Beta 1.8.4.676 is out, but, unfortunately, this bug is still not fixed,. I fear it won't even be fixed in the production release 1.8.4. which would mean that I have to wait for another 3-4 months.
Apparently the severity of this bug got got wrongly judged by the developers.
It happens in the process of "edge sharpening", which is a common technique, particularly useful in sharpening night scenes, to avoid increasing the noise by only sharpening the edges. The Gaussian Blur is needed to smooth the edges of the mask previously created by the "Edge Detect" filter to avoid nasty artifacts.
The grid lines,caused by the Gaussian Blur, even if they are not clelarly visible, prevent that sharpening takes place under those lines, Of course this is unacceptable.
Because there is no workaraound for this bug, I can't use this sharpening technique anymore. Even worse, I can't import a few images I've already processed into Affinty Publisher, because they are not correctly sharpened.
So I really would be very grateful if the bug could be fixed as soon as possible.
Which brings me to another point:
reinstalling release 1.8.1 over 1.8.3 crashes. Of course I can inistall 1.8.3 and the install 1.8.1. I just fear, that I might loose my customizations and macros during this process.
Is it safe to reinstall 1.8.1 in this way or are there othe possibilities ?