Digital Light & Color

After I have installed the latest update PWP 64 v7.0.13 on my PC, I have encountered the following strange behavior with the Sharpen transformation:
Any attempt to open the Sharpen transformation causes the PWP to freeze before its dialog and preview window completely display. Only way out is to kill the PWP. This seems to be linked to its preview window because when the Default Preview in Preferences is set to Manual, the Sharpen Dialog opens with no problem.

After that I have sometimes managed to successfully display the Sharpen preview window by clicking the Preview button or checking the Auto check box but other times not. I have not found so far any pattern as when it freezes and when it does not. But it is evident that the crash happens the moment the preview window is about to refresh, which is easy to see when bilateral sharpen is used: while the transformation is processing the image, the preview remains gray, as soon as the processing completes, the PWP freezes.

Another thing is that on my PC the black slider of the Halo limit control is missing, which might provide a clue to the problem, see the attachment. Also, the remaining white slider is always completely on the left, while its normal default position is on the right.
By the way, the new feature description says that: "The new Halo control is available in Unsharp Mask, Advanced Sharpen and Raw Sharpen.", but it is available in all Sharpen methods.

Advanced Sharpen and Raw Sharpen transformations run without problems.

The PC configuration: Windows 7 64bit SP1, Intel Core Quad CPU Q8300 2.5 GHz, RAM 4GB. At the time of testing no other applications were running together with the PWP.

The complete uninstall and reinstall of PWP does not help. I do not thing the problem is in CPU or RAM, as just to make sure I eventually installed the 32bit version of PWP 7.0.13 on an old PC with XP professional, Intel Pentium CPU 2.8 GHz, RAM 2.5 GB, where the Sharpen transformation runs without problem.


David

After some more investigation into installation locations, I have found, that there were two folders in c:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\

1.\Digital Light & Color\
containing a subfolder named after some previous PWP 7.0. update but empty
and
2.\Digital Light and Color\
containing the subfolder \Picture Window\ with all its own subfolders and files of the new installed version

After I removed the first folder \Digital Light & Color\ with its empty subfolder, I got no improvement. So I uninstalled the PWP 7.0.13, removed the other folder \Digital Light and Color\ with all its contents and reinstalled the PWP 7.0.13, which created the completely new folder \Digital Light and Color\ with all its contents. This step was successful and there is no more problem with Sharpen transformation nor its sliders.

It looks to me that the first folder \Digital Light & Color\ was a relic from previous versions, that was not removed by later versions, and quite probable cause of the corrupt installation of the latest PWP version 7.0.13.

If someone encounters a similar problem on Windows 7, a look into c:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\ may be a way to find a solution to the problem.

David

davidh...

(1) Thank you for the additional research/solution... ...Kiril will surely find it helpful among all the complexities of addressing the range of Windows OS's from XP to 8.1 Update, 32 or 64 bit, as well as varied processors/multi-cores, etc....

(2) A suggested Advanced Sharpen-Sharpen tab default... ...for increasing medium detail contrasts...

MaciejT and I have been privileged to preview the addition of Halo Limit controls to the Sharpen transforms and Advanced Sharpen-Sharpen... ...The manual suggests as a guide that Halo Limits range 5 to 10%... ...my own investigations for Advanced Sharpen-Sharpen Halo Limit and Thresholds are illustrated below: The indicated Halo Limit seems to also be generic for the Sharpen transforms and Raw Dialog-Sharpen as well, for my Canon EOS-350D image files... ...I will also somtimes use the Major Edge Overshoot Amount Mask suggested here: http://www.dl-c.com/board/viewtopic.php ... 1020#p4814 to further control Light major edge Halos.

...hope you find this a useful starting point for your own investigations...

...den...

Den,

Thank you for the suggested Halo Limit values.

I would like to point out that you can make these settings your default in all three dialogs -- Sharpen, Advanced Sharpen and the Raw Dialog. To save settings as a default, set all the values to your intended defaults and then select Save As Default under the Options button.

In Raw, the function is actually called Save As Camera Default, letting you make separate default settings for each camera model.

Kiril

Den, thank you for the Halo Limit suggestions and the link. It is very useful to see to the logic hidden behind this new functionality.
The Halo Limit is a nice fine tuning functionality so both the developers and contributors to the idea deserve special thanks.

David