Lightroom Denoise adding random blocks and artifacts to images

[Casga_]

Can anyone help me or shed some light why Lightroom Classic is adding these weird blocks and artifacts to my pictures once run through Denoise. There were no edits applied prior to denoise. These are on other parts of the photo as well.

Lightoom is upto date along with all drivers. My system shouldn't be the issue but here's the details
DELL XPS 17
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU
Driver 531.79
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz
32 GB RAM

Plenty of storage space

I only have very basic knowledge of Lightroom so it might be an obvious setting somewhere, but if someone can help I'd be very grateful.

Images are .arw files

[FNT-Photo]

I'm still interested to know if only Dell XPS 17 9710 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 laptop GPUs are affected by the problem or if other systems/graphics cards are affected as well. Therefore, it would be nice if someone with other computers and other graphics cards having the same problems would report here.

[Casga_]

I'm guessing this is going to be just a dell 9710, rtx 3060 issue. 

I've searched for quite a while and can't find any thing like this anywhere else. 

I just had a BSOD while running denoise and the error was video tdr failure. I can't remember seeing this error before. Maybe I have, but it's been a while and I've seen a lot of crashes and lockups so might've forgotten. 

But does this error mean that the gpu is being over worked/ over heated? Surely running denoise shouldn't be an issue for this system. 

[Ian Lyons]

In the past, companies such as Dell have used graphics cards that use vendor specific drivers. Not having used Windows in more than 2 decades, I've no idea if that's still the case, but still worth checking the Dell support site.

[FNT-Photo]

I have had contact with Dell support before regarding another GPU issue. Dell support also recommends checking directly with the hardware manufacturers for the latest drivers.

[Casga_]

Yeah I did install the specific one from dell for my machine but no joy. I haven't checked if they have an updated one yet as I've been away for a few weeks but I doubt anything's changed. 

I should've just got a MBP when I got this machine but familiarity won out and I stuck with windows and a machine I thought would be able to handle most things for a little while. 

[FNT-Photo]

I have just installed the Studio driver version 536.67 updated today and since then I have edited many images with Denoise without any problems. Let's see how long it goes well this time. I saw that you can optimize LrC in GeForce Experience. But I haven't tried that yet for now, because it just works again.

[Casga_]

I updated and tried again today. The first one came out ok and then everyone after that added big blocks and little artifacts to the image in random places each time.

[aarone4928937]

I'm having the same problem as well. AI Denise is creating artifacts in my photos as well.

[johnrellis]

@aarone4928937, most problems with LR's AI commands are caused by older, buggy graphics drivers. Try updating your graphics driver by going directly to the manufacturer's web site:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/troubleshoot-gpu.html#solution-4

If that doesn't help, please copy/paste here the entire contents of the LR menu command Help > System Info -- that will let us see exactly which versions of hardware and software LR thinks you're running.

[Ernie33618949mmoo]

I have Dell XPS 15 9570 with Intel i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz 16 GB RAM and the denoise works correctly. But it takes average 2 minutes per image. The XPS 17 is very fast average 10 seconds per image but unfortunately with the weird color block on every denoised images. 

[FNT-Photo]

Unfortunately, it is extremely frustrating. In the meantime I was able to denoise some images without these coloured boxes (mainly bright green or magenta, but also other colours) appearing in the DNG. But lately the artefacts appear in every denoised image or LrC even crashes. The most frustrating thing is that Adobe simply won't comment on it. Although I write an error report almost every time LrC crashes due to the error, Adobe has never contacted me and never provided a solution. I actually thought that Adobe cares about its customers, fixes bugs and responds to new feature requests. But apart from constantly launching surveys, not much seems to be happening in this respect. Actually, Adobe should just look in the forum to find out where there are problems and what customers really would like to see.

[Kevin31379336805d]

Don't know whether you ever resolved this issue, but for posterity sake...I had this same issue (in addition, if I tried to denoise large batches of images, it would only make it through a dozen or so before I got an error message related to the gpu). What I ended up doing was changing a setting in preferences. So, I went to "edit," (this is on a pc, not a mac), "preferences," chose the "performance" tab, and then where it says, "use graphics processor:" I switched it from "auto" to "custom" and then made sure that all of the boxes were checked. This seems to (so far) have solved the issue for me. I just ran a batch of 45 images, and then another batch of 98 images to test it out, and not only did I not have any of the issues that I previously had, but it also completed the task somewhat faster than it was doing previously. My hypothesis about this is that when it is set to auto, part of the workflow for the system is to make a decision for each image as to whether to use the cpu or gpu, and sometimes that leads to these errors as it is trying to make this decision while the image is being processed. Therefore, if you take the decision out of the equation, and just make your settings so that the gpu is being used, it solves the issue. I don't know if that is correct, but so far it seems to have worked.

[Kevin31379336805d]

Also, to clarify, my machine is a lenovo legion 5i with a Nvidia GeForce 4070. The issue with the image artifacts was that there would be large squares that appeared in the finished image or very small white spots. In addition, as stated, if I did a large batch, the process would terminate part way through indicating a gpu error.

[Casga_]

Thanks for your response. I have tried what you suggested previously but unfortunately it didn't help me.

From what I can find out it looks like ARW files from a Sony a7c are not supported by adobe for denoise, so no matter what I do it's not going to work unless I either upgrade my camera or adobe gets round to officially supporting it.

[johnrellis]

"it looks like ARW files from a Sony a7c are not supported by adobe for denoise"

Do you have a link to where you read that? I just downloaded a sample Sony a7c raw from dpreview.com:

https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries/6941396376/sony-a7c-sample-gallery/7761041633

and Denoise worked correctly on it.

[Casga_]

Sorry I don't have the link and can't remember the name of the thread as it was quite a while ago. But I'm pretty certain (I think) it was a thread in the adobe community somewhere.

[johnrellis]

A quick search doesn't show me any references to particular issues with the a7c and Denoise, and given that sample a7c raws from dpreview.com Denoise ok, that suggests either an issue with your particular installation or with any camera-raw settings you may have set.  Are you using one of Sony's raw compression options (L, M, S, C)?

[Carliewheeler]

Mine has just started doing the same thing today 

did you end up being able to fix yours? 

[johnrellis]

@Carliewheeler, there are a number of different possible causes, most of which are fixable. To troubleshoot:

1. Post a full-resolution screenshot (not a phone pic) of what the entire photo with artifacts looks like in Develop.

2. What's the precise camera model?

3. 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 and important LR options that are set.

[Carliewheeler]

Thank you

its been working perfectly until today and i havent changed anthing other than updates  ( i think my creative cloud updated overnight)

I am using a  EOS R6 CANON

Lightroom version: 7.2 x64 [ 20240214-0910-27200e9 ] (Feb 14 2024)
NGL Version: 1.36.0.9
WF Version: 6.2 3d4e7aa
VF Version: 1.0.135.7
HIL Version: 40409
CAI Version: adobe_c2pa/0.7.6 c2pa-rs/0.25.2

Operating system: macOS
OS Version: macOS 14.4.1 (23E224)
Application architecture: x64
Computer model: iMac20,1 / Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz
Logical processor count: 16
Processor speed: 3.8 GHz
Built-in memory: 8,192.0 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 8,192.0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 724.0 MB (8.8%)
Peak memory used by Lightroom: 1,613.0 MB
Memory cache size: 942.7 MB

Internal Camera Raw version: 16.2 [ 1763 ]
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 9
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 639MB / 4095MB (15%)

Display: 5120x2880

Graphics Processor Info: Metal: AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT - 8 GB
Graphics Processor Detail: loaded: Yes, supported: Yes, compute: Yes, init: I4_GPU4, hard: success, soft: success, al: Yes, dl: No
OS Media Capability: true

Application Folder: /Applications/Adobe Lightroom CC
Settings Folder: /Users/carliewheeler/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom CC
Library Folder: /Users/carliewheeler/Pictures/Lightroom Library.lrlibrary

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Likely this: https://community.adobe.com/t5/camera-raw-bugs/p-denoise-large-artifacts-with-amd-graphics-card/idi-... 
instead of this thread. 

[robcatphoto]

My turn... I'll need help if its a AMD Radeon 5500 update to firmware...  Any and all help appreciated.

Reprot info here:  seeing these blocks today...

Lightroom Classic version: 13.2 [ 202402141005-bf1aeb84 ]
License: Creative Cloud
Language setting: en-US
Operating system: Mac OS 14
Version: 14.4.1 [23E224]
Application architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 16
Processor speed: 3.8GHz
SqLite Version: 3.36.0
Built-in memory: 40,960.0 MB
Dedicated GPU memory used by Lightroom: 7,461.2MB / 8,176.0MB (91%)
Real memory available to Lightroom: 40,960.0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 8,438.3 MB (20.6%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 56,301.4 MB
Memory cache size: 291.3MB
Internal Camera Raw version: 16.2 [ 1763 ]
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 1528MB / 20479MB (7%)
Camera Raw real memory: 1541MB / 40960MB (3%)

Cache1:
Preview1- RAM:22.0MB, VRAM:0.0MB, _ATR4800.CR2
Preview2- RAM:22.0MB, VRAM:0.0MB, _ATR4801.CR2
Preview3- RAM:22.0MB, VRAM:0.0MB, _ATR4797-Enhanced-NR.dng
NT- RAM:66.0MB, VRAM:0.0MB, Combined:66.0MB

Cache2:
final1- RAM:248.0MB, VRAM:0.0MB, _ATR4801.CR2
final2- RAM:257.0MB, VRAM:270.0MB, _ATR4800.CR2
final3- RAM:248.0MB, VRAM:0.0MB, _ATR4797-Enhanced-NR.dng
T- RAM:753.0MB, VRAM:270.0MB, Combined:1,023.0MB

Cache3:
m:291.3MB, n:112.8MB

U-main: 100.0MB

Standard Preview Size: 2048 pixels
Displays: 1) 5120x2880

Graphics Processor Info:
Metal: AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT
Init State: GPU for Export supported by default
User Preference: Auto

Application folder: /Applications/Adobe Lightroom Classic
Library Path: /Users/robertcatania/Pictures/Lightroom/Lightroom Catalog-v13.lrcat
Settings Folder: /Users/robertcatania/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom

Installed Plugins:
1) AdobeStock
2) Aperture/iPhoto Importer Plug-in
3) Flickr
4) Nikon Tether Plugin

Config.lua flags: None

[johnrellis]

@Carliewheeler: 

OS Version: macOS 14.4.1 (23E224)
Graphics Processor Info: Metal: AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT - 8 GB

@robcatphoto:

Operating system: Mac OS 14
Version: 14.4.1 [23E224]
Metal: AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT

It appears that Mac OS 14.4.1 includes a buggy graphics driver for the AMD 5300 and 5500 series graphics processors. Many people have reported other symptoms with that combination:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-gpu-develop-edit-view-amp-export-artifacts-a...

But the same bad driver might be causing your symptoms as well. 

One workaround for those other users is restarting LR. Does that (at least temporarily) cause Denoise to run correctly?

Another workaround for those users is to set Preferences > Performance > Use Graphics Processor to Off. Unfortunately, that won't help you, because Adobe inexplicably refuses to allow users to disable LR's use of the GPU for AI commands like Denoise.