This is sooo frustrating!!! To have spent a substantial amount of time creating a template only to have it freeze up (or stop responding) when it comes time to download it to COLOURlover's. This has happened to me a few times and I have had no choice but to close Seamless Studio and completely lose my creation. I was just wondering if anyone that has experienced this issue might have discovered a trick to un-freezing it? It seems the more complex the design the greater chance this happens. It is really aggravating to have put so much time and patience into a creation and then lose it when it is finally completed!! :(
Any help/advice on this subject would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you

You should save templates step by step, after saving you should check the saved template or you can use the save as command and save a new instance in each stage.

You should wait after all mouse click or keyboard stroke. The freezing happen more often when you aren't wait enough (would be the best expression is very much instead of enough).

Freezing happen more often when you use groups, especially multi level groups. If you selected some objects and the focus goes away from the program, when you return, you can click on any point of the program. When you click on the drawing area or on the layer, your template probably freezes. You should click on one point of the user interface without any dedicated function, for example, under the shapes library.

You can also save your half ready template as shape and sometimes this method give best result than open from saved .ssf file. (Rare.)

Often restart SS and reopen your work.

Pray.

This is just way too much work-saving constantly and for every single template-and it's something that should be fixed permanently and NOT with a temporary one.

I bought Seamless Studio and it did that to me the first time I used it. I was 99% done with an elaborate pattern. I was so heartbroken, I never used the program again.

Save Save Save, seems to be the answer. But I would never give up my Seamless Studio, no way no how not ever. I must have received a good copy, because so far to date I have been quite happy with mine. I have however learned to save as I go so as not to lose my template if something happens. But with anything we do on computers, we have to save save save or risk losing it. How many of us have had a document of some importance nearly finished just to have a freeze up and lose it all because we forgot to save? I would go crazy trying to make templates on only Seamless Lite. I for one am so thankful I purchased my Seamless Studio while it was available, wild horses couldn't pry it from me.

What I don't understand is why only a select number of people were allowed to purchase the program! I would surely buy it if it had been available when I registered here.

It's kinda unfair. I have so many great patterns and ideas but I can't express them fully in only Seamless Lite.

@Jennafire Was your problem solved yet?
Seamless Studio is very buggy. However, the reason of freezes could be memory shortage, or other hardware related, or combination of both, or too old computer to operate SS. If you can't grasp the cause of your problem, contact with a computer repair shop in your town. Computer repair technician will check your computer environment and answer any questions you have.

@skettimon As you said, it's so unfair...
http://www.colourlovers.com/forums/2,6,6710/Please_can_i_have_Seamless_Studio?page=1#comment

Thank you so much. I do believe that it may very well be my computer rather than the program. Thank you, your advice was very helpful.
yncolor wrote:

@Jennafire Was your problem solved yet?
Seamless Studio is very buggy. However, the reason of freezes could be memory shortage, or other hardware related, or combination of both, or too old computer to operate SS. If you can't grasp the cause of your problem, contact with a computer repair shop in your town. Computer repair technician will check your computer environment and answer any questions you have.

@skettimon As you said, it's so unfair...
http://www.colourlovers.com/forums/2,6,6710/Please_can_i_have_Seamless_Studio?page=1#comment

YES zlaughingdog you are so right!! I have definitely learned that save save save IS the only way to protect your work from being completely lost! Thank you :)
wrote:

Save Save Save, seems to be the answer. But I would never give up my Seamless Studio, no way no how not ever. I must have received a good copy, because so far to date I have been quite happy with mine. I have however learned to save as I go so as not to lose my template if something happens. But with anything we do on computers, we have to save save save or risk losing it. How many of us have had a document of some importance nearly finished just to have a freeze up and lose it all because we forgot to save? I would go crazy trying to make templates on only Seamless Lite. I for one am so thankful I purchased my Seamless Studio while it was available, wild horses couldn't pry it from me.

Jennafire, sometimes I thought Seamless had crashed, and I just left the program up for a couple of hours or overnight just in case, and it resolved itself. It has crashed on me several times, though. However, now I know to leave it up in the background in hopes. I'm sorry we lost out on a thing of beauty from you!

Sometimes it can take hours to load a template on your computer before you can upload it to CL. I love to send while my file is still open, but sometimes I can't do that. I wish there were an address we could attatch an svg file to, and let them deal with that.

I wish I was able to create a pattern. It's been 2 years since Seamless Studio stopped working for me. :(

creed:

A few things to mention.

1. Continued development and updating/upgrading of Seamless Studio was suspended quite some time ago.

2. The umbrella company for ColourLovers and sibling site Creative Market was acquired by Autodesk in May of this year and the survival of ColourLovers is in question. People are not getting responses to inquiries, sponsorships are not getting processed, and bugs and glitches are not being addressed---including upload problems.

3. There are some other threads running pertaining to Seamless Studio. In another, and this one, it was suggested that complex patterns/templates generated just take forever to process. Others have said they have to wait a painful amount of time but it often works, to a point, sometimes.

You might check to see what other background programs your machine is running and that you do not need. This should free up some machine resources to speed processing of your patterns/templates? You should be able to disable them (CTRL-ALT-DEL in Windows. Then choose the tab for all running programs.), or you can tune your start-up programs so they do not load in the first place. Most start-up tuners let you disable but not delete entries so if you goof, you can simply change the status of the file in the start-up menu.

If you have never done this, you will be surprised at how much bloatware software companies think you want loaded and running on your machine! It is beyond annoying and close to evil. I have learned to scour for recently added programs and the start-up menu to see what crap I do not need has been added to my machine in a program install.

Not much you can do about how file upload processing is handled on the ColourLovers end.

4. Another thread discusses how to save your work somewhere other than this site. I think it is mainly addressing how to get work posted here off in case the site goes away and you do not already have it somewhere else.

5. If you have not already, and want alternatives, try a search engine of your choice for something like Repeat Pattern Design. There seem to be some nice tutorials for building pattern repeats in Illustrator, Photoshop and, one supposes, open source alternatives like Inkscape and Gimp.

6. Some of the custom wallpaper and fabric suppliers have free pattern repeat utilities. Upload the elements you want to pattern, pick a pattern repeat option, and they will do the rest for you. I do not know what your options are for saving your work. There are commercial repeat pattern design programs as well. I do not know what licensing them costs.

Creed, and everybody:

1. Seamless Studio in order to function, relies on Adobe Air, which was discontinued in 2011, and completely unsupported since. Here are the circumstances:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_AIR
Over a hundred thousand applications relied on Adobe Air in its heyday, so we and the Seamless products are far from alone in this problem. It's not that CL has a problem supporting this software, but that everybody does.

2. Autodesk, which is a big company, has lots of cash and resources. More importantly, they are a software development company. The old Colourlovers was never a software company, they contracted that out. So it's good that Autodesk has these resources in house. Colourlovers needs a complete software overhaul. Especially for phones and tablets.
Autodesk is also a company that generously supports socially centered artwork sites. They pumped a ton of money (millions $) to prop up DeviantArt recently, for example. They have attatched new software to DeviantArt as well, such as Autodesk Sketchbook.
http://autodesk-sketchbook.deviantart.com/
While this doesn't directly affect us in any way, I just want to note for the record that Autodesk absolutely has the materials, ability and resources to resuscitate Colourlovers, and to consider that buying the site and maintaining it all this time is not a sign to assume they meant for it to go down the tubes. Why do that? Why waste the cash? Whereas it's possible they bought the original CL company just for Creative Market, I tend to doubt that.

3. Colourlovers is world famous for its Twitter functionality through Themeleon. Just that alone makes it valuable, in my book. If they could expand that to WordPress, they'd really have something.

4. This site is still being maintained and upgraded. I saw them at it just last week.

5. While maintaining radio silence on future plans and support for past features for Colourlovers is not particularly friendly of Autodesk, it is completely cost effective. My theory is that they haven't decided what direction to take the site, or who to make spokesperson and thusly, official target, and that we are on the back burner. I see no evidence that they plan to kill it, however. Silence does not equal doom. We are in a thin period for sure, but it is up to us to keep the site alive, rather than them.

6. I am just going to continue enjoying this site and all of you. I refuse to surrender to romantic notions of atrophy, abandonment, and collapse. Further, I am going to explore Seamless Lite until it pops, because it is still available to everybody. I guarantee you are underestimating it. It's certainly flawed and cranky, though.

7. What makes a site social? What originally compelled me here were the database rankings. That made gaming CL with good works towards fame and fortune, however virtual, compelling for me. That only goes so far, however. The human element is much more vital. But say, were Colourlovers to disappear tomorrow, would you still have those relationships? I would, because I have connected with people here elsewhere. If CL disappeared tomorrow, I would mourn the loss of much design treasure, and I would have deep nostalgia for the design education I have gotten here. I urge you to connect with your fellow Colourlovers, maintain your personal archive of downloaded elements you would dearly miss, such as palettes and design tiles, keep a list of linked sites where you can keep track of particular CL friends on Pinterest, DA and the like, so that your loss would be minimized.

8. But today we are still up! I think we'll be up for quite some time. Enjoy!

Okay, I admit I'm wrong about Adobe Air. I don't know why I had that impression, that the development of Seamless Studio was stalled because of incompatibility. If that is not the case, then that is potentially good news for Seamless users.

Anyway, I believe that while this site is clearly in transition, it's future is not currently in question. We just don't have communication, which is not necessarily threatening. It could be that they are simply not saying anything until they have something to say. . There is some issues with sponsorships, which were part of the old financial model. Maybe they are not any more.

I was a member of the old site of recipezaar.com, when it transitioned into food.com. They had similar sponsoring issues, ended up discontinuing that, and refunded me.

eighteyed,

I think it might have been easy, from the Wikipedia article you linked, to conclude all of Adobe Air was discontinued. If I hadn't known (mainly because I run a lot of Adobe Air and Flash Player apps) and hadn't spotted Unix in the sentence, I probably would have thought the same.

Your impression about incompatibility seems dead on. Looking over Darius' ancient notice about throwing in the towel with regard to developing Seamless Studio further? That is exactly the reason given. It was not specific problems with Adobe Air though but just not being able to write the program to run on it the way they wanted and with the features they thought SS should have. I guess they felt they would never get the investment in it returned if they kept going with an open ended project. That is speculation on my part though.

Unless the company is willing to open source the code, etc. for Seamless Studio, or Autodesk rekindles or sells interest in developing it again---on Adobe Air or something else---I doubt we are going to see any more happening with Seamless Studio. From what you say, the Lite version works reasonably well so maybe they will work the bugs out of it and then call it a day. No way to know.

May be if enough people are willing to work on it as an open source project the company could be encouraged to release what is needed? Might be worth a shot if people think they could make it work? This type of programming is not part of my skill set.

I totally agree with needing to wait this out and I too have mentioned the lack of communication is not necessarily ominous and foreboding.