of moving accounts around. If memory serves there’s a 501 permissions setting that goes with the original account, and can’t be replicated to any other. Makes no sense, I know, but that’s what my feeble brain is telling me to write right now :)
If you suspect it’s preferences-related, try just removing ALL your preferences from ~/Library/Preferences, rebooting, and see what happens. You can always put that entire collection of prefs back, so I think that’s worth trying. If it works, put ‘em all back, and start removing obvious ones (anything to do with Nik and Aperture), and expand from there.
my 2¢
@PhotoJoseph
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Thanks Joseph.
When I get the time to tackle this issue I will try your suggestion of just wiping out the preferences first in a controlled manner. I just know what kind of rat hole I will be starting down and I am putting it off for now.
I meant to mention the following thread on the Nik forums website re: HDR Efex Pro errors.
http://www.nikforums.com//showthread.php?148-HDR-Efex-Pro-Errors
I have been monitoring this to see if anything new happens on this issue.
Jim
Dudley,
First I’ve heard of it. What was their offered solution?
@PhotoJoseph
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Since they diagnosed that my user account was corrupt, they wanted me to set up another user folder and see it that fixed it. Since HDR Efex Pro is the only plugin or application that I am having a problem with, this did not seem like the cause. I guess that Nik would want me to re-install OS X 10.6.
Dudley Warner
WARNER Photography
I too have this problem with Nik HDR Efex Pro. I worked with Nik about 2 weeks ago to figure it out. I have all the Nik filters - both Aperture plugins and Photoshop CS5 filters. All the other filters work fine. When I used the Aperture HDR plugin it crashed everytime (but only when I try to use the plugin). When I tried using it in CS5 it would do some processing then crash.
Nik was pretty swamped with calls at the time since HDR Efex Pro was just released and it took a while to get much assistance. I tried unistalling and reinstalling and most of the normal debugging stuff.
I have a boat load of login items in my menu bar and thought maybe there was some sort of conflict. So I tried logging in as a another user with no login items and found that HDR Efex Pro worked fine with Aperture and CS5. I then tried removing one-at-a-time all the login items in my normal user account. This did not stop the crashing problem. I discussed this with Nik and that is where they concluded it could be a corruption with my user account. They said they had seen similar issues with users in the past that had upgraded from Mac OS X 10.5 to 10.6.
The only suggested solution was to migrate to another user account. This is a real PITA and can be very time consuming. It can get complex if you want to move all your preference files. I have read the corruption is likely to be contained in your preference files. So if you move the preference files you may end up with the same corruption problems in the new user account. I have not tried to do it yet. It is going to take some dedicated time and concentration. Thinking about it just gives me a headache.
Since I can get HDR Efex Pro to work correctly in a different user account, it seems logical that there must be something wrong with my user account. But I can’t understand why I have not experienced this issue before with any other software including Niks other filters. ???
Dudley, I would suggest you take Nik’s suggestion and try using the Nik software from another user account on your computer (or add a new one). If it works then the ‘corrupted user account’ diagnosis might be correct. If the Nik sofware doesn’t work in the new user account then I would check back with Nik.
Thanks for the detailed response. I will try the new user acct. My question is the same as yours - why would Aperture work with all the other Nik plugins and not HDR Efex Pro? Since I am able to work with HDR Efex Pro for periods of time before Aperture crashes, I may just continue in this manner rather than change my user acct.
Thanks-
Dudley Warner
Dudley Warner
WARNER Photography
I have checked, and the same problem does not happen on my MacBook Pro, or when I use a new user account. I spoke to Apple Care and they said that doing a clean install would be the best way to deal with this. I emailed Nik back to say that while some file in my user account is partially responsible for the problem, so is HDR Efex Pro since it is the only program that causes this reaction from Aperture. I am hoping they come up with a fix for this because I will not be doing a clean install of OS X until Lion comes out.
Dudley Warner
WARNER Photography
Dudley,
I think you should take a look at AppleJack. From the AppleJack project page: “Using AppleJack, you can repair your disk, repair permissions, validate the system’s preference files, and get rid of possibly corrupted cache files. In most cases, these operations can help get your machine back on track.”
I was having different Aperture issues (see the fullscreen mode freezes on first use thread in this forum) that only occurred in my main account. AppleJack fixed it for me. It’s worth a try.
It requires you to install the program and restart in single user mode and type the command to start the program. The rest is automatic. Basically:
1. Download and install AppleJack (see link below)
2. Restart your computer. Hold down command and s keys after you hear the startup bong until you see text in the display. This is single user mode. There is no graphical user interface (GUI).
3. type “applejack auto restart” without the quotes and applejack will do its thing and then automatically restart the computer.
http://applejack.sourceforge.net/
Thomas
Thomas -
I appreciate the suggestion, and will be using AppleJack in the future for routine maintenance on my Macs. Unfortunately, it did not correct the problem. I am successful using HDR Efex Pro about 1/3 to 1/2 the time.
I also received an error message that says there is not sufficient memory available to load the image. My iMac has 8 GB of RAM, and 1.4 TB of free space on the hard drive.
Thanks -
Dudley
Dudley Warner
WARNER Photography
Thanks, but for now I am going to stay with the workaround that roundtrips to CS5. I will probably try your solution at some point since it is much less work that a clean install.
Dudley Warner
WARNER Photography