Troubleshooting
The following chapter includes common solutions to problems you may encounter when installing and using the Satori program for the first time. See the Readme.doc and Install.doc files installed with the program for last-minute information not included in this documentation.
If you have any questions, which are not answered here, please contact technical support. Before reporting any problems, please refer to the documents installed with the software. If possible complete a problem report form and forward this by email or fax to: [email protected] Fax +44 (0)1638 731795
Questions and Answers
CD-Key
Q: CD-Key not accepted
A: Take care to enter this number using upper and lower case as printed. Please keep a safe record of your product key as this will be required to register for technical support and future upgrades.
If you are unable to locate your key, experience problems with the installation or require any assistance, please contact technical support
Performance benchmark
It is important to set up your system correctly to get the best graphics performance from Satori. As a guide, brush drawing in Satori is at least twice the speed of pixel-based drawing and image-editing programs.
Drawing in a 720 x 576 (Zoom 1:1) screen, a default airbrush of 90 pixels was used to fill the area in a time of 11 seconds. A popular pixel-based image editing program was used to complete the same test and took 23 seconds. Most other programs tested exceeded this time.
System Specification: Pentium II 266MHz, 128Mbyte RAM, 4Mbyte graphics card and Wacom graphics tablet.
Please note that in resolution independent mode Satori will vastly outperform any pixel-based drawing and editing program with a drawing and graphics performance that is consistently high at any resolution.
Disk thrashing
Q: If you are working with a large number of layers, layer masks and effects. The system can under some circumstances become very slow with delays in selecting simple actions. Also the hard disk appears to be very active.
A: The system is running low on RAM and is making increased use of the system virtual swap file. It is possible to select (turn layer on/ off) one or more layers and render these as a RIR. It is also recommended that you save your work as a Canvas file. The layers saved can be now deleted and re-imported as an RIR file. This merges or flattens layers to reduce the demand on system resources and to speed up all actions.
If this is a common occurrence then you should increase the amount of RAM in your computer. Although, the minimum requirement is 16Mbytes, we recommend 64Mbyte or greater. It is also recommended that the system swap file (virtual memory) is set to 300Mbyte. See readme.doc for more information.
Images loaded incorrectly
Q: Images loaded in Satori also not displayed using the correct colors. The desktop area is also displayed incorrectly i.e. color cubes are not smooth gradients.
A: The recommended color depth setting is true color (24bit). Verify your current setting in Satori by selecting system from the Information menu. If your graphics card is only capable of displaying 16bit colors then any gradients may suffer from color banding.
Refer to operating system documentation to change your display settings
Files saved cannot be loaded by other programs
Q: Using Save as to generate a bitmap file, it is not possible to load the saved file into any other program.
A: In order to save bitmaps in the correct format, it is important to include the file format extension with the filename. i.e. test.tif. Caution: If no extension is given then the file will be saved with as a Satori proprietary Canvas file i.e. test.cvs. Hint: If you are always saving your images in the same format then use save bitmap as and preferences to set the required default format where no file extension is included. See readme.wri and online help for more information.
Problem saving bitmap
Q: When saving a bitmap file a problem saving bitmap error message appears.
A: In most cases, this error will be due to NO free disk space. Caution: It is important that you have enough disk space available to store the bitmap file(s). It is good practice to save your work as a Canvas file before rendering as this will allow you to re-render or edit your work at any time.
Slow screen refresh, zoom and pan
Q: Drawing suffers from serious pen lag and is unresponsive. Desktop operations are sluggish with screen refresh delay visible when turning on / off layers, using zoom and pan.
A: The installed graphics card is a major factor in determining the performance of Satori. If your graphics card is not capable of displaying true color with a desk top area of 1024 x 768 then you may experience poor graphics performance even using the latest Pentium processor technology.
A high specification graphics card is a wise investment. Satori is optimized to run in true color and with a desk top area of 1024 x 768, which requires a 4Mbyte graphics accelerator card.
Loading Photoshop PSD files
Q: Multi-layer PSD files are slow to load. Layers are imported correctly but performance is reduced for most actions.
A: It is possible to directly load multi-layer PSD files. It is advisable that large PSD files be pre-processed (using convert to RIR) before loading to ensure consistent performance at all resolutions.
Caution: PSD layers are flattened during pre-processing. See readme.doc and online help for more information about working with Photoshop PSD multi layer files.