I have been using graphic converter for many years now, and it has been flawless and dependable up until recently.

I have been having problems with graphic converter ever since I upgraded to OS 10.4.x. I have contacted Thorston multiple times, but have not been able to get anything resolved, has anybody else had these problems? The following is an amended copy of the e-mail I sent to Thorston (because I am too lazy to type this all out). All I can hope is you do not treat me like I am stupid for bringing this up.

On the advice of the apple people, after facing numerous problems, I zeroed-out and reinstalled my system (mac os 10.4.2) completely and I was still having problems with graphic converter 5.6.2. I took the computer into my mac store to have it checked out, and we searched through the problems. We installed the latest graphic converter on an iMac in the store (as well as my trying it on the two other computers in our house), and we encountered the same problems with the cursor not functioning correctly and the colour palette changing colours on it's own. It definitely appears  to now not be my computer (which as I said has now been completely zeroed-out and redone from the ground up), but an issue within Graphic Converter and/or OS 10.4. So I believe strongly this is because people are not reporting it, moving to other programs, or using graphic converter in ways that it does not present itself to them.

Due to the nature of the installation, I had the opportunity to test graphic converter 5.6.2 (as well as two previous builds) at varying systems (only 5.6.2 was tested on the other computers). On my computer, graphic converter was the first application installed, so only the system software was installed with it throughout this test.

At 10.3.6:
Graphic converter 5.6.2 had a solid colour palette and cursor.

graphic converter 5.0.2 had solid cursor, but the colour palette was sporadically unstable.

Graphic Converter 4.4.4 had a solid colour palette and cursor.


At 10.3.9:
Graphic converter 5.6.2 had a solid colour palette and cursor.

graphic converter 5.0.2 had solid cursor, but the colour palette was sporadically unstable.

Graphic Converter 4.4.4 had a solid colour palette and cursor.


At 10.4.0:
Graphic converter 5.6.2 had an offset cursor and can only draw the proper sized shape (as per position and visual on smaller shapes); the colour palette would shift colours when the palette was set to 32768 colours or higher; the marquee too would add a pixel to the selection more than what the position would say.

graphic converter 5.0.2 had an offset cursor and can only draw the proper sized shape (as per position and visual on smaller shapes); the colour palette would shift colours when the palette was set to 32768 colours or higher; the marquee too would add a pixel to the selection more than what the position would say.

Graphic Converter 4.4.4 had a solid, aligned cursor; the colour palette would shift colours when the palette was set to 32768 colours or higher; the marquee tool functioned corectly and gave accurate measurements of the selection in position on the rectangular marquee only.


At 10.4.2:
Graphic converter 5.6.2 had an offset cursor and can only draw the proper sized shape (as per position and visual on smaller shapes); the colour palette would shift colours when the palette was set to 32768 colours or higher; the marquee tool functioned corectly and gave accurate measurements of the selection in position on the rectangular marquee only.

graphic converter 5.0.2 had an offset cursor and can only draw the proper sized shape (as per position and visual on smaller shapes); the colour palette would shift colours when the palette was set to 32768 colours or higher; the marquee too would add a pixel to the selection more than what the position would say.

Graphic Converter 4.4.4 had a solid, aligned cursor; the colour palette would shift colours when the palette was set to 32768 colours or higher; the marquee tool functioned corectly and gave accurate measurements of the selection in position on the rectangular marquee only.


1. As for the cursor (in GC 5.x.x), I can only draw a shape from lower right to upper left, instead of the other way around. If I draw from the shape from upper left to lower right I get an additional pixel added to both dimensions. If I draw from upper right to lower left, I get and additional pixel on one dimension of the shape and an accurate length in the other dimension. It is the same for lower left to upper right, except the dimension with the additional pixel is the reverse. And when I try to draw a shape in any direction when drawing from center, it adds a pixel to the dimensions of the shape (i.e.; the circle is supposed to be 20x20, but comes out as 21x21) on any shape over 6 pixels. It is as if the program is adding on a half or full pixel arbitrarily.

2. As for the colour palette, the problem is that it will not hold the selected colour once you close the colour palette window, when the colour palette is set to 32768 in any colour mode.

In the case of an HSB colour, you might select H:0 S:100 B:99, you close the palette and the colour changes to H:359 S:100 B:100.
In the case of an CMYK colour, you might select C:0 M:0 Y:100 K:0, you close the palette and the colour changes to C:4 M:2 Y:80 K:0.

RGB colour seems to be relatively stable but I also rarely use it because it is hard to get fine gradations of colour like HSB, or is used by most of the magazines that my work appears in like CMYK.

Also, from the drag down menu in the colour palette where you can choose which palette to use (picture enclosed for clarity), if you select any of those palettes, it will automatically switch back to Generic RGB everytime no matter what. This leads me to believe that it is applying generic RGB to everything, hence why the RGB colour is apparently stable, while all the others are not.

I had mentioned that photoshop was also experiencing issues with the colour palette and cursor, these were due to a rendering node from Vue 5 that got stuck in it's plug-ins. Photoshop works fine now.

3. When altering or drawing a new file, the file sometimes gets saved in such a way as to cause it to turn up a type -43 error. This code should not even appear on my system, it is a code for a bad windows file in OSX server. When trying to move, copy, or back-up the file to a CD it gives a -43 error, to DVD it gives a 00_00086534 error (the mac guys did not even know what that meant), or to another hard drive a -1473 error (which is a corrupted resource code). When trying to work on these files, it does not allow changes to be saved and gives a type -50 error. The only way to save the picture, is to cut and paste the entire thing into a new document entirely and cross your fingers that the new one is not corrupt as well.