The addition of the glow tools is pretty interesting. Glow (or its equivalent) isn’t something I use a lot, but creating the effect has been a bit involved in ACR. (Basically I created an action that duplicates the image layer and then does a bunch of stuff to it that I then fine tune manually and often end up masking in various ways.)
But that new glow feature in ACR is going to make my old approach redundant in virtually all cases.
After running the installer and launching the updated ADR to check on the glow tool (which worked fine), the AI Denoise feature was not working. In magnified views there was a ton of noise in raw files, and turning AI Denoise on/off and/or adjusting the amount (unlabeled) fader beneath the AI Denoise checkbox had no effect.
The noise actually looked worse than I would normally see in a file with no NR applied.
The solution was to reboot the computer. (Mac OS running most recent system updates.) After that the Denoise feature worked correctly again.
Recently I have encountered at least one other situation where I had to reboot the computer after doing an Adobe update to eliminate odd little issues sort of like this.
I think the same happened to me (Windows). Instead of taking 20-30 secs to complete Denoise it took a minute to get to about 1/2 way and was only glacially increasing the %. I was not interested in waiting so I shut down and restarted Windows and Denoise is back to normal. I still need to update my MacBook so I'll just do that and reboot.
On occasion I have been using an informal version of some of the new glow tools with negative values of Dehaze and Clarity. I expect the new tool will give me more flexibility. Aside from local adjustments I'll probably see about making some presets for my more common use.
mcbroomf wrote:
I think the same happened to me (Windows). Instead of taking 20-30 secs to complete Denoise it took a minute to get to about 1/2 way and was only glacially increasing the %. I was not interested in waiting so I shut down and restarted Windows and Denoise is back to normal. I still need to update my MacBook so I'll just do that and reboot.
On occasion I have been using an informal version of some of the new glow tools with negative values of Dehaze and Clarity. I expect the new tool will give me more flexibility. Aside from local adjustments I'll probably see about making some presets for my more common use....Show more →
Yeah, the “negative dehaze” and “negative clarity” tricks seem to be overlooked by a lot of folks. I think it is because we think of those tools as being there to _increase_ clarity and “increase dehaze” (aka reduce haze) and it never occurs to people that there are situations when the tools can be usefully applied to soften images as well.
BTW, I ran into another oddball glitch with this update. I had edited a file somewhat heavily in ACR right before updating. I reopened it after finishing that process, and clicking the button at the lower left that should open it as a smart object in Photoshop no longer worked. It looked like ACR was starting to do the process, but the file never opened in Photoshop.
I went through the restart routine again and even signed out of and back into the Creative Cloud. Still no go. Then I thought to open a different raw file by double clicking it in Bridge to open in ACR, then hitting that export button again. It worked for this “virgin” raw file.
I went back to my edited file in ACR and chose the option that sets everything back to import defaults… and now it would open in PS.
I do all my Raw edits in LRC, so I rarely use ACR natively. I use Photoshop when I need to use layers that are not available in LRC, eg a lightpainting with many image layers. No problem opening ACR within a Smart Object imported to Photoshop from LRC.
gdanmitchell wrote:
Yeah, the “negative dehaze” and “negative clarity” tricks seem to be overlooked by a lot of folks. I think it is because we think of those tools as being there to _increase_ clarity and “increase dehaze” (aka reduce haze) and it never occurs to people that there are situations when the tools can be usefully applied to soften images as well.
BTW, I ran into another oddball glitch with this update. I had edited a file somewhat heavily in ACR right before updating. I reopened it after finishing that process, and clicking the button at the lower left that should open it as a smart object in Photoshop no longer worked. It looked like ACR was starting to do the process, but the file never opened in Photoshop.
I went through the restart routine again and even signed out of and back into the Creative Cloud. Still no go. Then I thought to open a different raw file by double clicking it in Bridge to open in ACR, then hitting that export button again. It worked for this “virgin” raw file.
I went back to my edited file in ACR and chose the option that sets everything back to import defaults… and now it would open in PS.
Interesting that you have so much issue with this. It might be time to a fresh install of the software you use. Inordinately time consuming process though. Have you tried running Clean my Mac? That might be an easy starting solution. It’s not perfect, but I suspect you have a clog in your system somewhere🤷🏼
Jack Flesher wrote:
Interesting that you have so much issue with this. It might be time to a fresh install of the software you use. Inordinately time consuming process though. Have you tried running Clean my Mac? That might be an easy starting solution. It’s not perfect, but I suspect you have a clog in your system somewhere🤷🏼
Well… hard to say what is going on.
I did have to do a complete new install of Photoshop a couple of months ago. I’d happily not go through that again.
Two more observations:
1. I earlier reported an issue with opening a raw file into Photoshop as a smart object. I thought that it was a one-off resulting from some timing issues between initial editing, installing the ACR update, and trying to open the file to PS… and that it was resolved by restarting the system. But last night it happened again with a different file. I had done some extensive initial editing in ACR and then clicked the button to open as a smart object in PS… and it failed. Again. (Not the same file as before.) I checked and unedited ACR raw files would open as usual, but the edited file would not. I eventually resolved it by, IIRC, choosing a menu option somewhere to open in PS instead of clicking the button at the bottom right.
2. Something else odd has been happening on my computer and on my wife’s (same relatively current Macs) with installers for printer software and perhaps Adobe software. We’ve both run printer installers — Canon for her, Epson for me — and ended up not seeing the installed files… only to see that they were installed on backup drives rather than the main system drives. (I double-checked that the OS sees the correct volume as the startup drive.) Something similar tough not identical seems to be happening with Adobe installers — I’m ending up with the new updates installed in the correct location (in their folders in the applications folder on the system drive) but then finding other older versions apparently hiding out in odd places on backup drives. Still working to track this one down.
My Mac experience is pretty extensive, and I haven’t see issues quite like these before. Still digging, as they say…
