Preview causing crash/kernel panic

[Robbie77]

Hey, I hope there might be someone here who has experienced this problem (please tell me I'm not alone lol)

I have an iMac, 27", mid-2010 running El Capitan 10.11.6
3.2 GHz Intel Core i3 processor
8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 Memory
1TB SSD

I work heavily in media and use Preview for resizing images in bulk.
I'm experiencing major problems when opening a selection of images to resize them, usually when the images are larger than 1500 px.
Resizing works, but when closing Preview the Mac will freeze for perhaps 30 seconds, everything stops responding, then the Mac will either shut down or go into Kernel panic (which always gives me a heart attack).

It doesn't happen every time, but given that I work from home on this machine and do a LOT of image alterations it's now happening about once a day.

Thanks for your time, any help greatly appreciated.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

-Do you have a Time Machine or other backup of your date? If not, I strongly urge you to make one, as this issue could be a failing SSD.
-How much free space is left on the SSD?
-Did you add third-party RAM at any time?

C

 

[Robbie77]

Hi, thanks for the reply.
It's definitely not a failing SSD.
My precious HDD failed a few months ago and the SSD was installed then.
There's 977 gig free on it and it's not showing any problems (the HDD alerted me to it failing).

I do run a regular backup of all important data, but after the previous failure, far more of my data is stored on my secure server and very little is kept on my desktop.

I'm pretty sure it's not the drive or any hardware issue, I've seen others reporting a similar problem with resizing large images in Preview but no solution to it. I've also seen it suggested that this problem has been recognized by Apple too (as being a problem with Preview itself), but they still haven't provided a solution.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Thanks for the additional information.

Kernel panics can be caused by any number of things. Many times, it's a hardware issue. I understand that the SSD is new, but they do fail, although not as often as standard hard drives. Third-party RAM has also been known to cause kernel panics at random times, especially when performing an OS X install/update. But, you probably would have had an issue prior to this if the RAM were failing. It's pretty rare that it fails after years of normal use.

That leaves us with a software issue. If you have read reports of the Preview resizing issue, and you aren;t having any other issues, then it may just be that.

Do you have any other image editing apps that you could use to batch resize the photos? GraphicConverter is excellent at this.

C