I'd just love it if it were possible to see a preview window in the Open box when sifting through exactly what personal files I have saved, rather than having to open it first just to find it isn't what I thought it was!! I have so many saved, and just haven't a clue without opening them first what they are going to be as time goes by.. Does either of these new upgrades to UF have this facility?

Are you using the "Save Parameters" and "Browse Parameters" menu option? That's where I always go to store/check my saves, and there is a preview pic there for them.

Um.. I am at this minute downloading the trial version, so no, I haven't tried that yet, will let you know... Thanks.

Here's something you might want to know - if you "Save As" your fractals and w.i.p.'s, etc. as "fractals" (.ufr files), they are going to take up a gigantic chunck of your harddrive in time. They produce a file orders of magnitude larger than a .ucl parameter file. It IS nice that they open faster but, myself, I just save the "mega-layer fiascos" that way so they don't take 30 minutes to draw themselves. 99% of the time I use the "Save Parameters" (.upr files) option that gives a preview look at what the image/layer is and only costs a few kb of space. Makes backing up to CD's more efficient, too, as you can get more onto a disk. I suppose, if you had a DVD writer, those hold more info but you might end up with everything on one disc. If anything happens to that disc you're screwed. A real concern in light of the recent debunking of the false claim that CD's would last over 20 years. All the studies now show that you will be lucky if the CD is still readable after 2-5 years - and that's if you use higher quality discs. I back up EVERYTHING, par's, formulae, gradients monthly to new discs. This has proved invaluable when an image is "broken" by a new version of a .ucl. I've been able to recover by going back as far as 2003 to get the version of the ucl that worked for the image. Good luck! Rick

Many thanks Rick, that's really valuable info, and I never knew about this before. I've just been working in UF 3.5 again now, and have started to save all sorts now as Para files, and once they're there, I will delete what I had before - most of it's bunkum anyway!

All this time, huh? Well at least now I know what to do in that department, thanks to both you and Rosemaryr.

Btw. have you thought of investing in a portable hard disk to which to save your stuff?

Haven't started yet at looking at the trial ver 4. But will... Nicky.

Message edited on: 08/05/2005 09:23

If you use the "Browse" command instead of "Open" you can get a preview thumbnail of both saved parameters (.upr) and fractal (.ufr) files - this feature is also present in UF3.

Another useful way to find images is to batch render your saved uprs at thumbnail size which is very quick to do, and then browse the thumbnails in windows or a graphics program. I have found this invaluable as i often save 5 - 10 parameters of one image as I'm working on it, and often can't remember which one I want to keep as the final image.

Tina

Message edited on: 08/05/2005 10:01

That's really odd, because I couldn't see any preview for the upr files at all! But I do see the ufr files. (Still in UF 3.5). Thanks for the other suggestions too.. All worth a try.

You should definitely be able to see a preview for your uprs - this was even present in UF2 - see image above.

It is also possible to alter the size of the prview you see under Options > Options > browser tab

Incidentally - the preview also works for viewing gradients.

Tina

it's very wise to invest in a external sub-system like a HDD, LaCie disks are very affordable, CD-ROMs are very unreliable, i can't read half of what i have backed up 4 years ago... gladly i still have that SCSI DAT 16GB tape drive connected to a MacClassic, so i can still backup the CD-ROMs if money isn't a question then the LaCie d2 AIT 2 Turbo tape drive is a valuable option cant wait till the intel mac is on the market so i can try UF 4 as well, but just gotta be patient smile Harmen