* Background Image -"image failed to load"

[tparkhill]

I am trying to create a nice Tree to get made into jigsaw puzzles for Christmas gifts.
So I first went into a 4 generation Ancestor Chart for me, and added a 4 Gen Ancestor Chart for my wife, and arranged it above my tree, so it would not end up such a wide format. I moved them and then went into Diagram Options, General, Background, Options and selected an image on an old map. It came in, faded 50% and tiled.

And then I realized that I needed to increase the page size to 31.5 x 23.5 inches format (for 1500 piece puzzle). So I went into Print Setup, selected Nitro PDF, and created a custom 31.5x23.5 format, and selected it. I went back and created a new chart, using the size format, and added the 2nd tree, moved them around, and it looks good. Still some formatting to workout. but tried to then bring in the background image.

I realized that perhaps I should crop the image to the 31.5x23.5 aspect ratio (in Photoshop), and did so.
Then I tried to add the background image.

At first, when I went into Options to add a picture, it still showed the one I had previously brought in. So I selected "Browse" and selected the new cropped image. But I got the error message "image failed to load". I tried various options (Stretch, etc.) but same error. And the background is white behind Chart now.

I have tried to reselect the one I loaded before, and it will not load that one either. I have search on the error message and found nothing. I usually assume most problems are user error. But is it now time to say its a bug in the software?
Or is there an explanation for this error message?
Thanks
Trent

[Jane]

Have you tried saving the Chart as a chart, then closing the chart and FH and reloading the image again perhaps after giving it a new name.

Those sort of errors are sometimes memory related.

[tparkhill]

Well, I tried, and partly worked. I couldn't find the Save Chart (did Save Diagram), but as I left it prompted me to save the chart.
I came back in and the Original large chart came in perfectly.
So to try to get the other cropped background image, I changed background to grey, left again and came back in. Background shows as grey, but when I open Options, it shows the original Large image. So I tried to Browse and select the smaller image. But again I get the error message. I checked Task Manager, and have 26.2 GB of memory available (I got a pretty powerful system for the genealogy work).

Then I tried changing Fade of the wrong image. Changed to 70%, worked. Then went into options again to try 20%, and now image does not show and if I Browse, I get error message.

Is there a Background image size I should stay to?

Memory used goes up and peaks at 59%. Perhaps the software can't use all the available memory?

I closed without saving, came back in and still get just the 1st image I loaded in Options. Apparently I can change its Fade once, not twice, and can't load a different image.

I also just tested Printing to PDF. When it does, both the Print Preview and the final PDF does not have the background image.
Again, perhaps its a max size issue?

Sorry to ask an additional question, but I plan to Print to a large PDF or JPG at high 300 dpi resolution. Is there a KB or FUG that gives tips on exporting large image files?

thanks
Trent

[LornaCraig]

Sorry to ask an additional question, but I plan to Print to a large PDF or JPG at high 300 dpi resolution. Is there a KB or FUG that gives tips on exporting large image files?

Yes, see Single PDF Page of a Diagram
I'm afraid I can't help with the problem with the background image though.

[Jane]

I suspect there is something "odd" about the way your image editing software is saving the image, perhaps a compression routine FH does not understand.

Have you tried saving it as a bmp or standard jpg (watch out for colour space options as well).

[tparkhill]

Photoshop is about as standard as one can get. The only JPG option/choices I see are:
1) yes or no on "ICC Profile: sRBG IE61966-2.1
2) compression amount (which I have set to 5, resulting in a 2.9 MB file
3) and of course the number of pixels, which drives the file size
4) "Format Options" baseline "Standard", Baseline Optimized, or Progressive. I always accept whatever software suggests, which in this case is: Baseline Optimized
5) there are some other choices buried in "Image Size", which must not be specific to jpg, and I keep defaults

I saved to BMP and the ~3MB compressed JPG went to a 30 MB BMP. Any size limits?
I closed again and went in. It looks like while it accepted the larger file originally, now it wants a smaller file maybe; it allowed me to select the 1.6 MB file, but not the 3MB file. Not sure why it would have worked 1st time and not second. I can live with lower resolution background image, if that really is the problem.
Is it possible perhaps that it has some memory limit where it is trying to hold both the original image and the new one being imported?

I tried opening the saved "Diagram" and then recreated the chart.
If I do this, it appears it lets me bring in a new image (basically just have to recreate each time). I am OK with this.
. . . That said, I did run into one last problem. If I save Chart as JPG, 1) it has option to include background file, and 2) resolution is too low.
If I save as PDF, resolution is great, but it does NOT show the background image (it is white).
I am guessing there is a very simple setting I missed.
I do see a "Watermark" option, Do I have to readd the background image as watermark?
thanks
Trent

[LornaCraig]

When you save as a PDF you are actually "printing" to a virtual printer. So check Diagram Options > Print tab. There is an option there to Print background. Does that fix it?

[tparkhill]

Thanks. Yes, I had checked that. The "Print background" is marked.

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[LornaCraig]

I have tested this with a backgound picture and the PDF did correctly show the background when the Print Background option was ticked. So it seems there is still some problem with your particular image.

Can you make it work with any other image? If you revert to Row Stripes for the background and save as PDF, are the backgound rows show correctly when the Print Background option is ticked?

[tparkhill]

Lorna,
Thank you for the suggestion!
Worked with strips. S
o I saved the background image at 100 dpi vs 150 dpi, thinking it might be a file background image size limit.
As usual, I could not import a different background image. I had to close FH, open the custom saved diagram, and rebuild the diagram. I did this, brought in the new 100 dpi image, and this time it worked !!
I am trilled, I can work around this program memory limitation.
I do think FH does not take advantage of my computer's full memory.
Seems to not use more than ~60% of my available memory, and then bumps up against what seems like memory limits. I have many other crashes of FH that I suspected could be its memory constraints.
Looks like the Jigsaw puzzle Christmas gifts are back on Snippet so far below.
I put in 2 trees (mother and father) to get a squarish format.
Thanks
Trent

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[ColeValleyGirl]

FH is a 32-bit application, so it can only access 2Gb of memory (possibly 4Gb at most), no matter how much you have on your PC.

[tparkhill]

Thanks!
It is helpful to have my suspicion verified.
I have started backing up 3x per day, and saving frequently.
I have also had recent trouble with it showing an "X" on some media, that I know has not been moved, with either a can't find or Bad jpg error message. Suspicious this could also be memory related.

[tparkhill]

Does anyone know, to deal with the memory limits, I assume that deleting media does not help, as they should just database links.
I looked through other postings to FUG on memory.

I have 64GB on my machine and seem to keep hitting memory problems when only 60% is used. I see that some have had benefit from increasing the Page File size (but these comments were 5 years ago.)
Is there a recommend Page file Size for FH when one has 64GB?

[LornaCraig]

I'm glad to hear you've had success with the background image.

I don't recall encountering any problems with memory limitations in recent versions of FH when working with diagrams. I think some people have mentioned problems with very large reports. It might be worth keeping a record of any further issues you have so that if a pattern emerges it can be reported to Calico Pie. I'm not aware of any recommendations for Page File size.

[tatewise]

As has been mentioned in other threads, FH is a 32-bit application so is limited in memory capacity by Windows.
Adding more physical memory or page file size cannot overcome that limit.
The usual limit is 2 GB but can be as much as 4 GB so your 64 GB ram does not help.

[ColeValleyGirl]

As has been mentioned in this thread, FH is a 32-bit application so is limited in memory capacity by Windows.
Adding more physical memory or page file size cannot overcome that limit.
The usual limit is 2 GB but can be as much as 4 GB so your 64 GB ram does not help.

Fixed that for you, Mike.

https://fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php ... 12#p130193

[tparkhill]

Thanks, discouraging, but good to know there is not much I can do about the issues I have been seeing that appear (thus far) to be likely memory related.
Thanks again for the answers!
Trent

[tparkhill]

I followed this up with FH Support, and have clarified my memory problem. Thought I should put a clear final answer here for anyone who searches FHUG in the future.

Support helped me understand how memory (RAM) was being used. I understand that when FH opens each image, it opens the image to its full uncompressed size (it is not showing a thumbnail, or a scaled down image). Many of my recent images are very large when uncompressed. So the combination of 30 large MB images and the 23"x32" background image was chewing up the 2 GB limit easily.

I had scanned my 100 to150-year-old damaged photos at a high resolution. I did this because I have found that a combination of Photoshop and the great MyHeritage photo enhance tool, can bring back pieces of faces that appear lost, if their are enough pixels to start with. if you have not tried it, the MyHeritage photo enhance and colorizer tool is well worth exploring. That said, as a last step, I need to appropriately scale down each image.

I believe that even if they make it to 64-bit, careful planning on media size is worth doing.
Trent