P: Exporting photo with brush mask and overlapping red-eye correction fails with "unknown error"

[John R Ellis]

Exporting a photo with a brush mask and overlapping red-eye correction fails with "unknown error" when Use GPU For Export is enabled.  

Tested on LR 12.1 with Mac OS  12.6.1, 12.6.2, and Mac OS 13.1 on two different machines.

To reproduce:

1. Import the attached JPEG.

2. Enable the option Settings > Performance > Use GPU For Export.

3. Export the photo to the desktop as a JPEG (see the attached screenshot for precise export settings).

4. Observe the following "unknown error":

The photo has a brush mask applied around the right eye socket, with Whites = 22 and Noise = 18, and a red-eye correction on the right eye.  

See here for the original report:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/error-using-the-publishing-service-in-l...

[MartinMal]

While publishing photos (a single one or a collection set as well) LrC always produce the following error message:

readMetadata: Error when Lightroom
attemps to process a catalog master
image file: "dng_error_file_not_found"
(look at the part after "dng_error" for
a clue to the problem)

Later apears a window with a list of not rendered photos preceded of this message:

Einige Exportvorgänge wurden nicht gerendert.
Unbekannte Fehler. Dieses Foto wurde nicht gerendert.
or in english
Some export operations were not performed
An unknown error occurred. This photo was not rendered.

All the listed photos are exist on the HD as DNG-Files. They appear in the LrC catalog with all their metadata attributes.
They also could without any problems be exported to HD by using the same parameters as in the Publishing Service.

Consequently the Publishing Service of LrC is not usable.

The same problem already occurred in LrC 11.5 so I was forced to downgrade LrC to version 11.4.

Lightroom Classic-Version: 12.0.1 [ 202210260744-9e008017 ]
OS: Windows 10 - Home Premium Edition, version: 10.0.19044

[GoldingD]

Please post a screenshot, library module, grid view, with folders panel shown. Looking to see if their are ? and ! marks, thinking missing photos

see:

https://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

[MartinMal]

This error currently affects any photo in any of my collections.
None of this photos are marked with "?" or "!" in the library module. They were neither moved nor missing.
All the photos are stored on an internal HD. It is still possible to develop this photos and also to export
them to any location.

[John R Ellis]

"Graphics processor information:
DirectX: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (31.0.15.1694)
Initial status: GPU is supported by default for image processing
User Preference: GPU enabled for export"

In Preferences > Performance, try unchecking the option Use GPU For Export.

Also, your graphics driver (31.0.15.1694, 516.94)) is about four months old.  LR is constantly tripping over bugs in graphics drivers, so update to the latest (526.98) by going directly to Nvidia.com.  Try the Studio driver first, rather than the Game Ready Driver (Studio drivers are supposedly better tested with creative apps.)

[MartinMal]

Hi John, it has no effect whether GPU support is enabled or even completely disabled: the error still occurs.
Installing the latest version of the NVIDIA Studio Driver (31.0.15.2698) has no effect as well.

[John R Ellis]

Which publishing service are you using?

[MartinMal]

I use the disk publishing service only. The target disk is an internal HD,
so the same one as the disk used for storing the source photos as DNG
files. There are enough free space on this disk.

[John R Ellis]

I found only one other relevant instance of this error, which you also found:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/ls-classic-10-4-error-using-publishing-...

Another suggestion: Rarely, LR has been known to corrupt export presets and definitions of publish services. Try creating a new instance of the Hard Drive publish service (right-click Hard Drive under Publish Services and do Create Another Publish Service).  Does that new instance also experience errors?

[MartinMal]

I found only one other relevant instance of this error, which you also found:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/ls-classic-10-4-error-using-publishing-...

Another suggestion: ...Try creating a new instance of the Hard Drive publish service...

@John R Ellis

Unfortunately, a new instance doesn't behave any better.
But I found out that the bugs were caused by two plugins, Timothy Arme's "LR/Mogrify 2" and Jeffrey Friedl's “Metadata Wrangler” Export Filter, which I've been using for years with no problems. After disabling both and adjusting the publish services accordingly, the errors no longer occur. Thank you for your support!

[John R Ellis]

"“Metadata Wrangler” Export Filter"

Please report the problem to Friedl. He's generally very responsive and actively maintains his plugins.

""LR/Mogrify 2" 

Unfortunately, there's no point in reporting this to the LR/Mogrify2's author -- lots of reports in the forums that he hasn't responded in years.

[GoldingD]

You made two changes, deactivated two plugins, and things now work. But, we're both of those changes required, or just one?

If you put one back, probably the metadata wrangler, does the problem return?

[MartinMal]

Both plugins, even individually, cause "Unknown errors" with a list of not
rendered photos. However, the message "readMetadata: Error when Lightroom
attempts to process a catalog master image file:
"dng_error_file_not_found"" only comes with the Metadata Wrangler.
The regular export with the "Export" function works perfectly with both
plugins.

[MartinMal]

I just found that the "Export as before" feature gives the same errors as described.

[camner2]

I have just run into the same issue running MacOS 12.6.2 & LR 12.1.  I do have Metadata Wrangler installed.  I got the same error whether I publish to SmugMug (using SmugMug's plugin) or publish to my hard drive Friedl's Collection Publisher plugin.  Interestingly, some of the photos are published successfully, others are not. Exactly the same photos fail when publishing to each Publish Service.  At this point I can't see what the successful or unsuccessful photos have in common.  It seems random (but I am guessing it's not!). 

I have used these two public services with Metadata Wrangler installed for many years without a problem. 

[camner2]

I am not persuaded that Metadata Wrangler is the culprit. I disabled it in the plug-in manager, and the same files still failed to get published, only this time the error message is different; it simply says "there was an unknown error." 

[camner2]

Digging into this further, the 18 images that were successfully published were the first 18 in the publish collection. The remaining 44 images failed to publish. The culprit seemed to be the 19th image. When I removed it from the publish collection, all of the remaining photos published successfully, both with Collection Publisher and with the SmugMug publish plugin.  Now I will have to see if I can puzzle out why Lightroom choked on publishing a particular photo.

[camner2]

I have spent (way too many!) hours trying to track down exactly what steps lead to this error. I can consistently create this error by doing the following: 

1. Start with a photo that needs red eye correction
2. Create an eye sclera mask and apply an exposure increase, a noise increase, and a whites increase (the order does not seem to matter)
3. Apply redeye correction
4. Attempt to publish or export

The export or publish will fail with the error noted by the OP. 

I have tried this with a number of different images (taken with different cameras) that require redeye correction, and the steps consistently lead to the error.

* For the curious, this phenomenon is independent of whether I draw a pentagram and hop five times on my left foot prior to taking the steps above.

[John R Ellis]

I'm can replicate this on my Mac, but only with Preferences > Performance > Use Graphics Processor enabled.  I'll file a precise reproducible bug report on this.   

Can you please do the LR menu command Help > System Info and copy/paste the entire contents here so we can see exactly which versions of hardware and software LR thinks you're running. Unless this issue can be easily reproduced by Adobe, it will get thrown into the bit bucket.

[John R Ellis]

Here is the bug report:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/exporting-photo-with-brush-mask-and-ove...

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Adding bug number

[Andreas22dev]

Any export with the Jeffrey plugin enabled runs into the render error exactly as described above. As soon as the plugins are deactivated, everything works again. Disabling GPU support doesn't change anything. Error also occurs with simple, unedited images. Please help Adobe!
(Win 11, LR classic 12.1, all plugins up to date)

[John R Ellis]

"the Jeffrey plugin"

He has many plugins -- which one in particular? The error message is generic and has many possible causes, and your problem is likely unrelated to that  of this thread. I recommend you contact Friedl next, since the problem could be caused by the plug-in itself.

[Andreas22dev]

These two:

Metadata Wrangler — Control what metadata is/isn't included during any export
Run Any Command — Custom process each image during an export

Of course I had already sent Jeffry the technical logs but didn't reply (which matches the experience of other users).

I suspect that Adobe has changed something in the plugin APIs in recent versions, but I can't prove it.

[camner2]

What is curious is that the behavior people are reporting does not seem perfectly consistent. A couple of people have claimed (and I have no reason to doubt them) that disabling some Freidl plug-ins fixes their issue. But the steps I described above in an earlier post caused the export problem even if all of the Friedl plug-ins are disabled.

[John R Ellis]

I think it's best to start a new thread for the problems with export plugins. "Unknown error" encompasses all internal programming errors, and it's almost certainly the case that the error triggered by rendering a brush mask overlapping a red-eye correction is different from that caused by running two plugins after LR has rendered the image.