Blur brush tool in Photo is not working

[Eddie Zub]

I Had The Same issue and removing the Hardware Acceleration Worked for me. 

[ACP]

I'm on 1.8.6, Brush tool doesn't have any effect... Unticked the Hardware Acceleration allready

[Lothyende]

Dear all,

happy holidays!

I wanted to confirm that the Median Brush tool still does not work on AF 1.8.6 (Mac Os 11.1).
Other than described above, disabling Metal Compute acceleration does not fix this. The only effect that I noticed is that it causes the "brush effect preview" to stop working as well.I made two screen video's to show what I mean, one with Metal enabled, the second one with Metal disabled. If you watch what happens with the bright spot that I try to retouch you'll see the difference most clearly.

The Blur Brush tool does work as mentioned, only with metal disabled.
Other tools such as the healing brush, do work fine with metal enabled.

Screen video with Metal acceleration disabled: 

 

Edited December 25, 2020 by Lothyende
added results for blur brush

[marble51]

Hi

I think this problem with the Blur Brush is still with us 2 years after being reported here. Way back then there was a comment* that the developers are aware of the bug but I had to find this forum thread to find out that I have to turn off Hardware Acceleration to get my Blur Tool (and some others) to work. Is this bug just being ignored or can we expect a fix soon?

My version of AP is 1.9.2.1035 running on Windows 10.

* To Quote Dan C in Sept. 2019: "This is a bug our development team are aware of and we're working to fix this ASAP."

Edited July 25, 2021 by marble51
Add quote

[Dan C]

Hi @marble51,

This thread is regarding macOS and not the Windows version of Affinity, and therefore it does not apply to your issue being reported.

I can confirm that 'Hardware Acceleration' was initially enabled on Mac and only recently has been made available on Windows. As it's still a relatively new feature for Windows, we're still working through a few 'teething issues' with this feature.

I'm glad to hear that disabling this option has resolved the issue for you, but our team would still like this information separately, so it can be logged with our developers as a bug.

Can you please post in the following section of the forums, providing as much information as possible regarding this?

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/78-photo-bugs-found-on-windows/

Many thanks in advance

[mypointofview]

Hi Affinity community

 

luckily I found this thread, since I was having exactly this issue ever since I have been using Affinity Photo.

It worked on low res images but not on highres 300dpi jpgs and tiffs.

 

Now on my my new MBP M1Pro (OSX 12.3.1 / AP v1.10.5) the same problem with the blur brush tool. No effects no matter how many strokes I use.

Disabling "metal compute acceleration" solved the issue!!!

Just out of pure curiosity what does this acceleration do and why doesn't it affect any other brush tool? 🤷🏻‍♂️

 

Thanks 🙏🏻

 

[MEB]

Hi @mypointofview,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Are you sure the Blur Brush Tool does absolutely nothing or it's very very subtle (barely visible if you are working with high res images and do not zoom quite enough) when hardware acceleration is enabled?
We have this issue logged and from my testing it was working with acceleration enabled but the effect was indeed quite subtile - specially with high res images - on Intel based Macs. I didn't check on the new M1 based Macs. It's possible it's doing the same thing (very subtile effect) and you didn't notice? In any case it's is not usable as it is and we hope to have this fixed when possible. Meanwhile you may want to try using a Live Blur filter with an empty/black built-in mask and paint the effect (the "blurriness") with the regular paint brush tool on the mask (with color set to white).
Metal compute acceleration speeds up a series of processes in the app, namely rendering things on screen. The app is faster/more responsive with it enabled.

[mypointofview]

Hi MEB!

 

thanks for getting back to me!

To answer your question: yes it is beyond extreme subtle... Once I had over a hundred steps to see a tiny change, the brush set to 100% opacity.

After turning the metal acceleration off I can use a lower opacity and between 5 to 10 steps. Which seems to me a more realistic behaviour, don't you agree?

 

if desired I can provide screenshots 

 

cheers

[MEB]

Thanks for checking. Yes, that's what we are experiencing/seeing here too (no need for screenshots). I will bump/update the report again to bring it up to developers attention. Thanks for your support/feedback.
 

[mypointofview]

Thanks MEB!

 

interesting enough it's the same behaviour on my new M1Pro MacBook Pro as well as on my very old 2012 i7 Intel 🙈

 

thanks for keeping me posted!

 

Besides that little glitch I must say moving over to the Affinity world has been my best decision ever (also for Affinity Publisher) 👏🏻

[Child of Olympus]

If there are any Staff members available, I would like to announce that I had this issue lastnight (June 1st)/today (June 2nd), running version 2.1.0.1799 on windows 11 Home (version 10.0.22621). 

 

Turning off hardware acceleration stoped it from showing the transparency checkers, but the tool is now 100% unresponsive.

 

The tool worked fine for a couple photos, then this. I have troubleshot by:

• restarting the program
• turning off hardware acceleration and restarting
• restarting the computer
• trying to dublicate the layer and try editing on the new layer
• try a new file

Please advise as to how this problem can be resolved, as I need the tool for a professional project.

[Dan C]

Hi @Child of Olympus,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

Could you please provide a screenshot of the full Affinity app, with this tool selected and your layers studio visible? This should help me to assist further.

Many thanks in advance

[Child of Olympus]

I continued our convo in the email replies.

[melonbird]

Never mind.

Edited December 19, 2023 by melonbird

[mypointofview]

2 hours ago, melonbird said:

Never mind.

I could read your old post and must agree to what you said!

In my experience on my M1 Mac blur only works well on smaller jpgs. As soon as I use 50 mpx images the changes between the steps are barely noticeable. It would take hours to see a difference.

 

Have you found a solution? What made you edit your post to "never mind"?

 

PS: working with the newest Affinity suite!

[PaulSW]

Hi. I've had constant trouble with the blur tool as well, but noting advice from 2019 on this thread, I have disabled the Hardware acceleration and it now seems to work. But over 4 years ago there was an anticipation this would be solved and it clearly doesn't seem to have been.

I am running an M2 16Gb using MacOs Sonoma 14.1. and Affinity 2.4.0

The problem seemed to happen on any photo I tried to work with, but in this latest case it is a .jpg 17.9MP - 9.7Mb

I would appreciate news when this bug is resolved. Thanks

[MEB]

Hi @PaulSW,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thanks you for your feedback. I've bumped/updated our report/log to bring this up to dev's attention.
The Serif Info Bot should post here to inform you when a fix is available.

[GreenSWOhio]

Same issue here - blurr toll doesn't work. I sometimes see the checkerboard background.

Problem 1st reported in 2019. Still not fixed.

 

[mypointofview]

6 hours ago, GreenSWOhio said:

Same issue here - blurr toll doesn't work. I sometimes see the checkerboard background.

Problem 1st reported in 2019. Still not fixed.

 

 

I can confirm this!

I'm on the latest version of AP.

I can confirm that it works fine on low resolution JPGs on high resolution JPGs/Tiffs it's hardly visible.

I have to repeat the blurr stroke at least a hundred times to see only a slight difference... 🙄

 

really really weird°

[walt.farrell]

Have you tried disabling Metal or OpenCL in the application's Settings, Performance, and then restarting the application?

[mypointofview]

@walt.farrell thanks a lot! That was the solution, or maybe just part of it!

 

I deactivated Hardware Acceleration, but left it for Display on Metal.

Tried use only integrated GPU, which slowed down everything unbearably.

Tried all possible setting on Display and left it at Metal.

 

NOW the blur tool works, as it should.

Attached my settings panel (Mac)

 

Hope that helps!

[mypointofview]

One addition to my previous post: working on a R5 highness file, having opacity and flow set to 100%, the blur brush tool is still very "timid" even at the level.

At 20% probably not even noticeable...

 

That should definitely be improved! 🙏🏻

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Blur Tool: blur effect quite subtle if Metal compute acceleration is enabled" (REF: AF-2268) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.5.0.2375".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Affinity Info Bot to notify us.