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View Full Version : Quartz Extreme / Core Image problem


MickM
06-04-2012, 05:02 PM
I have a 2009 MacBook Pro and I use SketchBook Pro to draw on a graphics tablet connected to my laptop. The drawing program complains that my laptop does not support Quartz Extreme / Core Image and it brings up a (usually hidden) dialog box complaining about that. I have to go moving windows around finding that miserable dialog box so I can click on OK, only to have the same thing happen again at some random time a little later. Really annoying. Aside from that, the program works just fine. I put the following post into the SketchBook forums, however it occurs to me that this might be a DisplayLink problem because it is corrupting the way programs determine if Quartz Extreme / Core Image is available or not. Could someone please let me know if this is a DisplayLink issue? Here is my post:

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I think I have debugged this further to the point that you might be able to fix this - I believe it is a bug in SketchBook. It turns out my 2009 MacBook Pro does natively have Quartz Extreme / Core Image - all Macs of that vintage do and in fact Apple have stopped specifically mentioning that capability in the System Profiler because it's now redundant (and that's why I thought my Mac wasn't capable).

The issue is how Sketchbook determines if the Mac has Quartz Extreme / Core Image capability. I happen to have two USB DisplayLink monitors and a Wacom DTU-1631 hooked up to my MacBook Pro. Obviously I use the Wacom graphics tablet for my drawing and for better performance I run that through my mini-DisplayPort connector. The issue is that I have set the system menubar to be on one of the external monitors and they are driven via USB using DisplayLink drivers. If I change the system menubar to be on either the MacBook Pro LCD display or on the graphics tablet (connected via mini-DisplayPort) then I do not get the Sketchbook Pro error pertaining to Quartz Extreme / Core Image.

So it sounds like you just need to find an alternate way to decide if the Mac being used has Quartz Extreme / Core Image capability, because the way it's done now is not strictly correct. Hope this helps you!

Carlo
06-05-2012, 07:19 AM
We continue to look at ways to improve compatibility with all applications but at the moment I don't have a solution for your use case.

At the moment we are not lying about the display's capabilities, I think your post was correct because the application can ask the capabilities of the display the views are being drawn on instead of the ones of the main screen.
You stand a better chance to convince the developers trying the opposite: have the menubar on an accelerated screen and using the application on a DisplayLink screen. As happens in few other apps, this may work well (maybe slowly) and not be what they intended to happen.

Carlo