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Scribus => General Discussion => Topic started by: evansorrell on July 25, 2016, 10:56:13 PM

Title: [Solved] Image import has stopped working halfway through editing document
Post by: evansorrell on July 25, 2016, 10:56:13 PM
Hi there, Long time user of Scribus but new to the forum! While editing my latest document I have come across an issue I just cannot seem to solve. I am editing a Magazine for a not for profit organisation and 14 pages in the image import seems to have stopped working. I have not had an issue up till now and need to get this sorted ASAP so that it can go to the printers in a few days.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Title: Re: Image import has stopped working halfway through editing document
Post by: GarryP on July 26, 2016, 10:31:39 AM
Welcome to the forum evansorrell.

I'll try and help but this could be a tricky one (or it might be very simple, we'll see).

Firstly, which OS are you using and which version of Scribus? (That can make a big difference.)

Next, what exactly do you mean by "stopped working"? That can be interpreted a number of ways with similar symptoms but different solutions.

For instance, have you been importing images just fine until you got to a point in time where the images were no longer being put in the frames even after you OK'd the Import Image dialog? Can you please explain the exact work-flow you were using around when things started to go wrong (both before and at the point of change)?

Also, can you check the following things:
1. You haven't moved/renamed the document or images files to different folders or machines.
2. All of your images are on layers that are both visible and exportable.
3. Menu "View -> Show Images" is checked.
4. With a frame selected, menu "Item -> Preview Settings -> Image is Visible" is checked.
5. Your images are "clean" and don't have any weird metadata or colour information in them. (Use GIMP to load and export them to clean them.)
6. It shouldn't be an issue but can you check your free memory status?
7. Are you using images on any kind of attached storage such as network drives or similar?

I think that's enough to go on for now. If you can make the suggested checks and supply the necessary information we can move forward (unless you have enough info' to fix things already).
Title: Re: Image import has stopped working halfway through editing document
Post by: evansorrell on July 26, 2016, 09:06:34 PM
Hi GarryP and thank you!

Well I am on a windows machine using 1.4.6 the latest stable version I could download.

So what has happened is that I am half way through editing a magazine and have been importing images without any issues, after about two hours of editing the import images has simply stopped working as shown in the attachment. I have tried a number of images now and none seem to  work at all anymore. The images I have already imported are fine and can be re-inserted but nothing new.

Hopefully that helps.

Thank you your help!

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Image import has stopped working halfway through editing document
Post by: evansorrell on July 26, 2016, 09:34:25 PM
Solve. Thanks for getting in touch GarryP! I have happily found that Scribus is not the issue! After a certain point in the image files supplied there is a level of corruption that is making the images unreadable in Scribus.

I am glad it is not a Scribus issue as I think it is a fantastic program!

Thank you for taking the time to reply and I will be back on the forums from now on!
Title: Re: [Solved] Image import has stopped working halfway through editing document
Post by: GarryP on July 27, 2016, 10:18:57 AM
You're welcome evansorrell.

I'm glad you've figured out what the problem was.

It's usually good practice - as I mentioned in item 5 above - especially on large jobs or if you don't trust the source of the images, to "clean" your images by putting them through something like GIMP before importing them into Scribus. This is primarily to make sure that the image is in a format that can be read by Scribus and that it contains no strange artefacts such as weird colour profiles.

The same thing goes for SVG vector art. It's a good idea to "clean" SVGs by putting them through something like Inkscape first so that you can be sure they're not corrupted. Scribus can't handle everything that Inkscape can so it might not display exactly the same but at least you'll know where the problem probably is.

Having said all of the above though, Scribus shouldn't just ignore images that it can't handle. That's not very user friendly. Some kind of message telling you that there's a problem should be displayed so that you can look for a relevant solution.

Would it be possible for you to attach one of the original images you were having trouble with? Once I've confirmed the problem I can raise a bug tracker ticket to ask the devs if they can do something about it. A simple dialog saying "Can't import image, it's broken in some way." would be better than just doing nothing.