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

[johnrellis]

@Casga_ , see this article about how to disable the integrated GPU:

https://www.cgdirector.com/how-to-disable-integrated-graphics-igpu/#:~:text=Once%20you've%20opened%2... 

I agree that it's a long shot, since LR didn't see any GPU when you booted into safe mode and you still got the error. But easy and worth it to try.

[Casga_]

So I thought I'd start completely fresh, so I did a fresh install of windows and updated the driver to the latest studio driver, installed LR and disabled the integrated graphics from the device menu. Unfortunately the issue is still present. Although denoise is super quick to process, LR with the Intel gpu disabled was running exceptionally slow. Just zooming in develope mode would take about 5 to 10 seconds. I've attached the latest exported photo just to show what it's doing. Although it's more of the same really

[defaultwekyvt8fqi8x]

I have a similar spec Laptop and also have the issue, enhanced denoise is nearly useless due to artefact blocks. It's not just your machine and likely a bug somewhere!

[johnrellis]

@defaultwekyvt8fqi8x, you're issue may or may not have the same cause as @Casga_. 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.

[Casga_]

I'm glad in a way that it's not only me. It's not the drivers as I tried all of them going back a little while. I have done the help chat on adobes page on many occasions and everyone I chatted to didn't resolve anything. I think it was about the seventh or eighth person I spoke to who just said it's a bug and will be fixed in the next update. But I believe there's been an update since and it's still not resolved. It did seem like a bit of bs really but hey.

the amount of reports I've sent when it's crashed is unbelievable but no contact from them to help. Do they actually look at the crash logs you send?

Anyway, I hope you have more luck than me in finding a fix 

[johnrellis]

"I think it was about the seventh or eighth person I spoke to who just said it's a bug and will be fixed in the next update."

Unfortunately, Adobe technical support is unreliable and will often say things just to close out a call. What they told you may or may not be true.  The Bugs section of this forum is the most authoritative place to find acknowledged bugs.

[Casga_]

If I remember correctly I did originally post this in bugs but it got moved

[FNT-Photo]

Is your computer also an XPS 17 9710 with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 laptop GPU?

[CumberLinda]

Has anyone suggested disabling the LogiOptions plugin? Use File > Plugin Manager. That plugin has caused many problems in the past for Lightroom users.

[Casga_]

Yes I did try that already as someone said that plug-in can cause issues. No change in the result though

[FNT-Photo]

I have exactly the same issues with my XPS 17 9710 (with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU).

Even after a complete fresh installation of the computer there was no improvement.

But after installing the latest Nvidia Studio driver (version 536.40 from 06/29/2023) the problems were solved for about a week. I was able to edit about 60 images with different settings of Denoise without any artifacts and crashes, both individually and as batch processing.

I was relieved to find that it was apparently not hardware damage but driver issues or settings that were to blame for the problems.

Unfortunately, since yesterday, the old problems are reappearing with almost every usage of Denoise.
Batch editing multiple images with Denoise always crashes Lightroom Classic.
The artifacts (colored boxes) appear in almost every dng generated individually with denoise.

The graphics card driver that seemed to have solved the problem is still the same.

Does anyone have the same problems (see example images from Casga_) with a computer other than the XPS 17 9710 and a graphics card other than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU?

[Ian Lyons]

Do you have Windows auto updates enabled? If so, then it's possible that something was changed. You could try reinstalling the GPU driver

[FNT-Photo]

Yes. I have also thought about reinstalling the same driver. I'm just a little worried that any old files will accumulate and cause problems. Let's see if I try this anyway. Thanks for the idea.

[defaultwekyvt8fqi8x]

I upgraded to Studio Driver 536.40 and now denoise crashes every time...

[Ian Lyons]

In that case, you'll need to work your way back through the earlier drivers to find one that doesn't crash.

[TVarkus]

I might be the first to say that I am having the same issues with Denoise with a brand new AMD Ryzen 7 5800x with an Radeon RX-6600. Pretty much the same issue and started around the same time, so seriously doubt a hardware or driver issue is to blame. The only common denominator Lightroom Classic and the time the issues started. My customer is running the production version of the Radeon drivers vs the gaming ones. One thing that happened at about the same time was that he updated software for one of his lenses, well actually I did. Anyone else do a lens update at or around the same time? Any other add-in or related software? Thanks. Oh yeah, he did mention that he was using a feature which brought his subject into the "foreground" and softened the background of the image. I am not a photographer, I am a technician, so please forgive the descriptions vs actual terminology. Hope it's enough. One thing that I can say for sure that it is a fresh build and that all of the drivers were up to date from the manufacturer's websites and the creative/production drivers not the gaming ones wherever applicable. Adobe please help.

[Ernie33618949mmoo]

Yes, I have the same Dell laptop and Nvidia card. I posted the problems of having these weird block and was referred to this discussion. I am not computer savvy. Since I have another Dell laptop XPS 15 that works correctly with the denoise, so I will wait until LR or Dell resolve the problems (wishful thinking?).

[johnrellis]

@Ernie33618949mmoo, please do the command Help > System Info and copy/paste the entire output here. Most likely you have an out-of-date graphics driver.

[Casga_]

Sadly I think you are right with it being wishful thinking that dell or Adobe are going to fix this. 

Despite all the help here (which is way more help than you'll get from either Dell or Adobe) nothing has fixed this issue for me. 

I've tried every driver update going back quite some time so it's definitely not an outdated driver (for me anyway).

[TVarkus]

This was image was created on a new build AMD Ryzen 7 5800x (8 cores/16 threads)with Radeon RX6600 using the non-gaming version of the graphics drivers. It was originally a HEIC file when sent to me. The problem started around the time of this thread and no upgrades or changes were made to the PC's drivers before the problem started. The system was only weeks old at the time. Being that this is an AMD CPU and GPU which are arguably current models, if not the newest, I think that would rule out may of the driver and/or GPU concerns. I am also quite aware that hardware does fail even when new, but there are no other signs of failure in any other aspect of usage. This is also a very conservatively built machine with no overclocking outside of XMP. Memory is 32GB (2x16GB DDR4 3200). There are few additions and the software was all installed fresh with the build, no carry over from another machine. The conventional air cooling is almost excessive, but no unusual draws and the power supply is more than adaquate for the machine. Please see my last reply for some additional detail and questions. I forgot to include the example image previously. I am an experienced computer technician, though no one is infallible and don't pretend to be any guru, I've been around long enough to see(30years of Professional Hardware/Software troubleshooting) that this is a 90% chance of being a Lightroom Classic bug. Now, this could be due to it's interaction with some other software or limited to some specific image processing steps. We need to get into nitty gritty details to work this out. We can now rule out Intel or NVidia specificity to the error. Age of the hardware and/or drivers appears not to be the issue either. Now how about photo processing steps in these cases? What edits did you make prior to the issue in Lightroom Classic(if any)? Original resolution of images? File type of originals? Camera? Lens? I am not the photographer in this case or a photographer at all, but I will get this information from my client and post it ASAP as well.

[GoldingD]

This was image was created on a new build AMD Ryzen 7 5800x (8 cores/16 threads)with Radeon RX6600 using the non-gaming version of the graphics drivers. It was originally a HEIC file when sent to me.

By @TVarkus

Fairly sure AI Denoise will not work on a HEIC file, only Bayer and Fuji X full (not compressed, not other than normal RAW) files. Not a DNG convert from a non standard RAW. (not a bug, but something Adobe is probably working on, AI Denoise is very new, just barkley not Beta)

Also, absolutely sure LrC handling of non iOS HEIC sucks. (not a bug, just something Adobe has not addressed yet)

[CumberLinda]

I've been using Denoise on the Fuji losslessly compressed raw files from several bodies. I had the pink line problem with the files from the X-T2, but they are gone with the update to LrC 12.4. I agree that Denoise wouldn't be expected to be an option for HEIC files. I certainly can't use it on my HEIC files from the iPhone.

[CumberLinda]

That image seems to have an mask overlay showing, maybe an Object mask. (Note the word Overlay in the Toolbar.) What do you see if you get out of Masking?

[GoldingD]

I think that would rule out may of the driver and/or GPU concerns. 

By @TVarkus

Dang, I overlooked the attached (in the post) image. Yes a mask. But to me it looks like a People Mask gone wrong (rectangle) . This could be a GPU driver issue.

Even a brand spanking new computer can have out of date drivers installed. 

[FNT-Photo]

As already mentioned, Denoise currently only works with the described RAW files. In my case these are Canon RAW files (CR3). Can you clarify if your customer really processed HEIC files with Denoise? It would be good if you would let Denoise process supported RAW files on this machine and report if you get the same artifacts and problems as Casga_ initially posted.

In the week when I had no Denoise problems at all after the mentioned driver update, it didn't matter if and how the images were processed before. Currently it is recommended to treat unprocessed RAWs with Denoise and then do further processing on the resulting dng. But for testing, I also sent processed RAWs through Denoise and even images with masks were no problem at all, I simply updated the masks in the dialog popping up and no artifacts have been seen. So this is not the reason for the reported problems.