This week I’m going to talk about a bug workaround and then give you a tip for using the Tint wheels. Recently I’ve been getting occasional black previews on images that had been successfully transferred from the CF card. Initially the previews were fine. Then after I work on the image in the Adjustment HUD, suddenly the thumbnail preview becomes black. Sometimes the larger preview in the Viewer remains, and sometimes it turns black as well. It’s annoying and frustrating, but not deadly. All you need to do is click on the New Image from Master icon (or go to Images >New Version From Master in the Menu bar) and a new version is created complete with a preview. To copy the adjustments you made to the original file, use the Lift and Stamp tools. So far I’ve not had any trouble with that corrupting the new version. Hopefully Apple will fix this bug soon.
Now here’s the tip. The tint wheels in the Adjustment HUD are useful to make subtle separate adjustments to the colorcast of the shadows, midtones, or highlights. Sometimes people hesitate to use the Tint wheels because there is no obvious way to reset them individually. However if you double click inside the tiny circle - the part that you drag to set the colorcast - it will snap back to the center of the wheel. You can think of it as a pseudo joystick that you drag to the desired position. Then to return to center, just double click.
Ellen, thanks so much for sharing both the topics of this post. Both were incredibly useful (i've had one black thubnail driving me nuts) and have dealt with resetting the tint adjustments as well. Thanks.
Kiran, thanks! Actually when I was just experimenting with it, it seems that all I have to do is make any adjustment and the thumbnail gets redrawn.
I usually just click the 'Auto-adjust black and white point' histogram button, then click the undo button next to it. Nearly always works.
Ellen
A quicker way around black previews is simply to make an adjustment to the image and then, undo the adjustment. This seems to redraw the preview.
Eric, I don't doubt that your approach will work, but it certainly is more involved and takes more time. But if you prefer it, go for it!
To repair black previews (and the occasional black full render, which has also happened before), I delete the AP.thumbnails file from the project package itself (using "Show Package Contents" in Finder).
Since you obviously don't want to delete thumbnails for a large project, I first create a new project, and move the offending image to it before deleting the thumbnails.
I agree with you Random Bob!
I use the tint wheel to warm my photos up a bit, which by the looks of the image in this post, you are doing too!
I prefer a warmer, softer, inviting tone in my photos, and using the tint wheel to cast a reddish-yellow hue in the whites (and occasionally a slight bump in the grays) does pretty well without affecting the colors in the rest of the photo.