P: Random white images when exporting or publishing

[DaveInMelton]

I have just installed the 2015 CC edition of Light Room but am having problems publishing and exporting photographs. When either exporting to hard disk or publishing to FlickR, I'm getting 5 or 6 random, all white images.

[ssprengel]

The picture I'm using is under my C:\Users\Steve\Pictures folder so it won't work as is on your computer, or if the problem is that I edited it with Notepad and resaved it with a different encoding. It is a simple preset. I just added a graphic and saved the preset so whatever else was the watermark defaults. Presumably you could make a preset on your computer and see if it looks the same as mine, other than the path to the photo, in a text editor. I didn't have any other watermark presets on my computer.

[ssprengel]

Here is the original contents of my watermark preset w/o the change in graphic filename, where it is a little strange that their is both text and graphic specifications. I assume the text is the default "Simple Watermark" that I modified to have a graphic and saved as a new preset:

This is copy/pasted from Notepad:

s = {
id = "30E87C29-E66E-4D8D-A7E1-6030734D1913",
internalName = "yamd_test",
title = "yamd_test",
type = "WatermarkingPreset",
value = {
items = {
{
anchor = "bottomleft",
horizontalPadding = 0,
imagePath = "C:\\Users\\Steve\\Pictures\\2M\\you_are_my_dream_____by_shakuchan1995-d6m92rc.jpg",
kind = "image",
opacity = 1,
orientation = "AB",
sizeKind = "relative",
sizeRelativeAmount = 0.1,
text = "© Steve Sprengel",
textColorBlue = 1,
textColorGreen = 1,
textColorRed = 1,
textFontName = "Myriad Web Pro-Regular",
textHorizontalAlignment = "left",
textShadowAngle = 270,
textShadowEnabled = true,
textShadowOffset = 0.1,
textShadowOpacity = 0.8,
textShadowRadius = 0.2,
textVerticalAlignment = "top",
verticalPadding = 0,
},
},
},
version = 0,
}

Here is a version copy/pasted from WordPad, where a difference is the extra accented-A preceding the copyright symbol. I assume this is a difference between Notepad's UTF-8 and whatever Wordpad does with a copyright symbol in whatever character encoding it uses:

s = {
id = "30E87C29-E66E-4D8D-A7E1-6030734D1913",
internalName = "yamd_test",
title = "yamd_test",
type = "WatermarkingPreset",
value = {
items = {
{
anchor = "bottomleft",
horizontalPadding = 0,
imagePath = "C:\\Users\\Steve\\Pictures\\2M\\you_are_my_dream_____by_shakuchan1995-d6m92rc.jpg",
kind = "image",
opacity = 1,
orientation = "AB",
sizeKind = "relative",
sizeRelativeAmount = 0.1,
text = "© Steve Sprengel",
textColorBlue = 1,
textColorGreen = 1,
textColorRed = 1,
textFontName = "Myriad Web Pro-Regular",
textHorizontalAlignment = "left",
textShadowAngle = 270,
textShadowEnabled = true,
textShadowOffset = 0.1,
textShadowOpacity = 0.8,
textShadowRadius = 0.2,
textVerticalAlignment = "top",
verticalPadding = 0,
},
},
},
version = 0,
}

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

For the purposes of the test, I need your original preset- not a modified version. I am capable of restoring the link to the JPEG file in the preset. Can you provide me the actual preset?

[ssprengel]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9...

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Thanks for the updated preset, Steve.

OK - with Steve's export preset, watermark preset and graphic, I just did two exports of 240 JPEG files: One on Windows 7 and one on Windows 8.1. In both cases I got 240 JPEGS with no anomalous White - blank images.

Note: on the Win 7 machine there is no SSD drive and 12 CPU cores on the 8.1 there is only an SSD drive and 4 CPU cores.

So, the bad news is we still do not have a duplicatable failure.

Are any of you running any other applications which may have the folder to which you are exporting tied up temporarily - ie. Via Bridge, Dropbox, Creative Cloud, etc?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I have 8 cores (4 physical, 4 hyperthreaded) and lightroom runs on a SSD. I get about 15% blank images in larger batches.

[Eat My Pixels]

Hi Rikk

Seems really strange that you cannot duplicate the problem with so many of us experiancing it
I have nothing running on my PC when this occurs
sometimes I watermark twice it random fires white blanks only the WM then rerun with a differnt WM over the top and it will fire random again

I can help as much as you want but dont get too techie lol

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I am getting this same exact issue with my PC Running LR CC, but my yield of error is around 15%. I would like large chunks of white images when exporting. It's pretty bad. Interesting enough, I also have LR CC on my iMac and I DO NOT have this issue. May not apply to many of you, but this may only be an issue with the PC version, just a thing to keep in mind and to note. I rather not use my old iMac for LR.

I just recently built my PC and I rather use that for LR. Also I am in the same postition with Andrej Stern, I have 8 Cores (i7-3770K), LR CC runs on SSD (Windows 7) and exports to an internal HDD. I'm exporting from simple CR2 to JPEG with a PNG watermark

[John R Ellis]

A small clarification: The i7-3700K has 4 cores which present 8 logical processors to the operating system via hyper-threading. Logical processors are also called virtual processors by many. Confusingly, Intel refers to these logical/virtual processors as "threads", which has a different meaning in the software world.

[John R Ellis]

A workaround to this bug is to run Lightroom on 1 CPU. Download this Windows batch file:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2...

and put it on your desktop. When you're ready to do your export, exit LR and restart it by double-clicking on the .bat file. Then do the export. The export will go much slower, but the chances of encountering the bug will be greatly reduced.

I did some test exports, each with 1000 JPEGs, with varying numbers of CPUs, and here are the number of blank JPEGs produced:

1 CPU: 0
2 CPUs: 6
4 CPUs: 26
8 CPUs: 29

(This was on a 4-core / 8 logical processor machine.) Give that this bug is almost certainly a concurrent-programming bug, it's still possible that you'll encounter the bug when running with just 1 CPU, but in practice, most such bugs happen very infrequently on 1 CPU.

[John R Ellis]

I've packed up all the files needed to reproduce the bug, including 50 test photos, the export and watermark presets, and step-by-step instructions:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2...

I've noticed in my environment that the bug doesn't seem to happen when the originals are raw files -- it only happens with smaller JPEGs (the originals are about 3 MB, the exported versions about 860 KB).

Race conditions are notoriously difficult to track down. By definition, race conditions are timing dependent, and it is often the case that they can't be reliably reproduced on different machines. But enough different people experience the bug often enough that even if Adobe can't reproduce it on one of their own machines, they should ask to use one or more customers' machines to reproduce and debug. Using the configuration above, the bug happens every time I export the 50 test files.

The folder also includes a Process Monitor trace of the system calls made by LR when doing a buggy export. LR 6.0.1 uses three passes to export a file: The first pass writes it, the second pass rereads it into memory, the third pass writes it again with slightly changed metadata. For a properly exported file, the first pass writes about 858 KB, but for the buggy exported file, it writes only about 145 KB (and thus it appears blank). It's likely an internal buffer containing the exported file is not being properly locked and is getting reused prematurely by another exported file before LR is finished writing it out to disk.

The trace shows that LR was the only process accessing the originals and the exported files. Windows File Explorer and Bridge were not open on the destination folder. I even turned off Windows Indexing, because it would try to read the JPEGs as soon as they were written.

[pols73864050]

im with some that about 15% of my files come out blank/white, and its complete randoms. Ive reexported the same set and it will be different photos that turn out blank than the previous export etc.

[pols73864050]

Ive been dealing with it for close to a month and 2 of my staff photographers are now dealing with it as well.

[geoffdeck]

Reproduced in Lightroom 5.7 with no issue. Is there a possibility this is an issue with the graphics processor acceleration? Maybe specifically with AMD processors since it sounds like this is happening with 8 core processors?

[pols73864050]

Geoff it very well could be as I do have a 8 core and a good deal of people complaining about ti have the same, but I do have 2 staff photographers with the same problem that have quads and another with a Imac which I think is a quad if im not mistaken as well

[DurhamMike]

There is definitely some confusion running around. I'm using an intel i7-3820 with HT. It's got 8 threads and yes it is happening to me. I know I'm not the only one running an intel machine with 8 threads. I'm curious to hear from anyone not using an 8 threaded part (besides the adobe rep not experiencing problems on a 12 and 4 thread parts).

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I have also 8 threads and this problem affects about 15% of my pictures. Extremely annoying.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I mean seriously, what the fck.

This is killing my workflow very effectively.

[John R Ellis]

"Is there a possibility this is an issue with the graphics processor acceleration?"

It's not related to the GPU. LR 6 currently uses the GPU just for the Develop module, not for export. (See https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1828580.)

"Maybe specifically with AMD processors since it sounds like this is happening with 8 core processors?"

No, a number of people, including me, have reported it with Intel processors. I have a 4-core / 8 logical-processor Intel (8 "threads" in Intel's confusing nomenclature).

[John R Ellis]

Try the workaround I posted above: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh.... It's slow, but it should avoid the bug.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Better news everyone.

Using John's Zip file with samples and good quality step-by-step instructions, I was finally able to reproduce on a Win 7 machine this morning - having 3 images fail out of 50.

A bug has now been filed.

Thanks to everyone for providing the diligence, tests and sample files.

[John R Ellis]

Great, thanks.

[rd34sdf]

Thanks a lot!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Yes, Windows 8, exporting to jpeg, using watermark (tried both omg and built in text watermark), exporting 100+ images. Export each individual image they are fine and the thumbnail shows the image.

[pols73864050]

Hurray. Lets hope this gets fixed ASAP as its def killing my workflow also.