Denoise AI takes 10 minutes to render

[lucieneb30222720]

I was so excited to update ACR, but denoise AI is unusable for me. I'm running a Windows 11 with 64 GB RAM, 2 solid state drives with 1 TB each, one of them empty, and my GPU is NVIDIA GTX 1060 with 8GB memory. ACR is set to use GPU. PS and Bridge run fast, but the new feature, Denoise AI takes 10 minutes to render. I thought it was a mistake when the display said 10 minutes, but it's real. Ten minutes is unusable, not to mention that the result, after waiting 10 minutes was poorer than Topaz denoise, which renders in less than 20 seconds. What's going on? Have I gotten a defective update? I've been reading that other users are running into the same problem, but one user reported a much inferior GPU  than mine. Do I have to buy a server to run ACR denoise? If so, it's really unusable.

[TheDigitalDog]

See correct answers here (skip the other stuff): https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/denoise-takes-several-minutes-to-comple...

It's your GPU. 

[lucieneb30222720]

So I was right. I need a server or something that costs over $10K. Thanks a lot. As I said, the feature is unusable.

[TheDigitalDog]

So I was right. I need a server or something that costs over $10K. Thanks a lot. As I said, the feature is unusable.

By @lucieneb30222720

No, you were not right. 

For $10K, you can buy three MacBook Pro M1s like mine that process a 24.4MP raw in 12 seconds. 

And no, the product isn't unusable as you define your issue. It works; it's too slow for you. Big difference. 

But yes, your old and outdated GPU is why you can wait 10 minutes, not use the new feature(s) or work with a different product. 

For others who may view this, the bottom line: 

Eric Chan says you probably ought to use 8GB for Denoise.

[lucieneb30222720]

No buying anything. That's ridiculous. If you don't know how to optimize the app, just say  "I don't know." Buying a new computer, especially a Mac, which I bought years ago and had nothing but problems? No way. At least I sold that piece of garbage for a good price to an apple worshiper. I read all info about system requirement for ACR and my system is fine according to Adobe. Adobe will fix the new feature or they won't. Object selection was very unstable when just released, then a few weeks later they released a "bugs fixed" update. I don't care if it works or not. The competition has more feasable and better products anyway. The feature will remain unusable for me and many like me. Maybe in future versions it'd be usable. The first Topaz sharpen was increadibly slow, that was about 8 years ago or so. Topaz found a way to make it work for most users (except some Mac users that keep complaining on forums), without discriminating them based on their hardware age, brand or value.

[TheDigitalDog]

You don't have to buy anything. You can use the underpowered hardware you have and wait. 

Or you can use the rest of Adobe Camera Raw without Denoise. And/or use another software product for NR.

You asked a question: Do I have to buy a server to run ACR denoise?

The answer is no, you do not. The question was answered factually here and in the post I provided. 

From Adobe (community forums):
"Currently, the community on community.adobe.com is used as a destination for customers to ask questions and engage in peer-to-peer conversations. IOW, this is a user-to-user support forum. The Adobe Support Community is a place to ask questions, find answers, learn from experts, and share your knowledge. Because we are a community used by people of all ages, cultures, and people at work, we carefully moderate its content".

If you have problems or need answers from other users who volunteer their time to help, do so in a discussion topic and message body, whereby you post specifics (what's the problem or issue, or the question) and provide some information about your operating system, version of the software you're asking about and steps to illustrate your problem.

You did that, you got multiple factual answers. 

If you want Adobe to be viewing what you post, there are two ways based on what you are hoping to report:
If you wish to report what you believe is a bug, you do so by following these guidelines:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/how-do-i-write-a-bug-report/idi-p/12373403

If you wish to provide a feature request, you do so by following these guidelines (then make a request in the product forum):
https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/how-do-i-write-a-feature-request/idi-p/123863...

So, it seems we are done now. 

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Just a personal Data Point:
 

6.5 Years old home-built system with GTX970 - 4 GB Card takes <90 seconds for a Canon 5D Mark IV file. That is a generation older card with 1/2 the ram taking ~ 1/8th the time. 

You may want to start looking at your system/installation as your results seem to be substandard. I would recommend some basic GPU/Driver Troubleshooting to find where your bottleneck might be. 

[lucieneb30222720]

Thank you so much!

I ran the troubleshooter and my time has decreased from 10 minutes (16 to some frames) to 4 minutes. When I upgraded to Windows 11, Photoshop was removed from the list of the fastest GPU and it was using the Intel card instead of NVIDIA. Everything is running better. Denoise time has decreased to 4 minutes, which is a lot, but I now classify it as usable. Thank you so much!

[deejjjaaaa]

Hi All

I noticed a post from Rikk Flohr ( apparently "Adobe Employee") = saying that Adobe's Ai NR takes "6.5 Years old home-built system with GTX970 - 4 GB Card takes <90 seconds for a Canon 5D Mark IV file."

Got me curious - I have a discrete GPU nVidia GTX1070Ti w/8Gb and most recent nVidia drivers ( not gaming versions ) installed.... the card works w/o issues with ACR and DxO PL6.* ( DeepPRIME XD) - however it takes 10-20 times longer than DxO NR for Adobe's NR.... and yet my card is "better" than Rikk Flohr's... so where might be the problem.... I was assuming that Adobe's Ai NR is using Tensor Cores on nVidia GPUs and in the absence of them it will be way-way slower  but the claim from Adobe employee that his way older card ( also w/o tensor cores ) can do AiNR for 30mp raw file in 90sec is ????

I downloaded ISO12800 Canon 5D IV raw from Imaging Resources to RAM disk (not even SSD but to RAM disk)

ACR time = 8 minutes for Ai NR ( for comparision Adobe's enhanced details Ai-Demosaick is 2 seconds )

So what I am missing ?!

The topic with the claim was locked  = https://community.adobe.com/t5/camera-raw-discussions/denoise-ai-takes-10-minutes-to-render/td-p/137...

[D Fosse]

@deejjjaaaa 

Here's what I suspect will be typical timings for an *old* but otherwise decent GPU.

The one in question is a Quadro P2200, 5 GB, released 2019, but originally released as P2000 in 2017.

36 MP - 1:56

43 MP - 2:15

60 MP - 3:12

Other megapixel sizes can be extrapolated from those numbers, as it seems roughly proportional. 30 MP, for instance, should land at about 90 seconds.

This is all around 6 x slower than my other machine with an RTX 3060, which finishes 60 MP in 33 seconds.

[deejjjaaaa]

but that does not answer a question 
Rikk Flohr ( apparently "Adobe Employee" - which matters as he might know more than us ) = saying that Adobe's Ai NR takes "6.5 Years old home-built system with GTX970 - 4 GB Card takes <90 seconds for a Canon 5D Mark IV file." and my card GTX1070Ti (w/ 8Gb) - which is a generation newer ( and class - as "Ti" - better , and twice more memory ) with most recent (non gaming drivers) from nVidia on such raw files clocks 8 minutes with Adobe's Ai-NR ( but 2 seconds with Adobe's Ai-Demosaick - which kind of shows that my GPU works OK otherwise ) and GPU monitor shows that GPU utilization never goes above 12% and mostly stays under 5% during those 8 minutes... so how come his GPU does 5-6 times faster than mine... there is something a·miss on Adobe's side here - may be he can comment which driver version he uses - unless as Adobe employee he happens to use some next non public not yet released version of ACR already with something already fixed

comparing with Quadro cards is not proper

his vs mine are better comparison 
GTX970/4Gb vs GTX1070Ti/8GB
90 sec vs 8 min

definetely something is wrong 

He said "I would recommend some basic GPU/Driver Troubleshooting to find where your bottleneck might be. " - OK, may be can tell the exact version of nVidia drivers he sports and also confirm that he clocked on publicly released ACR/LR version 

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

I always test on public versions.
LrC 12.3
Win 10 21h2

nVidia: 531.68 (4/18/2023)

[deejjjaaaa]

OK

here is mine

i7-9700K CPU
64Gb RAM

nVidia GTX 1070Ti / 8Gb - driver version is 531.61

NVIDIA System Information report created on: 04/27/2023 17:03:35

[Display]
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, 64-bit
DirectX version: 12.0
GPU processor: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
Driver version: 531.61
Driver Type: DCH
Direct3D feature level: 12_1
CUDA Cores: 2432
Core clock: 1607 MHz
Memory data rate: 8.01 Gbps
Memory interface: 256-bit
Memory bandwidth: 256.26 GB/s
Total available graphics memory: 40927 MB
Dedicated video memory: 8192 MB GDDR5
System video memory: 0 MB
Shared system memory: 32735 MB
Video BIOS version: 86.04.85.01.70
IRQ: Not used
Bus: PCI Express x16 Gen3
Device Id: 10DE 1B82 66783842
Part Number: G411 0010

no issues with Adobe's Ai-Demosaick in ACR, DxO PL6 DeepPRIME XD or Capture One - GPU performs in line w/ what other users are reporting... the only exception is Adobe's Ai-NR in ACR

[deejjjaaaa]

you are using a non studio driver - but GeForce Game Ready Driver... a studio, non-gaming driver as of NOW is  531.61 ( which is what I use )  - but then there are no such drivers for GTX 970 anymore ( as it is an old card ) ... I will try to download a  Game Ready Driver of the same version and see if that makes a difference

for the record

All NVIDIA drivers provide full features and application support for top games and creative applications.

If you are a gamer who prioritizes day of launch support for the latest games, patches, and DLCs, choose Game Ready Drivers.

If you are a content creator who prioritizes stability and quality for creative workflows including video editing, animation, photography, graphic design, and livestreaming, choose Studio Drivers.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

"you are using a non studio driver" 

Of course. The GTX 970 does not have a Studio Driver. If it did, I would be using it. 

[deejjjaaaa]

can you please use the same raw file as I use and post your timings for all 3 AI operations = https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-5d-iv/E5D4hSLI012800NR0.CR2.HTM

I installed the same driver - it does not change anything... so curious how is your GTX 970 performs on 2 other AI operations - see my screenshots down below in the thread....  

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

1:27 For Enhance>Denoise to complete on a different test file.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

1 Minute and 20 seconds on the test file you made available.

[deejjjaaaa]

what about 2 other opertions - how fast GTX 970 does Raw Details and Super Resolution... that is what interesting - if GTX970 in your system does it faster than mine 2 sec and 7 sec ....

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

No.
4 and 12 seconds on those two operations. 

[deejjjaaaa]

and that in my opinion shows that Adobe code itself might be a suspect regarding at least some GTX10xx GPU cards ... as expected your OLDER and LESS "POWERFUL" card delivers worse performance ( and that difference looks perfectly fine given just one generation difference and half a stop better tiers of my card - 970 vs 1070 , plain vs Ti  ) in Raw Details and Super Resolution ( 4 sec vs 2 sec, 12 sec vs 7 sec ) BUT THEN your card magically works way faster than mine in DENOISE (same GPU drivers, same publicly released code - albeit you use LR and I am using ACR - but that shall not be the problem ) ?!  

Do you think my configuration is to blame while yours is OK when mine as expected , with time tested code,  in Raw Details and Super Resolution delivers better results and yet with a new, full of bugs (enough examples reported ), code of DENOISE starts to pefrorm incredibly slow ? note that both DxO PL6 ( with GPU intensive DeepPRIME XD NR) and C1 run perfectly fine - so every GPU-using raw conversion related piece of code runs normally - except Adobe's new AI-DENOISE... 

Does Adobe have some kind of test software that can be run on a user's computer and produce some output to be sent back for investigation ?!

[TheDigitalDog]

Do you think my configuration is to blame while yours is OK

Did you read what Rikk wrote?

In the correct answer?

[deejjjaaaa]

I did - and as I noted - my GPU is properly recognized and used by ACR ( including 2 previous time-tested AI tools : Raw Details and Super Resolution - where as expected it delivers properly / proportionally better results vs Rikk's GPU),  by PhotoShop, by C1, by DxO PL6, by FastRawViewer ... what I am curious at the moment if Adobe poseses some test utility that can be run and produce test output saying something - our Raw Details and Super Resolution in ACR can detect and use your GPU, but our Denoise in ACR can not ... I think it is a legit question to ask if the company that develops a software that intensively using GPU has some utility that can test such things , produce some output that can be posted or sent to Adobe to check ... 

see this picture below ? a regular user of ACR is expecting that anything used by ACR like AI Denoise will be using GPU properly if ACR itself reports in this screen that GPU is found and will be used... are such expectations wrong ?! can't Adobe if this is wrong make some information visible in this screen indicating that - dear user : while ACR itself and  AI Raw Details + AI Super Resolution are OK to use your GPU - but AI Denoise is NOT OK ... I presume it is reasonable to expect from a company like Adobe ( with all money and brains to buy ) to present a proper information over there in that screen

[TheDigitalDog]

I did - and as I noted - my GPU is properly recognized and used by ACR ( including 2 previous time-tested AI tools
By @deejjjaaaa

Apparently not.

It greatly helped the OP so there's that important data point some will accept and someone will ignore.

[TheDigitalDog]

 a regular user of ACR is expecting that anything used by ACR like AI Denoise will be using GPU properly if ACR itself reports in this screen that GPU is found and will be used... are such expectations wrong ?! can't Adobe if this is wrong make some information visible in this screen indicating that - dear user : while ACR itself and  AI Raw Details + AI Super Resolution are OK to use your GPU - but AI Denoise is NOT OK ... I presume ...

By @deejjjaaaa

They can, and they do this for 'regular' and all other users and the timing reported is (on this end) very accurate. 

No matter the time, it works. If the time is too long, fix the issue with your hardware! 

No surprises!

Yes, presuming and assuming aren't useful.