Image Artifacts in Lr Library Module

[jeffreyh96105683]

After the Oct. Lightroom Update I noticed that one of my pictures (a .dng) has a series of artifacts at the left-hand edge in the library module (see arrow on picture). Noticed that this occurs also when opening this same picture directly in ACR in Photoshop, only the artifact colors displayed are different.

When switching to the develop module, the artifacts disappear. These artifacts also do not appear in Microsoft Photo or Luminar.

Unfortunately I imported this photo only after the Oct. update, so I have no way of knowing if it would have occurred on the Lr version prior to update.

Can someone shed some light on what causes this? It appears to be related to ACR, since Photoshop ACR is also affected.

More info: It now appears that the artifacts do appear in the Develop module as well. They seem to change - before they appeared as a solid black strip, but now I'm seeing some colored lines as well. I have made sure that the clipping indicator is off. One other piece of information: When I turn clipping on, the blue clipping indicators appear in the areas where the artifact colors do not appear.

[JohanElzenga]

It looks like this image is corrupted. Do you have a backup copy?

If not, it's easy to simply crop out this small part.

[jeffreyh96105683]

I thought the same thing - there are two similar pictures, both of which produce the artifact. Before posting I also tried opening this picture in Luminar 2018 - it opens there with no artifact. Same with the Power Media player that is pre-installed on the desktop. In both cases I zoomed in to make sure there was no artifact on the left hand side. Since its is literally no cost, I'll try uninstalling ACR and reinstalling. Sometimes an upgrade has issues. Otherwise let's see if anyone else sees this. And true, it can be cropped out easily. Thanks for the reply!

[JohanElzenga]

If it happens in ACR and in the Lightroom Develop module, then it's a waste of time to uninstall and reinstall ACR. That is not the cause. Lightroom uses the same algorithms, but it does not use ACR. I think it is corruption, and that the ACR algorithms are just a little less forgiving than the ones that Luminar uses.

[AxelMatt]

It's only an idea, but I think it's worth to try.

Please uncheck "use graphics processor" under Preferences> Performance menu in Lightroom

Refer this article for for more details: Adobe Lightroom GPU Troubleshooting and FAQ

[jeffreyh96105683]

Thanks for the idea. Tried unchecking "use graphics processor" - same result in this case.

I'll try some other things as I get the chance in an attempt to narrow this down. If I find anything I'll report back.

[jeffreyh96105683]

I've done some more tests on various images and found:

This issue happens with raw .dng images from the rear camera of two different Samsung Galaxy s7 smartphones.

Sometimes the photo displays fine in Library. Then I go to Develop and it has the issue. Then I go back to Library and the artifacts appear.

I copied a test raw file directly from the smartphone to computer and imported directly into Lightroom. This was to make sure that some intermediate step was not causing some kind of corruption. The image displayed the artifacts.

Can't say for sure, but I've edited enough of these images with the previous Lr version that I would have seen it if the issue had been on the previous version.

There are a large number of images that I've seen that now exhibit this problem. I don't consider it impossible, but I'm having a problem with the file corruption theory. I'm unsure what an ACP is, but if not an Adobe employee, I'd really appreciate having someone on staff there weigh in. And if there's anyone else that experiences artifacts with .dng's from Galaxy S7's in Lightroom, please also reply.

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

I'm unsure what an ACP is, but if not an Adobe employee, I'd really appreciate having someone on staff there weigh in. And if there's anyone else that experiences artifacts with .dng's from Galaxy S7's in Lightroom, please also reply.

ACP = Adobe Certified Professional; not an employee.

I suggest you post a bug report in the official Adobe feedback forum:

Lightroom Classic CC | Photoshop Family Customer Community

Which forum should I post to? (Feedback vs Forums)

Product developers read everything posted there and sometimes reply. But they're rarely seen in this forum and most likely won't see your issue.  (The low-level Adobe technical-support employees you see here generally aren't skilled enough to help on an issue like this.)

Upload a couple of problem pics to Dropbox or similar and include the sharing link, and give a step-by-step recipe for reproducing the problem. Adobe usually doesn't pay any attention to bug reports unless they can easily reproduce the problem.

[jeffreyh96105683]

Thanks, John. Yes, I'll do that and thanks for the tips on posting there. Unfortunately I didn't have a good, complete handle of what was going on when I started this thread, since the problem causes bound-able but somewhat random behavior. Now I do know how to reproduce step-by-step.

The problem is, the only workaround I see is to use another tool to convert several hundred of these pictures into tif and reimport the tif into Lr. I'll lose the adjustments I made to some of them. A friend of mine warned me just yesterday at our digital editing meetup, "don't trust any Adobe format; always convert to tif".

[jeffreyh96105683]

Adobe has logged this as a bug.

[matthias.quail]

I've been experiencing the same problem. Lots of DNG files from Samsung Galaxy S7 were fine and looked up to certain version of Adobe Lightroom. Then in last 2 versions problems started to pop up.

First, some images looked purple (this applies to Develop module in latest version as well) and now every single DNG file from that camera presents this weird corruption at the bottom of the image. I'm unable to edit those files.

[dj_paige]

This is caused by a hardware malfunction somewhere on your phone or on your computer, or in the transfer between the phone and computer. You need to diagnose the problem by using different hardware and different methods of transfer until you can isolate the problem.

[matthias.quail]

Negative.

All of the sudden, all my 2 years of photos from Samsung S7 (and only photos from Samsung S7) started to look purple in random manner?

If I open the same folders in different software, everything is ok.

[dj_paige]

Be specific — what different software?

Many other software opens and displays the JPG preview embedded in the DNG which is often uncorrupted even when the actual DNG image is corrupted.

[matthias.quail]

Fast Stone Image Viewer (viewed at 100% zoom with full DNG decoding, nut using embedded JPEG) and Adobe Photoshop CC 2018. In Photoshop the glitch appears for first 1-2 seconds after loading the DNG into Camera RAW. Then everything is ok.

Besides, could you explain how 2 years of my photos sroted on a dual parity NAS corrupted after upgrading Lightroom version?

[johnrellis]

The edge artifacts observed by matthias.quail were also observed by jeffreyh96105683 and confirmed by Adobe in the bug report Jeffrey filed:  Lightroom/Camera Raw: Artifacts at Edges of Galaxy S7 raw/DNG Files | Photoshop Family Customer Comm...

While it's certainly possible Matthias is experiencing the edge artifacts and a purple haze caused by hardware failure, it seems more likely to me that the purple haze is associated with the edge-artifact bug.

[matthias.quail]

I read the bug thread and I can confirm I experience exactly the same behaviour as described.

Regarding hardware failure, that woud be 1/million chance that only S7 files and only in LR look corrupted... and somehow they fix themselves when opened in different apps aaah, one more thing, the same issues are experienced when working on my other computer (notebook).

So thanks everyone and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the fix to arrive quickly. Too bad I cannot use LR CC anymore to develop those DNGs...

[jeffreyh96105683]

I agree with John. Please go over to the bug report I filed and "me too" it. You may also want to add the image with the purple haze over there.

I noticed that the image with purple haze also has the edge artifact under the purple haze. The photo with the clouds looks like a classic case of the problem I filed.

I personally did not see the purple haze in my s7 raw photos. At this point though none of us have any idea of what is going on with the rendering for s7 DNG's in Lr, so we cannot rule out the purple haze as being just another symptom of the same problem - that's why I consider it important to add this image to the problem report as a possible additional symptom.

See John's post for the link to the problem report.

[matthias.quail]

I've just updated the bug thread. I can upload more samples if needed or record a screencast. Thanks!

[johnrellis]

Please add your feedback to the bug report filed by jeffreyh96105683 in the official Adobe feedback forum: Lightroom/Camera Raw: Artifacts at Edges of Galaxy S7 raw/DNG Files | Photoshop Family Customer Comm... . Adobe product developers don't read this forum and won't see your useful information.