General Information
How can I determine my current version?
Picture Window displays its name and version number in the title bar of the main window. If you have the standard version, it will say Picture Window; if you have the pro version it will say Picture Window Pro . Following this is the version number -- the major version number followed by a period followed by the minor version numbers (e.g 4.0.1.0 ). The version number and other useful information is displayed when you select Help/About Picture Window (or Help/About Picture Window Pro) from Picture Window's main menu.
What's the Latest Version?
For information on the latest release of Picture Window Pro and Picture Window, click the link below:
Workflow 'Hang' Problem (PWP v 4.0.1.2)
Problem: The workflow may suspend execution. This problem is caused because the workflow has displayed a 'Convert Profile' dialog box and is waiting for user input. Responding to the dialog resumes the workflow. (The dialog box may be buried beneath currently-active windows.) This is a bug. Workflows should not require any user input. The problem only occurs if one of the Ask to convert profile options is set in File/Color Management.
Resolution: This problem has been fixed. To install the fixed version, uninstall your present version. Download and install the posted PWP 4.0.1.2. (An uninstall is required because the current post will not overinstall.)
Installation Problems
How do I install an update?
To install a new version of Picture Window, just download the latest version from our web and install the new version over the old one. The new version will recognize your existing serial number. You can tell if a new version is available by comparing your version number to the version number listed on the Downloads page.
My download does not install.
One or more of the following may help:
1) Use the Add/Remove Programs control panel to uninstall all earlier versions of Picture Window 3.5 and delete the Picture Window 3.5 folder in C:\Program Files\Digital Light & Color.
2) Clear your browser cache (using Internet Explorer: Tools/Internet Options/General/Delete Files...)
3) Shutdown your computer and reboot
4) Temporarily disable your antivirus/firewall software
Missing file on install from the web
When installing from the web and electing to save setup.exe instead of running it, you may get a message indicating the the file Instmsia.exe or Instmisw.exe is missing when you subsequently run setup.exe. These files contain the latest versions of Windows Installer which are required to complete the installation. To download Windows Installer, visit one of the following Microsoft Web sites:
Instmsia.exe (for Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition):
http://download.microsoft.com/download/WindowsInstaller/Install/2.0/W9XMe/EN-US/InstMsiA.exe
-or-
Instmsiw.exe (for Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP):
http://download.microsoft.com/download/WindowsInstaller/Install/2.0/NT45/EN-US/InstMsiW.exe
These files are intentionally omitted from setup.exe to reduce the download size which would otherwise be about 2MB larger.
Some Windows 2000 systems may not have a copy of gdiplus.dll which is required by Picture Window. (The DLL has not been included in the installation because the majority of Windows systems already have a copy.)
To correct this problem, please download gdiplus.zip file. After downloading it, extract the gdiplus.dll and copy it to your WINNT\System32 folder. Picture Window should now start normally.
Zip archives of images and other files can be created directly from the Browse and Workflow windows. The feature requires that you have Wzzip, a Winzip command line processor, installed on your system. Wzzip itself is a free download and provides a command line interface to compatible versions of Winzip. You can download wzzip from winzip.com. Make sure to also check to see if your version of Winzip is compatible with wzzip.
Autoplay Problems
If the Autoplay menu is displayed when you insert a memory card or CD with images, but it does not list Picture Window Pro (or when you click on Picture Window Pro it does not run) there may be a problem with how PWP is registered with Autoplay.
You can register it manually by downloading PWP40.inf. After you copy the file to your computer, right-click on the file and select Install from the menu. Please note, PWP40.inf assumes Picture Window Pro is installed in c:\Program Files\Digital Light and Color\Picture Window Pro. If it is installed in a different folder, edit the installation folder accordingly.
Preview Problems
Preview windows can be zoomed and scrolled.
One of the most powerful and sometimes overlooked features of Picture Window is that preview windows can be resized, zoomed and scrolled using the same Window commands that are used for image windows. This gives you the flexibility to preview detail in a small part of an image or see an overview of the entire image.
What is causing my preview windows to look grainy?
What you are seeing is aliasing which results from the preview being computed only at the pixel locations on the screen. When the preview window is zoomed out to beyond 1:1 this means that some pixels in the output image are skipped and this causes the preview to look grainy. Normal image windows are antialiased to reduce this effect, but to antialias preview windows would mean it would take as long to compute the preview as it does to compute the final image so there would be little point in previewing.
You have three options:
1) Zoom the preview window to 1:1 -- this eliminates the aliasing artifacts.
2) Click the Apply button to create a full resolutionimage that will be antialiased.
3) Live with the grainy preview
You can turn off antialiasing for zoomed out image windows which will make image windows look as grainy as preview windows (via File/Preferences).
Printing Problems
Picture Window Pro crashes when I print color
images.
A number of printer drivers do not fully support Windows color management and crash either repeatably or intermittently when passing image data that has an associated color profile. The only workaround at this time is to go to Picture Window's Help/Support Settings command and uncheck Print Using V5 Bitmaps. To get color management to work with this setting unchecked, you need to do one of two things:
1) Only print sRGB images.
2) Specify a custom profile for your printer whenever you print a non-sRGB image.