LR Denoise no longer working

[TamsinH]

Others have also had issues with Lightroom's Denoise not working but mine appears to be possibly slightly different. OK - I am up to date with Lightroom, I have plenty of storage on my Mac, I always shoot in RAW and the Denoise feature was working perfectly up until a few weeks ago. In fact a few things have been going a bit wrong with LR lately including having to close down LR and go in again because I sporadically lose "information" on my photos). Not sure if relevant but I also have the Topaz DeNoise plug-in. I have had this for a while and it's never been an issue before. In the past I have always been able to choose which Denoise to use either Topaz or LR depending upon which looked best. The Topaz denoise function still works by the way.

Now if I press the Denoise button in LR I am taken to the usual Enhance Preview screen and whilst it looks like the image is loading properly it then greys out and if I press "enhance", I get a new window called Enhance Errors which states that denoise was not applied and am given the file name (the DNG file) BUT with what looks like the green "D" logo for Topaz Denoise at the start of the file name. So I am wondering if somehow, LR and Denoise have confused each other.

Be grateful for any help to get things sorted again. TIA.

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from using the community bugs">

[Aleke]

Hi @TamsinH! Welcome to the community!

I'm sorry to hear that denoise isn't working correctly for you. Could you share a screenshot of the error message? Also, could you test if the issue persists if you temporarily disable Topaz Denoise?

Thanks so much!

Alek

[TamsinH]

Hi there - thanks for coming back to me. This is a bit of a weird one. Before I load up everything you ask for I can add a bit more information.  When I click on finder for each photo - every time, as I mentioned above, the file name is prefixed with the Topaz D symbol and interestingly also shows  to open with Topaz Denoise rather than "Preview" as default. Having changed it back to Preview, and trying again in LR to use Denoise, the same thing is happening ie the enhance feature doesn't work and the file names are still showing up with the Topaz D at the start. I have no idea how or why the file names have been altered but it appears, from my random selection that every photo in my catalog has the same D symbol in front of the photo file names. My husband aslso has LR and the symbol in front of his photo file names is the Preview App.. He too has Topaz Denoise by the way!

Thanks

Tamsin

[Jao vdL]

If the image at any time was run through topaz Denoise, you won't be able to use the built in denoise on it anymore. It sounds like the dng files you are working with might have been run through topaz at some point in time. Make sure you are working with an original raw not one that was run through denoise already. 

[TamsinH]

Thanks but my whole catalogue has the same thing….and I can assure you that not every one of my 74,000 files have been run through Topaz. For some reason which I cannot explain, every photo has the same “D” at the start of the file name 🤷‍:female_sign:

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[Jao vdL]

That d at the start of the file name likely means they were indeed run through topaz. Share a link to an affected dng in this thread for us to check. You do this by uploading the image to iCloud Drive, Dropbox, creative cloud drive, or similar file sharing service and sharing the public link here. The forum does not allow posting of dng/raw files (they are too big typically).

by the way, since you are talking about file names and opening in preview, it sounds like you are using Lightroom classic, not the cloud based Lightroom that this forum is about. 

[TamsinH]

Thanks. I’ll do as you ask in a bit, likely via Dropbox. The crazy thing is…this situation has only occurred in the past week or so and certainly nothing that I instigated. In the past I have able to choose LR denoise or Topaz denoise and am well aware that the Topaz Tif files are not recognised by LR. I have no idea why all my files now have been recategorised with the “D” sign now but they are all DNG…most of which have never been edited by me let alone denoised!

Oh and as to the forum, my original post was moved here I think by an admin as I originally posted incorrectly to a “bugs” community🤷‍:female_sign:

Cheers.

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[Jim Wilde]

The "D" in front of the file name in Finder probably means that Topaz Denoise has been set as the default file association for that file type. This sort of things happens all the time when we install various programs, some of which silently change the default association. On my system I have a variety of default apps for different raw file extensions, e.g. CR2's default is Topaz Sharpen, CR3 is Photoshop, DNG is Preview, etc., none of them set by me. It's of no consequence when working within Lightroom Classic, it only matters if you attempt to open the file outside LrC by double-clicking in Finder, in which case the assigned default program will open.

[TamsinH]

Right ok here is the entire sequence of events, bearing in mind that I have changed nothing but as you say, it could be as a result of something being loaded though I have no idea what because other than the various updates for LR, nothing else has been loaded onto this machine. Anyways:

1. I take photos and I upload to LR as I have always done and in the same way. I press nothing new.

2. I look at photos and if I think I need to I will use either the Topaz or LR denoise, whichever gives the best result. Up until recently this all worked well.

3. Now - if I choose one of my DNG files and press the LR Denoise function I get the usual dialogue box which appears to load the photo but then it greys out and if I press the enhance button I get another error box which gives me the file name.DNG but with a prefix of the green Topaz "D' logo.

4. When I click on the arrow it takes me to finder where all the files are shown with a "D" and if I get the info for the file, it showed Open with: "Topaz Denoise AI" clicked as the default option. I have no idea why by the way.

5. I then changed the above to Open with:  Preview as default for this and all documents like this one.

6. I assumed that this might fix the problem but I have just loaded up a new photo but whilst the default setting is now to open with Preview, the same old thing happens if I press the LR denoise function. I am still getting the error message and the file still has the Topaz "D" logo as a prefix.

7. I have yet to disable Topaz and tbh not sure how I go about that but what confuses me is the fact that this was all working perfectly well just a short while ago 😞

8. As an aside, I have also noticed relatively recently that the information in the top left of the screen for each photo has been missing on occasion, often just after I import, where I need to close LR down and reopen for it to appear again. Not sure if this may be related to the current issues I am facing with Denoise.

9. I will do various print screens to demonstrate what I am saying.

Thanks for everyone's help pitching in.

[Jao vdL]

Ah. Yeah forget about anything you do in finder or what it shows on the icon, that has nothing to do with your issue. As Jim says, that is just the file type association in finder. It is annoying but Lightroom (classic clearly) does not care about any of that. What is going on here likely has more to do with your hardware and software. What version of Lightroom are you running? What computer hardware and what operating system version? Easiest is to post a result of "system info" from the help menu.

[TamsinH]

 

[TamsinH]

For anyone wanting to help, here’s the link to a Dropbox folder with an example DNG raw file together with my screen shots which I have annotated from 1 to 4 in order of the actions I took…. Note on screen 4 the "Open with" option.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/q3n2wfucuzb8e2ocgkowo/AOd3vCr4ixtWNhB9M4iG7Xs?rlkey=xchwzctdighdejklt...

Cheers.

Tamsin

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[Jao vdL]

I have a similar M1 Max machine, same version of Classic but I run Mac OS 15.4.1 . This file denoises just fine on my machine both in Classic and in Lightroom Cloudy. Perhaps you need to update your mac os version. There were several GPU related fixes in the recent updates. 

P.S. for screenshots one trick is to just type screenshot in the upper right hand corner looking glass icon. It will give you a built in screenshot utility that saves screenshots to your desktop. Very handy.

[TamsinH]

Ok thanks on all counts. I’ll update today and let you know the outcome 🙏

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[TamsinH]

Ok I just updated my system and tried the same denoise sequence again. Sadly I get the same results ie it doesn’t work. LR denoise keeps telling me in the dialogue box that there was an unknown error, just as before. I’m stumped.

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[TamsinH]

I'm still struggling. I still cannot use LR denoise. My LR and system are completely up to date. 

[Jao vdL]

Topaz can save its output as a dng. This is the default behavior if you open through the menu item. Is the d you are talking about actually in the filename or us it in the icon in finder?

[TamsinH]

….and just to add…every file may have the Topaz “D” as a prefix but they are all DNG files.

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[GhostGirl]

Hi!  So, I was running into this issue as well, and it turned out -  after the last update my prefernces got mixed up..!

Make sure that your Performance settings are set to the best performance and using your graphics card for Display, Image Processing, and Export.  Then restart the program.

Hope this helps (: