Crop causes blank Preview bug?

[thewildrover]

Hi Nik,

I was having a discussion elsewhere (a potential new user for RP), and they’d come up with what looks like a new bug, which is no reproducible on my system here – iPad Pro 2020 (iPadOS 15.4, RawPower 3.4.6 (346.01).

If I apply Crop to an image (it may not always happen though) it saves a blank (blacked out) preview image. It’s visible as blank in the filmstrip, and is blank in Photos too. If you remove the Crop, it’s then fine.

I’m also seeing a weird affect on the previews when opening Raw Power for the first launch, the preview opens as a mess of psychedelic colours, selecting another image and then back again clears this.

Cheers

Andy

[thewildrover]

Just to add to that, this only applies to Raw Power on an iPad, the Desktop version seems to be behaving normally.

Also to confirm that this is when accessing the Photos Library directly from Raw Power.

Cheers.

[Nik Bhatt]

Hi Andy,

I’m not seeing a problem like this on my iPad with the same combination of OS and app. Can you please try restarting the iPad – the psychedelic colors sound like a GPU problem that might be addressed with a reboot of the iPad. Also, does this happen with any kind of image (JPEG or RAW)?

[Nik Bhatt]

Hi Andy,

I’m not seeing a problem like this on my iPad with the same combination of OS and app. Can you please try restarting the iPad – the psychedelic colors sound like a GPU problem that might be addressed with a reboot of the iPad. Also, does this happen with any kind of image (JPEG or RAW)?

[Nik Bhatt]

OK, I am able to reproduce this in some situations. This is an OS bug unfortunately – I am going to look for a workaround and also contact Apple.

[Catas]

I also saw this discussion regarding the crop module, however I did not notice this behavior generating black thumbnails on my iPad Air 3. I did however noticed some weird freezes of cropping module.
Now talking about that “mess of psychedelic colours”, it happens when hitting edit raw image from Photos while RP app is stuck trying to decode that raw. Or maybe RP is trying to show that raw before it is fully downloaded from iCloud.

[Nik Bhatt]

I saw something similar with the Photos app on Mac – it was downloading an image and I entered it. It got stuck and I had to restart the app to get things going again. Perhaps there is an issue in iCloud in that regard.

[thewildrover]

Thank you for fixing the crop bug.

[Nik Bhatt]

No problem. Thanks for reporting it.

[thewildrover]

Hi Nik, and all,

Just to update this. the issue with the psychedelic previews is now a more consistent one. I get this on most photos now when I open them for editing (OK for viewing only). It doesn’t happen on every image, but is random enough to be impossible to work out if there’s any common cause. It happens on any type of file (Raw or JPEG doesn’t matter), and any camera model. They can be unedited originals, or previously edited, it may or may not happen, but does seem to be perhaps 50% of images I view in any album.

It’s actually so bad now that I’ve actually abandoned using Raw Power all together, as it’s impossible to know if I can edit any given image.

It does seem to take a handful of images before it first happens, but once it does, it may, or may not, clear itself, if I keep selecting/reselecting the images. I did originally only get this when first opening an image for editing in a session.

Of course I’ve tried, numerous times, your suggestions you sent me, turning Off/On Metal Support, I’ve rebuilt the catalogue, I’ve repeatedly deleted the app, rebooted and reinstalled it again. I’ve even switched off iCloud Photos and then re-synced it, and even reset the iPad completely. All to no avail.

To clarify, this is on an iPad Pro 12.9″ 512GB, 2020 model, running iPadOS 15 (always updated to latest version). Is this a rare configuration for Raw Power users perhaps? Is there something on this particular setup that’s the cause?

I also run Raw Power on an old iMac 27″ (Late 2013 model, macOS Catalina), and have not seen this issue there. Admittedly, I have recently upgraded it to Monterey using OpenCore Patcher, but it’s running fine, and has made no difference to anything here.

It isn’t apparent in any other apps either, and I use, or have tried, just about everything on the App Store.

Of course I’d love to get to the bottom of this, and be able to use Raw Power again, as I much prefer the way it integrates into the Photos library over anything else out there.

Best regards

Andy

[Nik Bhatt]

Wow, Andy. I’m really sorry that this problem has gotten so bad you can’t use the app any more. I have not seen this problem and I haven’t gotten emails from anyone else about it. I’m completely mystified. If I figure it out, or get other people with the issue (so I can figure it out), I will contact you. Until then, I certainly understand your need to move to other apps until this can be fixed.

[thewildrover]

Thanks Nik,

It’s a real shame, as I really like using Raw Power otherwise, and I much prefer how it handles non-destructive editing files so much better than anything else (Pixelmator Photo, for example, can create huge sidecar files, into the 10x original kind of scale). Of course there are other features that are good too, along with its general capabilities for editing a photo.

As it is, I have just switched to using Photos itself for the bulk of my editing, and find it’s not really doing a bad job. The others I always had available there, but used them for different purposes. Most annoying is that not one of them has all the tools one might need when editing on an iPad – Photos is the only app with Red-Eye repair, Pixelmator is the only one with a Repair tool, and Raw Power is the only one with a proper non-destructive workflow that works with a Photos library.

I’m guessing there’s just something screwy going on with rendering a preview image somewhere, but I can’t see anything on an iPad that might improve it (like you could get a corrupt colour profile in MacOS, and just switch to a new one).

Cheers, and all the best

Andy

[thewildrover]

Hi Nik,

I’m sorry, I thought I’d posted an update to this – at least I did type something, and it hasn’t appeared here for some reason.

However, for some reason, Raw Power seems to have started working without the issues now. I’ve been editing a few album’s worth of images now, and haven’t seen a single scrambled image during editing. Very weird.

Can’t be sure when it fixed itself, but I occasionally test a few images just to see if the problem persists. So far so good at the moment.

Only a few thoughts and guesses. Could it have simply been an unknown OS bug, that’s got fixed during recent updates (15.6.0 or 15.6.1 perhaps? It was after 15.6.0 I started testing). Could it have been something in Raw Power undetected, maybe accidentally cured in an update? Or how about a rogue app installed on my iPad? I do occasionally cull old apps, or apps I deem not useful at any time. I did have FastestVPN installed (although not active, no idea why I even put that on, as I never intended to use it on the iPad), and have recently deleted it, for example.

Cheers

Andy.

[thewildrover]

As you were, it started again after a few albums of editing 😒

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