DeepDesertPhoto

@Lee D Have you looked at my reply to you back on January 22nd? The program crashed again today while working with the Defringe filter. The crash occurred after using the Normal Defringe filter from the filter dropdown menu. It crashed while trying to remove some pinkish to red fringing. I did complete the defringing using the Live Filter Layer, but I would like to know why the program crashes with the Normal filter but not the Live Filter. What is the difference between the two filters which essentially do the same thing.

@Lee D It took about a dozen images to finally get AP to crash again while applying the defringing filter. Out of 12 images, 2 of them caused the program to crash. I have a theory as to what might be causing it. The images that caused the crash were photos of the sun reflecting off of water or shining thru tree limbs. The intense sunlight caused the fringing to be excessively bright and probably overloaded the filter in some way when I selected a specific color shade to apply the filter to. I have created a series of 5 screenshots showing the procedure I did before the program crashed. I manage to complete the defringing using the live filter that you suggested as shown in images 06 and 07. But I still would like to know why the normal filter gets overloaded and crashes the program. Screenshot Image 01 shows the original image after I have done all prior development work. The defringing was my final step before saving the final image. As you can see in image 01 there is significant fringing in the lower left side where the sun is reflecting off of ice. Images 02 and 03 are closeups showing how intense the fringing is for the individual pixel blocks. Image 04 shows my selecting the dropdown menu for the normal defringing filter. Image 05 shows the defringing panel with the settings and color shade I selected for defringing. When I clicked the Apply button for the normal filter in image 05 that was when the program crashed. Images 06 and 07 show my retrying by selecting the Live Filter option with similar settings on the filter panel. When I applied the Live Defringe Filter it did finish the task and I was able to save the final result. I hope this gives you insight as to why the program is crashing when I use the Normal Defringe Filter, and only the Live Filter seems to be able to deal with this. I use the Normal Filters 99% of the time, so I would like to find out what is causing the crash. Like I mentioned, my theory is that the color intensity might be overloading the Normal Filter. In any case, it is a problem that should be looked into by the Serif Technicians.

Right now I am getting read to go on a photo trip so I won't be able to do anymore testing until I get back tomorrow. But to answer your question, I am developing Nikon RAW photos shot with a D810 camera. I use various presets I have created in the development persona for exposure, lens correction, and noise reduction before converting it to the pixel persona. While in the pixel persona I perform HDR toning, various level adjustments, white balance corrections, and HSL enhancements. All of those adjustments have never caused any crashes. Because of the crashing I save the photo as an AP document before proceeding to the Defringing. This way I don't lose all of the prior adjustments if it crashes during the defringing. The crashes have always occurred while applying the normal Defringe filter. I don't normally use the Live filter unless I am working with multiple layers. But even that does not always cause a crash. The crash seems to happen when I am trying to select a specific shade of purple to red to defringe. I use an ultra-wide 20mm lens, and a rectilinear fisheye lens for a lot of my landscape photography. Those lenses cause fringing toward the outer edge of the image. The fringing colors seem to be in the red to purple range. It is when I zoom in and select individual pixels for defringing that the crash occurs. But like I said, it does not always happen. The crash seems to be triggered by a specific shade of purplish-red. I was hoping the crash report would give a specific reason as to what is causing the crash. I have to leave for my trip, so I will check back with you either later tonight or tomorrow.

@Hangman I did as you suggested and lowered the RAM and Disk usage back to their original defaults. It seemed to work for a about a dozen images, but just today the program crashed again when trying to apply the Defringe filter. I sent the crash report to Apple, who will relay it to Affinity Photo. But I did save a copy of the report as a PDF file and uploaded here. Perhaps you, or someone else here, can make sense of the report's jargon. I'm not a computer expert so it looks like gibberish to me, but I suppose that someone who does computer coding for a living should be able to decipher it. AP-CrashReport.pdf

I have always used the maximum RAM setting because the lower default setting caused memory limit warnings from my Mac when I was doing any complicated work. But of course that was before the latest update. Maybe something changed with the newest update on how it uses the available RAM. I will lower the RAM setting and see what happens. If it continues to crash I will let you know.

It doesn't happen all the time. It seems to crash when I zoom in and select a specific shade of pixel that I need to defringe. I primarily use the Normal (Filter → Colours → Defringe...) because I am mostly working with a single image. I don't use Live unless I'm working with multiple layers. As far as my hardware settings I have included a screenshot of the current settings in the program. Before I go to the trouble of uploading a 700 to 800 megabyte AP document here, please let me know if there is something I should change in the hardware settings first.

I did a search for the following problem but nothing turned up, so I don't know if this has been reported yet. Affinity Photo 2.5.7 has been randomly crashing while using the defringe filter. I decided to report it here because just today it crashed on me at least 5 times. I am using a 2021 MacBook Pro running Ventura 13.7.2 Every time it crashed the popup appeared saying that the program quit unexpectedly and gave me the option to report it to Apple. I have sent the report every time so hopefully your techs are working on a solution for the next update. All I can say is that it doesn't crash every time I use the defringe filter, but it does seem to have a problem with defringing certain shades of purple and reds which causes the crash. Hopefully this problem has been reported before and an update is on the way because it is most annoying when it crashes in the middle of a procedure. I have been compensating by saving the file as an AP document every time I make an adjustment so that if it does crash I don't lose the prior adjustments. But regardless, this crashing does indicate some kind of problem with the program related to the Defringe filter.

You're welcome. I understand what you were getting at with the video now. Because it was in a foreign language I wasn't sure what its purpose was at first.

That's a possibility. The representative that I complained to had to manually examine my images himself before he realized that they were not AI generated. He admits that they use an algorithm to examine images being submitted for sale thru their site. Part of this is economics. Using an AI algorithm to review the incoming images is a lot cheaper than having a large staff of experts to review each image. But as can be seen by my complaint to them, it is causing false positives which forces them to manually look at the images anyway.

Not sure what the point of the video was. But on the matter of AI created art, I understand what you're getting at. Many people have creative ideas but might have a hard time using traditional methods to bring their ideas to life. And I don't have a problem with someone experimenting with AI and making images for their own personal use. But I do have a problem with non-artists using AI to create realistic photos or illustrations by just typing commands into a keyboard and then selling those images as the real thing when they didn't actually shoot the photo or draw the lines in the illustration. I've been making a living at this for over 20 years, and I spend a lot of time and money traveling to get the photos I need for my work. If someone, who has no photographic experience, can use AI to create a realistic photo of a place I spent time and money to go to in person, I treat that as a threat to my livelihood. I look at it as being like a student cheating on an important test.

I have tried that before and enlarging more than 25% using traditional methods creates distortions that are unacceptable to these agencies. That is why in a separate thread Upscayl was actually recommended to me. I have done comparisons of enlarged images done by AP and Upscayl, and Upscayl seems to be better, quality wise. In my opinion, these agencies need to learn how to distinguish between images that were created from scratch by AI and those that were merely enhanced.

Just before I got a notification of your reply, I was in the process of sending the representative from the photography agency called RooM a message asking if certain AI tools like Upscayl could be triggering the algorithms they use to prescreen the image submissions. I have been using Upscayl to enlarge older illustrations that I created between 2005 and 2012 using Photoshop. Those particular illustrations have resolutions below what is required now by some of the agencies I deal with. But the only way to enlarge them without creating distortions is to use Upscayl, or something similar like Topaz. I asked the RooM representative if this would be a problem since an AI tool does not create an image from scratch but just enhances an existing image. Hopefully they will reply back soon.

Upscayl does not create anything. It only enlarges an existing image. That's not much different than other enlargement tools such as the program "Genuine Fractals" which has been used for years without being questioned. And like I mentioned, I place the enlarged image into a new layer within Affinity Photo where I make additional modifications using AP's tools, which are not AI according to Callum, who is a staff member.

I don't have Topaz, or any other plugins. I recently updated from AP2.4.2 to AP2.5, so whatever is in it is whatever came with the update. The only other program I have is Upscayl, which was recommended to me in a separate thread about converting rasterized images to vector for the purpose of scaling up to a larger size. Right now the illustrations I'm working on are old that I originally created between 2005 and 2012 using Photoshop. They are under 2000 pixels so I have been using Upscayl to enlarge them. I found that Upscayl does a good job at enlarging an image without creating distortions. After the enlargement, I then place the image into a new canvas layer using Affinity Photo. The new layer is in ROMM RGB 32 Bit color. After I use Affinity Photo to make some modifications to the image, using the tools already in AP, I then flatten the layer and export it as a JPG to upload to the sites I sell thru. The representative from RooM, told me that after additional examination they now realize that the image was not AI created, but for some reason the layer processing done by Affinity triggered the algorithms they use to prescreen the submitted images. They told me to make sure I state in the description of the image that it is not AI. It's the same with Adobe. They require that I certify that any images I submit were not created by AI. I am still having problems with DepositPhotos, however. They are being very obstinate about this issue. Arguing with them is pointless because they have a policy that if an image is flagged as AI generated it cannot be resubmitted, even after I explained to them how I created it.

That's possible. But I prefer to create my own illustrations and photo manipulations the old fashioned way. In my opinion, unless you're a high volume producer and need to produce large numbers of illustrations and manipulations in a short period of time, using AI is just being lazy and takes away the enjoyment of doing the work yourself. There is a certain satisfaction in showing that you have the creative skill to make something from your imagination instead of having an AI do it simply based on typed instructions.