MikeFromMesa

Well, today seems to be crash day. I loaded a simple jpg to record a macro. I then recorded the macro and exported it. I then imported the macro I just exported and got this crash.

Decided to try 2 consecutive HDR merges as before, but this time using processed jpgs instead of the raws. I assumed that this might be easier for APB to process since there would be less memory usage and, perhaps, less intensive CPU usage as well. Nonetheless I also got a crash with this scenario. The crash dump is here. I have not compared them so perhaps they are the same, perhaps different.

APB crashed when I created a second HDR in APB. That is, I created an HDR from 5 Canon raw images, adjusted it and, without closing it, started to create a second HDR from a different set of 5 raw images. I did not have anything else running at the time. The crash dump is here in case the developers are interested.

Yes. That worked as well. Is this on the list of things to be fixed?

Right. That worked. Opening the 16 bit psd from APB in Elements (I don't have Photoshop on my Mac), saving it as an 8 bit psd and then opening it in APB worked properly. The file opened as it should have.

In Photoshop? I must be missing something here. I thought Lee was asking me to try exporting the stacked image from APB as an 8 bit psd file from APB. What, exactly, should I try to do? UPDATE: Oh, I get it. Open the APB exported psd file in PS, then save it as an 8 bit image and try opening it in APB. Right. Will try that now.

How can I save a psd file as an 8 bit file? There is no option on the export dialog box or on the More sub dialog box to allow me to specify bit depth. The only options I have on the main dialog box are Presets, Resample, Area and Layers. The More sub dialog box offers me more options but there is no bit depth.

I have been playing around with the new stacking functionality and put together a multi image stack. After processing I exported this image as a psd to work on later. When I later tried to load the psd i got the image at this link. I repeated the test, first checking the Don't export layers hidden ... and then flattening the document before exporting. Neither setting made any difference. I then loaded the psd files using the MAS version and had no problem so it appears that APB is having an issue with exporting psd files. My test was with focus stacking but the problem may be wider than just that.

Does the save show up as step in your macro? It did not in mine but perhaps it recorded without being visible?

I asked this before but never got an answer and, since it touches on the basic macro functionality, I wanted to ask one more time. I can not seem to get the Macro recording functionality to record an image save (Cmd-S) or File -> Save. I understand why this might be a problem if a file name has to be added but if it is a save of a currently loaded jpg or tiff AP and APB just save the current image with the current name. Is it intended that a save command not be allowed in recording a macro? Or is it a bug?

Perhaps a year ago I filed a bug concerning use of the InPainting tool on a cropped image. I wrote that if I tried InPainting near the edge of a crop AP seemed to be including some of the cropped-out image in its calculations when it filled in the space. You replied that I could Rasterize the image and solve that problem so I already knew I could get rid of the sparkles outside the crop by Rasterizing. I reported it because I thought that the selection should not be displayed in the cropped-out part of the image and I thought it was a bug. There is also the issue of the first image I posted. The selection of the color in the cropped image resulted in square areas being selected and I have no idea why that was happening. I am not sure I can reproduce that but it did seem odd.

I was working with some images I took in the mountains of New Mexico and decided to select some flowers in the image using the Select Sampled Color functionality. I first cropped the image to include the flowers, used the HSL adjustment to increase the saturation of the blues a bit (but did not like the result and pressed the delete on the dialog box) and decided to use the Select -> Select Sampled Color to select the flowers thinking that I would have a bit more control over what got adjusted. However, when I did that, I got this. Somewhat startled by what selecting the blue had given me I returned to the original image and did the selection there. That seemed to work as I got this, but when I did the crop AFTER the selection I got this. Both of the selections on the crop seemed odd. The first because the selection makes no sense, the last because I am seeing the selection outside of the cropped area. I then opened the MAS version to see if I could reproduce the issue. While I could not recreate the first odd selection I noticed that if I did the selection first and then cropped I also saw the selection twinkles in the cropped out area. I never noticed this before, but perhaps I had never followed this sequence or, perhaps, it is because of the original image. I don't know. In any case I thought it was worth posting. Why are the selection twinkles showing up in areas of the photo that have been cropped out?

I recorded a macro this afternoon which included, among other things, saving the file. While the macro recorder captured everything prior to the save it did not record the save itself. Is this a known restriction? Or should it have recorded the save as well? I tried both File -> Save and Cmd-S but neither recorded.

I suppose that makes sense as I use sRGB. I have, from time to time, also noticed some color differences between the plugin versions and APB as well as some brightness differences between the computer display and a printed version. My comment was meant to mean that the major problems I had seen before with the Nik plugins (for example, the image not even showing up in the Nik display) were gone and it was clear that the plugins were affecting the image, not that they were working perfectly. I also have to admit that I have not played with color space settings much so I did not see the problems you mention.

> I see, so you are panning your camera and refocusing. That is a no no. Your camera needs to maintain the same orientation throughout all the images. Really? Why? I understand there are certain accepted procedures and that shooting in some ways produces good and expected results, but trying new things to see how they work out is at the heart of the creative effort in art, music, writing, photography and many other things. I personally think that people ought to be creative and try to see how new methods and approaches work out, if they are fruitful paths to follow and if they give creative solutions to problems. Your approach undoubtably works but why are you suggesting that other approaches to solving the same problem are wrong? Personally I found that the approach of moving the camera and refocusing works quite well, especially if you are using focus stacking functionality from other software where the edges are not thrown away. And even if the result of moving the camera instead of selecting different focus points is not as elegant a solution and even if it results in some slight distortion as the multiple images are combined, why is that necessarily "bad"? Photography is, after all, more art than science and even some image distortion, even if visible, may add to an image rather than detract from it. We are talking about creativity and the ability to capture an image in new and unique ways. Some photos I have seen captured with fish-eye lenses are absolutely amazing, even if they are full of distortion and do not represent the world as we see it with our eyes. I would suggest that, as a general rule, "experiment, experiment, experiment" should be as much our motto as "practice, practice, practice".

Just for the sake of completeness, here is the result if the focus points are changed instead of moving the camera. The problem, of course, is that to get the image centered so that I can place all of the focus points on the do-dad I have to be considerably further away and the result is noticeably smaller.

I realized when I posted my question that my explanation might have not been very clear, so perhaps this will be better. I have been thinking about buying a new macro lens and was testing it to see how I could increase the dof. Normally I would use a tripod, adjust the focus points and take a series of photos but decided to see how it would work if instead I moved the camera and always used the center focus point. I suspect that if you are out doing actual nature macro shooting that is easier than constantly accessing the functionality to chang the focus point for the camera. But doing that meant that I ended up with a series of photos, each with a different part of the image in focus, and I ran them through the Focus Stacking in AP to see how it all came out. The original 5 images are here. When I used AP's focus stacking functionality I ended up with this. As you can see the top and bottom areas of the sequence have been lost and that is the reason for my original post. I ended up having to crop the top and bottom images and run the focus-stacked image and the new top and bottom through some pano software to get a final photo. Hence my question. I hope this clarifies my original post.

MEB: Yes. I understand the purpose of focus stacking, but I was wondering if it would work with multiple images taken by moving the camera as well as changing the focus point. It appears that answer is "Yes, but ...". That is fine. I will just change the focus point of the camera instead of moving the image. I was just experimenting anyway. Thanks for the response.

I was doing some focus stacking testing today with images that were taken by moving the camera (rather than by moving the focusing point) so there were parts of the image in some shots but not in others. The result of the focus stacking was an image that contained information from multiple images but not containing information that was only in the first and last images and to correct this I had to convert all of the images to the same format (I used jpg) and create a pano using those first and last images. This worked and the result looks OK but I was wondering if there is some way to make sure the result of the focus stacking contains all of the images rather than just those in multiple shots. Or is the functionality intended to be created from images where the user moved the focus point instead of the camera?

I don't normally use dng files for anything but I did have some panos that I had assembled using LR 6 and I called Edit In for APB using one of those. I first told LR to pass the file as a tiff and I had no problem but when I told it to pass the file as a psd I saw what I assume you are referring to as "a mess". I tried this using all of the Color Space options and they all exhibited the same issue. However, when I called AP instead of APB I did not have this problem, so it appears to be an APB issue. Something has broken in the beta.

Sure. 2015 Mac Mini, dual core i7 chip, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD running El Capitan, Intel Iris Graphics (such as they are on a Mini). If you need more details please let me know and I will upload the complete specs.

I finally figured out how to keep the ants out of our hummingbird feeder so I refilled it and hung it back up. When the birds showed up I took some photos and began to edit them in the latest beta. I loaded one of the raw images into AP and this is what I saw: The photo was so unexpectedly dark that I let it sit for about 20 seconds before I decided that AP was not going to do anything more to it. I then moused over to the exposure slider planning to adjust the value when suddenly this happened: I made no change to the exposure value (as you can see the adjustment values have not changed) but the photo adjusted just as soon as the mouse (well, actually trackpad) was pressed. No change was made but the selection was made in preparation to making a change. This is specific to the beta. When I loaded the raw image into the MAS version it did not display the dark screen but immediately displayed the properly adjusted image. This is repeatable so something is going on here. I just don't know what.

I noticed that all of my keyboard shortcuts from the previous beta version stopped working when I installed this version. I don't know why this beta did not read and use the previous shortcuts but perhaps there was so much new functionality that they had to assign new keyboard shortcuts. I have had to start re-setting my previous custom keyboard shortcuts.

The Macros Panel is document specific but the Library Panel is not. I have saved the Macros that I need and now just keep the Library Panel open. When I load a new image I can then just click on the Macro I want in the Library Panel and it works. Apparently the Macros Panel is only for recording, saving, exporting and importing. Once those are created I only use the Library Panel and that is not document specific.

Given the functionality in AP I find I rarely use plugins anymore however I decided to see which of my plugins worked with the new version of AP. All of the Nik plugins seem to work and more of my Topaz plugins. However Clarity and ReMask are still failing. Adjust, which was hit or miss with the previous version of AP seems to solidly work with this new version. Thank you developers.