Arch Linux

imatechguy

Arch Linux f@h Team Member

Registered: 2010-03-22

Posts: 66

Custom PSE5 actions not alphabetical when displayed in the pallette.

I’m not getting much input (1 response) on the WINE forums for this so I thought I’d try here on the Arch forums.  The PC having issues is currently running Arch 2.6.38 x86_64 version, and the Wine version is 1.3.17.  I’d just updated the system before installing PhotoShop Elements and discovering the issues below so I don’t know if things would have “worked” before the update, though I would guess not.

Problem:
I am trying to migrate my wife's PC to Linux and doing that requires she retain access to PSE5 (Photoshop Elements 5) so using another program, like GIMP, is unfortunately not an option. PSE5 installed and starts flawlessly and all the generic actions that came preinstalled with it seem to be fine. However I have a few folders with custom actions that are “loosing” the alphabetical sort when Photoshop builds the Artwork and actions databases when PSE5 is started. If I use the file manager to browse to the folder everything looks as it should. However when PSE5 starts and we use the Artwork pallete to navigate to the Photo Effects folder the actions are displayed in jumbled order and the thumbnail images are in an even different order so nothing is sorted and nothing matches.  I'd really like to fix the issue so I can get everything to be in the proper order with matching icons without manual intervention because I'll have to redo everything with every new custom action my wife decides she needs.

Affected folder:

~/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Application Data/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/5.0/Photo Creations/special effects/photo effects/CoffeShop Actions

Unaffected folders:

~/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Application Data/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/5.0/Photo Creations/special effects/photo effects/frames 

~/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Application Data/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/5.0/Photo Creations/special effects/photo effects/image effects

Equivalent Window XP path of affected folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\5.0\Photo Creations\special effects\photo effects\CoffeeShop Actions

Here are a few of the 23 total actions in the affected folder and where they fall in the displayed order. As I said above I've tried renaming them in various ways and while it will change the order it never fixes it to be correct, alphabetically. I can provide a few more, or even the full list if needed but this short list will at least highlight the problem.

CoffeeShop Baby PowderRoom.atn - should be 1st but is displayed 6th
CoffeeShop Moody Pop.atn - should be 10th but is displayed 1st
CoffeeShop Vintage Blush.atn – should be 20th but is displayed 5th
CoffeeShop Eye Bright.atn – should be 5th but is displayed 11th.

Also here are a few cropped down images of the palette window area showing the menu that's borked and ones that work. I am hopeful this will help my explanation of the problem.

This first image is just to show the menu's how's these actions are accessed. (Note it also happens to be the actions that are not sorting properly.)

This image shows default actions that were loaded with PSE5 and the proper display sorting. Note the cursor is being held over the middle action icon to show the tool tip that pops up matches the action name under the icon and the icon shows the correct image for the action.

This next image shows the unsorted data being discussed. I am holding the cursor over the top left-most icon and the tool tip matches the text at the bottom but the icon is for some Baby Powder effect thing. If you look through what's visible you will see that the icons are being loaded in correct alphabetical order but the actual action files are not.

Wine from the terminal doesn't seem to complain about anything different with the custom actions folder there or removed but I'm not sure I'd recognize something that could specifically be attributed to this issue and these aren't really “folders to be accessed” in the typical sense. These are action files that do specific things to an image, in this case effects like making the affected image look B&W, give it a golden hue or make it look like a vintage photograph. These are all based on a Media database that is built when PSE starts and used via drop-down boxes in the pallete window. These action files are placed in folders and when PSE launches it reads them looking for new media and if there rebuilds the appropriate database files. Its the database files that are then drawn from to build the pallete menu's. At least that's my understanding of what happens.

I've checked the thumbs.psd stack and the images are properly ordered alphabetically from bottom to top. I tried changing the order of 6 of the images in the stack to match the order the actions in the pallete window and that worked on those I tested to get the images to match the actions, however the order of the actions in the pallette window is still wonky. I also tried renaming the action files to get rid of spaces, exchange the spaces for an underscore “_”, remove extra words/letters and though sometimes the display order would change it still wouldn't be alphabetical as expected. I've also tried multiple copy/pastes of the folder and even just the files within as well as multiple deletes and rebuilds of the Media and Thumbs databases.

It was suggested on the WINE forums where I’ve only gotten that single response that I “cd” into the affected folder and then “ls –al” to see if the files look proper.  I did so and everything looks as expected, I also checked those folders where actions are displayed properly and the permissions are the same in all folders and the order in each case alphabetical, in the folder. Yes the action files all work each doing what it is supposed to do but as you can see from my initial post the order in which the actions are displayed are grossly out of any logical sort.

Please note this all works as expected if I boot the machine into XP so I know all the files are capable of functioning as intended. Also note there are numerous other custom actions in various other paths that are displayed in alphabetical order as expected so it's not a global problem with actions. I'm thinking the problem is in how PSE is building the MediaDatabase.db3 and ThumbDatabase.db3 files when it is launched but why these specific actions are affected is what I'm stumped on. Since I know this is occurring in a few other folders, though not all, I am hoping there is a single fix to the problem.

Thanks.

As an aside; what really adds insult to injury in all this is that PSE5 normally takes 2-4 minutes to launch when booted into XP Home but will launch in about 30-45 seconds using WINE. This PC is running a C2D 6420 @ 3.2Ghz with 4Gb of RAM (4x1Gb of DDR2 800) so it's shouldn't be a hardware issue that's causing the slow load time in XP.

Edited because I accidentally clicked Submit too soon.

Last edited by imatechguy (2011-04-15 18:48:19)