It takes over 15 minutes to apply Of Course everything works great in PS7.
Of course it might take little more than 15 minutes to find Lens Blur Filter in PS 7. <G>
I see some peculiar behavior with this filter.
Regardless of the amount of memory allocated to PS Lens Blur filter always puts my Scratch Sizes above PS allocated memory value until filter is applied and done with its calculations.
For example: Im working with the file, ~15 MB/ 8-bit, one Alpha Channel mask.
When I give PS 500 MB of RAM LB filter dialog (before applied) shows Scr: 585M/500M when I bump PS RAM to 900 MB it will show Scr: 945M/900M for the same file with the same filter parameters.
This is causing filter dialog to be little sluggish and unresponsive.
Time it takes to apply the filter seems to be related to the pixel dimensions of the image (understandable) and complexity of the mask in Depth Map source.
Anyone else seeing that?
Other than that this filter (with some creative masking) is simply amazing in simulating (almost) lens-like bokeh.
I am also seeing this filter bringing my system to a stop. I have 4 gigs of ram and this filter will take forever to load. I like the filter when I can use it on a 20 meg file, anything above, forget it.
I wish people would be a little more understanding of somethings. For some reason people feel that things need to be instant. You have to realize that it maybe slow because it is doing very complicated work. If you want a quality effect you can apply it in two seconds. Now that being said 15 minutes sounds like a bit too long unless your working on a large area with a high resolution file.
To answer your question about whether Adobe tested this-, yes, I did. We understand that the filter takes longer than other blur filters, that’s why we put in a faster preview mode. Please understand the following: Lens Blur is not applying a global blur, in fact, in the case of a gradiated mask, it isn’t applying a set blur either, nor is it filling a small preview window. Certain controls and scenarios: such as high level specular highlights, very large images and very complex depth maps will take longer. I’m sure that when you factor the time that it would take to apply a highly realistic lens blur to a re-usable selection, , one at a variable rate, and with a full screen preview, you’ll have a newfound respect for this powerful filter. This said the efficiency of your work flow is important to us, and we’re always working on ways to improve that. Thank you for your input, I hope that you continue to enjoy this cool new filter. I found Martin Evening’s tutorial very useful and a great place to start (aforementioned prior thread), if you have any additional questions regarding the Lens Blur filter, please feel free to ask me (). Thanks, -Bryan
I really, really like what Lens Blur can do, but if you have to experiment on a large file to get the effect just right, you may well spend the better part of an afternoon watching the progress bar (an oxymoron if there ever was one) crawl across the screen.
Now that I think about it, a large file really isn’t required to torture yourself with this filter… something in the 8-10Mb range will do. And heaven help you if you check "more accurate" preview.
I will look into the tutorial(s) that have been mentioned in hope of finding some useful pointers. For the time being, I have a tip of my own: Do not play with sharp instruments (anything which could slit a wrist) while using this filter; you have been warned.
Bryan, thanks for the direct Adobe input. Appreciated.
That Martin Evening tutorial you mention ends on a dialog box and doesn’t show the finished image. Is he still waiting for the filter to finish or did you forget to put page 2 on?
Now I have no complaints about the speed of PSCS and I love most of it but this filter is ludicrously slow. I have a pretty fast machine which eats most of what I throw at it in PS but not this filter. I ran it on a 20Mb file and it took ages to finish. It uses 100% processor and my machine was heating the room by the time it finished. I would say that it is unusable in its present incarnation except for very small images. This and the slow Filter Gallery are the two things I dislike most about PSCS. Otherwise a great app.
And I had to turn on small fonts to see what’s in the dialog box as in several of the new dialog boxes. Please fix this for those of us with high resolution on who wish to retain the last vestiges of our rapidly fading sight.
Given all my previous (& current) dramas with 2GB DC DDR RAM, 3.0HT & PS, I’m going upset things a bit on this one.
File: RGB image 33.8MB.
Filter settings (Top to bottom, numbers only, no Depth Map): Iris = Hexagon, 10, 79, 83, 1, 26, 0, Distribution = Uniform.
67 seconds to open filter & refresh display (with Preview checked, More Accurate enabled), 43 seconds to update filter & display when changing "Brightness" from 1 to 6.
Execution of filter – nearly instant (less than a second).
Hmmmmmm. Nice to be one of the ones NOT having a problem with something for a change!
Not much of a consolation for you really Fred but you inspired me to have a look on my laptop (2.4G Pentium, 1G RAM). It absolutely flies in comparison to my desktop (Athlon 2800, 1G RAM). Haven’t got time now to quantify but much much much faster will do for now.
Depth Map is what sets this Filter apart from all other blur filters. Try it and Im sure you will enjoy the results along with little extra time (to pour yourself a drink or something) while Lens Blur does its magic. 😉
Nagash,
Andrew do you know where I can find some good tutorials or explanation on how to really get the most out of this filter?
Sorry for the late response, I only just got a chance to check forum messages. Im glad Jonathan provided these links because I havent read any tutorials on this filter yet. Looking forward to reading them myself.
We appreciate you shedding some light on the inner workings of this great tool.
I do understand that Filter this powerful can take little more time to render the results I can appreciate.
Mine doesnt take nearly as long as 15 minutes to execute 15-20 MB file with some complex Depth Map (masking and gradients). Heck it takes much longer to mask and apply gradients then to run filter.
Im still puzzled though with this Scratch sizes/ available PS RAM Status bar display. Why does Lens Blur always want more than I allocated to PS. Regardless of the file size and amount of RAM I allocate to PS.
Is this normal? Something unique to my machine? Nobody else mentioned it when I asked in post #1 so Im not sure.
I also noticed that my CPU usage is showing ~50% (dual AMD) during the filter application so it looks like there is a lot of unused horsepower waiting for something to do.
If you want my full system info please let me know.
I also noticed that my CPU usage is showing ~50% (dual AMD) during the
filter application so it looks like there is a lot of unused "horsepower" waiting for something to do.
Not all filters are amenable to MP. There can be data access order dependencies, incremental intermediate states, and other things which prevent both CPUs from being used, thus the 50% usage in the monitor.
Nagash keeps asking for a patch, as if somehow the complicated math behind a good quality lens blur will suddenly go away. That’s simply not that case, and you’re better off learning to effectively use the preview.
OK, this isn’t exactly quantitative but if anyone is interested I did a speed test with an action on a 20Mb image, with a gradient depth map over about two thirds of the image. Changed default radius, curvature settings, used specular highlights and gaussian noise. The action doesn’t open the dialog which would slow it down.
P4 2.4 1G RAM – 70s
Athlon2800+ 1G RAM – 150s
Compared to 15 minutes, this is fast but it is very slow compared to any of other built-in PS filters I’ve tried which usually take no more than a few seconds even on larger images. The difference in speed between the Athlon and Pentium is surprising.
That is very fast compared to what I’ve experienced. However, not opening the dialog means you are flying blind as far as having any real idea of how the filter would affect the image.
I agree. The previews take ages and that is with fast previews on. Most of my images are in the 50 Mb range which would greatly increase the times anyway. The only way I would use this filter would be to work on the large image first, creating the basic channels for depth map, resample a copy down to 1-2 Mb and experiment with that, then use the same settings on the large image. Not sure how well this would transfer from small to large but it would give a reasonable approximation I’m sure.
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