P: Bring back the ability of Enhance to run in the background. (LrC)

[adventure_photo]

I just updated to Lightroom Classic 14.4 and although I do like the fact that I can Denoise without creating a DNG file, I still would like the option to select a series of images and menu: Photo>Enhance... to let it create dngs in the background which enables me to work on other images while it;s doing those. Currently, in 14.4 it takes a long time, especially if I have multiple images that I am denoising and I cannot do anything elese while it's doing that process. Is there still a way possible to do it the old previous way of creating a DNG Denoised file? Seems like an oversight when implementing this new way and slows down my whole workflow.

[C.Cella]

@Nigel DCosta

I recommend to file a bug attach files (raw + XMP or DNG ) so the LrC can conduct proper testing on them.

This is not the good thread for the issue you speak about.

.

[Mar�a Jos� R]

Hola.

Antes cuando trabajaba con LRC podía reducir ruido de una imagen pero podía pasar a la siguiente y editarla , con lo que ahorraba mucho tiempo, ahora hasta que no acaba de reducir el ruido en una imagen no me deja pasar a la siguiente. 

¿Hay alguna manera de cambiarlo?

Gracias

[Debbie3]

When Lightroom is processing and syncing my edits in batches it takes forever and I can't do anything else in the program. I am having to rely on other apps for culling and Denoising because they are so much faster or allow me to work on images while it is processing. Am I doing something wrong. Does anyone have a work around or suggestion? I do nighttime sports photography and work with thousands of images a shoot. Please make these improvements so I can maximize my time which is valuable.

[lukedyson]

So has Adobe drawn a line under batch denoise in the background? It might seem like a small deal to those who don't use it often or need it, but for those that work in low-light conditions it's become a critical addition and this has very much become a downgrade.

I downgraded to restore the feature back in June and now have no intentions of trying v15 onwards if this feature isn't re-added in some form. 

A key example for me:

It was fantastic when culling through say a couple of thousand photos and I have 50 selects made I could de-noise those whilst I continued to cull through the rest. So by the end of my culling all but the last few selects were denoised. Rather than then sitting there whilst the system was blocked de-noising for however long I could get straight onto editing.

[DdeGannes]

@lukedyson , I am not a user of Bridge / Camera Raw which are Adobe applications that can do the Dnoise process as an Alternative to the LrC app to Denoise your Raw images. Then you can import into LrC for further processing. Just a thought.

Adobe applicant

[Lars M�rch]

Ditto - And we are many who have screamed about this for months but with no
reaction from Adobe - WHY?

--
Med venlig hilsen / Kind regards

Lars Mørch

[lukedyson]

There's so many posts across the internet of people remaining on 14.3.1 because of this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lightroom/comments/1m89125/is_the_new_denoise_update_driving_anyone_else/

[lukedyson]

@DdeGannes this only complicates the workflow, having to manage files in bridge,  camera raw and lightroom classic to achieve something that used to just work in lightroom. not to mention handling metadata changes having to overwrite one way or the other would negate being able to multi task in the first place

Not to mention the bloated catalog files with the new non DNG denoise setup. Once I've finished an album I move the raws and DNGs to my external hard drives. Now that DNG data lives in the lightroom catalog to clog up my main hard drive!

[DdeGannes]

@lukedyson , to each his own, I prefer the new Denoise process with the LrC edits stored in the Catalog and support data files. No additional DNG file created to store and manage. I use LrC in its default mode so I do not have the option " automatically write metadata to XMP " nor do Save Metadata to the file.

Users can choose the options available that best suit their own preferences.

I have already deleted thousands of DNG files created in the earlier versions of Denoise from my system. I retain my RAW originals that I revisit as needed.

[lukedyson]

@DdeGannes I agree people should, and I could live with these updates if adobe would just remove the blocking part of the process, it's totally unnecessary when the kind of photographer who need to hammer their machines typically have machines powerful enough to do so. 

I'll also note you might not appreciate the latest v15, as after some research, it looks like adobe listened on the catalog size issue and are moving to extra xmp/acr files for large AI meta data away from the catalog again.

[Jao vdL]

Folks. The Adobe engineers explain the issue in the pinned reply:

"Running Denoise in the background while trying to run Reflection Removal (or some other "heavy" ML model, take your pick) in the foreground is very likely to destabilize the machine, especially on Windows, which does not offer GPU/ML model memory protection. When we first introduced Denoise in early 2023, it was by far the most GPU-intensive ML model we had, but there weren't many other models that would "compete" with it. That's not true anymore."

The issue is that their use of ML really ballooned in the time since denoise was introduced and they would need some way of blocking the use of other ML models while it is doing denoise in the background and that would need a fairly large revamp of the GUI of the program. So they simply chose to just block the entire GUI instead of risking these rather bad crashes. You can argue about the decision but the reasoning is right there at the top of the page. This also indicates that we are unlikely to see a return of background denoise until the GUI gets revamped to allow some kind of blocking of certain operations which I only see happening on Lightroom Cloudy to be honest unfortunately.

[DdeGannes]

@Jao vdL , Thanks for that info.

[Generous_view0D45]

Wild to be here making excuses for a multi-million dollar corporation.

they would need some way of blocking the use of other ML models while it is doing denoise in the background

You mean graying out elements? Like they already do with the Denoise slider when Denoise isn't enabled? Like they already do with vignette settings when vignette isn't enabled? Or hiding elements altogether like the b&w mixer which isn't shown if using a b&w profile that isn't Adobe B&W?

[johnrellis]

"adobe listened on the catalog size issue and are moving to extra xmp/acr files for large AI meta data away from the catalog again."

It's more complicated than that. In LR 15, denoise and other computed AI data is still stored in the catalog folder.

In LR 14.5, denoise data was stored in the .lrcat-data file in the catalog folder. If you did Metadata > Save Metadata To File (manually or automatically), the denoise data was also stored in .xmp sidecars and in the .lrcat file (the catalog SQL database).  Adobe acknowledged that the extra copying to the .lrcat file was a bug.

In LR 14.5, denoise data is still stored in the .lrcat-data file in the catalog folder. But when you do Save Metadata to File (manually or automatically), the denoise data is also written to the .acr sidecars. It is no longer written to .xmp sidecars or copied into the .lrcat file in the catalog folder.

So in both LR 14.5 and 15.0, the primary location of the denoise data is in the catalog folder. But if you do Save Metadata To File (manually or automatically), then in 15.0 you get one additional copy of the denoise data in the .acr sidecars, rather than two additional copies in .xmp sidecars and the catalog folder's .lrcat file.

[lukedyson]

@johnrellis wow it's a real mess, I'm glad someone knows where we're up to!

@Generous_view0D45 I agree with your sentiment, but also understand it's a little more complex than greying something out. The problem is adobe are trying to cater to so many people with so many different use cases that many are probably unaware (including the developers) in ways others use and rely on different parts of the software. 

Personally, they could drop the map, book, slideshow, print windows from the app and I wouldn't miss them at all but others would be up in arms. It's just frustrating that there's no space for a meaningful conversation to be had about it

[Generous_view0D45]

Their whole argument boils down to "we can't risk the user doing x, y, or z while Denoise is running", so yeah, it is pretty much as simple as graying out those options while Denoise is running. It's not equivalent at all to completely removing features that some users wouldn't miss. At the end of the day, there was a small incompatibility, and rather than deal with it individually, they slapped a lazy nuclear option on top as a "good enough" fix that isn't actually good or enough. 

[C.Cella]

The issues existed before the Denoise before Super Resolution.

Applying AI settings to a large batch of images has alwys been bad jas always blocked the Ui behind modal dialog(s)

It just got worse with Super Resolution and Denoise.

And really try to apply Reflections Removal at Best Quality in batch, that's literally a minute per photo.

Also there are other problems.

Suppose you are fed up with the long wait and just stop updating AI settings.

That leads to images with missing AI or "invalid downstream of AI edits" and LrC doesn't allow us to find these images via filters or collections (plugins allow to find Missing Ai).

The entire experience around "Update Ai ettings experience in Batch" is inefficiently done.

[Generous_view0D45]

Pretty sure lightroom cloud doesn't have the option to filter for photos that need AI recalculated either, and we don't even get the option of using plug-ins. Pretty ridiculous oversight.

I bet people would be less fed up with waiting for AI settings if they could actually do anything while it was happening.

[C.Cella]

@Generous_view0D45

You are underestimating the problem.

Suppose you're editing ONE image.

You have done all your Ai settings and everything is perfectly up to date for this image.

Then you sync to 100 or even just 10 other images other images.

As a now there is nothing you can do: now you cannot edit or do metadata, you cannot do anything beside wait.

If AI processes was done in background we could do some other operations but we could still not edit the images processed in background else risk breaking the update Ai process.

So it's not like we could do anything we want, we could do something.

Also in order to allow editing in foreground as backgrounds AI runs something needs to be scaled down.

LrC cannot allocate 100% of resources to foreground editing and 100% of resources to background editing.

One of the two will have to be slower.

I think the price for background Ai processes would be that it will take more time to compute the results but at least we could still work to some extent in foreground.

I think most of us would be happy and prefer that to the total UI paralysis we have now.

[Generous_view0D45]

Literally nothing you just said goes against anything I said and nothing I've said is contrary to what you said.

I fail to see how I've underestimated anything.

[C.Cella]

@Generous_view0D45

You said :

"yeah, it is pretty much as simple as graying out those options while Denoise is running."

Is clearely not as simple as that.

[Generous_view0D45]

Are you trolling? 

The reason why denoise completely stops you from doing everything right now is because they don't want it to be run concurrently with a handful of other tools. So they implemented a global block instead of graying out a handful of options while denoise runs. So yes, it is as simple as that.

[C.Cella]

@Generous_view0D45

I am not trolling.

All Ai models block Ui, is not just Enahnce 

The team has not decided all of a sudden to do something different.for Denoise and SuperRes.

Blocking Ui has been the chosen method when runningn Ai models since 2021 (when Ai Masks arrived first)

Some of us (few isolated voices) complained about Ui blocking years ago, long before non destructive Denoise arrived.

Now after years, everyone is seeing the issusse.

Small problems inevitably grow into bigger problems.

Now inevitably the ACR needs to find a solution.

[Incredible_Explorer0544]

The solution satisfying everyone, I think, as discussed in the beginning, would be to optionally enable the previous denoise version, which creates dng files. Every user could decide for himself and nobody would need to stay on an old LC version.

I would immediately and glady return to the previous denoise, but which was better, with that small preview window etc. 

[gareths61360876]

I agree wholeheartedly. The most productive way to Denoise is how it is in 14.3 - and they should return it to the state where you can continue to edit other image files while an image is rendering in Denoise.  Otherwise, this is a major productivity issue for my work flow.  Anything else - the current Lightroom Classic updates - make it almost impossible to meet client deadlines. Freezing the whole app while it denoises an image is nonsense!