2.4.2 APhoto - Denoise Live Filter not working in 32bit mode

[cgidesign]

2.4.2 APhoto on Windows 11.

Denoise Live Filter has no effect in 32bit mode.

 

EDIT:

Before the "disable OpenCL compute ..." advise gets posted - it is the same with on and off.

 

Glass-and-Volume_002_32bit.afphoto Glass-and-Volume_002_8bit.afphoto

[Old Bruce]

I think your 32 bit file is corrupted. I see nothing in the file when I open it.

 

[NotMyFault]

The exposure is far outside the SD range. I added a levels adjustment to reduce output white to 1% (factor 100) to see something, and the denoise filter works. Like other filters it is not capable to work outside the 0-1 value range.

 

[cgidesign]

14 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I think your 32 bit file is corrupted. I see nothing in the file when I open it.

It is a 32bit linear exr file. Check the lower right part of the UI. There I use Open ColorIO to set a suitable exposure compensation.

6 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

The exposure is far outside the SD range

Thanks for testing.

Yes, that's the purpose of using Affinity Photo as it is mentioned to support full 32bit editing. And 32 bit is not limited to 0 - 1 range.

Using the Levels is changing the data values which I need to avoid (in the posted test image it is not realy relevant but for real work it is).

So, is it official by Serif / Canva that Noise Reduction does not support 32bit exr if the file is not normalized to 0 - 1 range?

[NotMyFault]

You can add another levels adjustment to restore the original lightness values. (white level to 1%)

I assume the noise filter is optimized to mitigate actual sensor noise of digital image sensors, where it gives good results in most cases with actual images. I filed bug reports because the live filter does not remove artificial noise which I created e.g. by add noise.

[NotMyFault]

affinity has some limitations in 32 bit. Adjustments and filters work differently (except for simple mostly linear functions, but even the gamma plays a role). If you convert a file with adjustments and/or filters (from/to RGB/32), the rendering will differ strongly.

dust and scratches removal does not work, and some blend modes will not work.

The usual formulas (for layer blending. Adjustments and filters) either do not work (e.g. clipping) or work differently for values above 1.0. this is a principle limitation, not a bug.

So RGB/32 editing is possible, within the principle limitations and some additional Affinity specific limitations.

some known limtations:

• dust and scratch removal not working
• some file formats cannot be use for stacking (e.g. jpegxl or heic, did not try all 32 bit capable formats)
• Some format specific details like encoding or compressions differ between import and export, e.g. you cannot choose which compression will be used in tiff.
• the layer structure or channel structure will be automatically transformed in some cases, some channels may get ignored at import

[cgidesign]

Thanks @NotMyFault.

[Dan C]

Thanks for your report @cgidesign!

As @NotMyFault outlines, these Live Filters unfortunately don't work on values outside of the SD 0 - 1 range, however it is not explicitly clear to our team whether this is a hard limitation of the filters, if this is something we don't support currently & hope to in the future, or if this is classed as a bug to be resolved.

Therefore I have logged this with our dev team for further investigation & I'll be sure to update this thread with any information I'm provided.

2 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

I assume the noise filter is optimized to mitigate actual sensor noise of digital image sensors, where it gives good results in most cases with actual images. I filed bug reports because the live filter does not remove artificial noise which I created e.g. by add noise.

I can verify this is logged separately with our team, though as you've mentioned the current algorithms are more suited to 'natural' image noise, rather than noise added in post.

I hope this helps