Torstein

I agree on the excellence of the RAW engine in DxO PL, it may be in a class of it's own! I also use as my DAM and it is sufficient to me as that. I can search for Keywords, ISO etc. etc. What should I miss? And by the way, how do you define a DAM? What must be included?

Just not what I would recommend...😀 In my view, the best combination for speed, stability and energy efficiency is a Ryzen CPU and a Nvidia RTX GPU. Anyway, an Intel CPU also works very well.

For me it's all about power efficiency, that equals less noise and heat. Ryzen CPUs are a lot more energy efficient than Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPU's are better in that regard than AMD GPUs.

I don't know anything about AMD GPUs in Affinity Photo, but at least there is nothing wrong to combine a Ryzen CPU with a Nvidia RTX GPU if that is an option.

I have never used AI masking in my photo edits. So, I just wonder, how precise is it? If I want to mask hairy subjects, like humans or dogs, mostly all of the time is used to refine the selection. If I still have to do the work with refining the selection, I will not save much time....

Get DigiKam for free...

Sorry, there was no crash report. I dont think I can give a very good description of my workflow.... I was working on a jpg file exported from DxO PhotoLab. I was doing quite a bit with the photo. Duplicating the layer 3 times and masking two of the layers. On one of the layers, I also had two masks. Adding several effects like blur, high pass filter etc. etc. Anyway, it's not a masterpiece, but I guess I can add the new version of the file here, a somewhat simpler version not quite finished... Vintermåker.afphoto

Two times I have experienced 2.3 suddenly quit without giving any warning. That has actually has cost me and hour work or so... Everything is fine with my PC and this is the only application that has done this to me. I'm using a PC with Windows 11, Ryzen 5700G, RTX 2060 and 32GB RAM

It works the way I expect with the Mask layer at bottom, as long as I don't select preserve alpha in the blur layer. With preserve alpha it gives the photo "aura" treatment in any way I order the Mask layer before or after the Blur layer(s).

Now I do understand what you are saying....

Maybee I'm not so stupid.... Some more experimentation and I have found that the order you arrange Mask and Blur layers is important! (That feels like a bug too me!) These two orders of the layers don't give the same result! To my surprise, the last sample with Mask below Blur works fine, while the one with the Mask above the Blur do not! I would have expected the other way around... You can see the effect in the small samples.

Thank you all for suggestions and ideas. Anyway, I must have done something stupid, because I now get everything to work as expected! Can it have had something with the preserve alfa selection?

Thats exactly what I do. I replicate the mask, invert it and use for the background mask. But when I add the blur it's as the blur function also consider pixels that are masked. My work around is to make a new pixel background layer from the masked background layer, but where the masked area is 100 % transparent. That seems to work fine, but it's extra steps with work that should not be necessary.

I often want to add some blur to backgrounds in my photos. I normally make a copy of the layer, make a mask of the motive and add live layer with blur, gaussian or to blur the background. But when I add plenty of blur AP seems like it also considers the masked area and I get a "halo / gloria" effect around the subject. A work around is to create a new pixel layer where the foreground is totally erased, but it makes the process more cumbersome and it takes more time. I don't know if this is unavoidable, user error or a bug...

After a restart Affinity worked fine, so problem solved.