Black screen

I just downloaded and installed Photo AI current production (1.3). MS Win 10. The installation had no issues. When I open Photo AI, the entire application screen (not the entire MS Win desktop) is black. Just all black.

Steps to reproduce issue:

  1. Step 1
  2. Step 2
  3. Step 3

Topaz Photo AI [v1.x.x] on [Windows/Mac]

Please run DxDiag, save the result and upload here.

DxDiag.txt (63.9 KB)

You will note faults with Luminar Neo. My primary workflow application is DxO Photolab Elite complete current run on a machine with more CPUs. I have used various components of the Topaz suite in the past, primarily Gigapixel to salvage old NEFs from the Nikon D2/D300 epoch. Current primary body is a Nikon Z9.

Thanks for sending your system profile. It looks like you are running a virtual machine. Virtual machines are not officially supported for Topaz Photo AI. You will need either:

  1. A computer with a graphics card that is directly connected to the computer.
  2. In rare cases, updating the graphics driver on the virtual machine can get it working.

I have licensed (owned) most of the Topaz suite: Sharpen AI, Gigapixel AI, DeNoise AI, and Video AI, along with Photo AI. Video AI is a possible alternative to DaVinci Resolve, my current primary video post application. All of these work without a “black screen” except for Photo AI on the exact same platform and environment that you state is “not supported”. My primary still workflow is DxO PhotoLab Elite complete current and that works perfectly in the environment I use. I use almost all of my workflow on this environment, and it all works except for Photo AI (with one caveat, having nothing to do with being under a hypervisor, and is related to use of image/video files and directories/folders on the MS Win Z: drive that is a network shared folder from my own non-Internet SAN – despite the fact that MS Win File Explorer can properly “see” these Z: files, some but not all applications require files/folders to be on the local C: drive and crash using Z:). Are you stating that in future updates, the rest of the Topaz AI suite also will fail? I require both a hypervisor and a SAN under my standard (desired) workflow. My primary still workflow is DxO PhotoLab Elite complete current and that works perfectly in the environment I use. I use the other still Topaz suite workflow applications to clean up certain JPEGs for specific clients and purposes, and was looking at Photo AI as a possible alternative to DxO under specific situations. I also use Gigapixel for old images from my D2/D300 archives and current Olympus TG6 images when I need more pixels and the end product does not preclude synthetic (added) pixels not in the original image file (NEF from the epoch, first processed to JPEG in other workflow, or TG6 ORF also processed to JPEG in other workflow).

attached is my current dxdiag.exe output.
DxDiag.txt (63.9 KB)

The use of a SAN, in MS Win 10 running under a hypervisor, that appears under MS Win 10 as Z:, a shared folder, does work in Sharpen AI in terms of accessing, processing, and saving JPEG output. This may have been fixed in a later update; Sharpen AI always worked if I copied the image file to the local C: and then copied the result to Z: . It definitely is not a black screen as I successfully took the output from DxO PhotoLab 6 Elite (JPEG from lossless compressed NEF) and sharpened the image that is now submitted to a client. Thus, as far as I can tell in what is purported to be an unsupported environment, Sharpen AI works.

We have seen some cases where our apps have run in situations like this, but most of the time our apps do not work (or do not work consistently) since we don’t perform any testing in these environments. Since we hadn’t intended for these environments to be used when we built our apps, I’m afraid we won’t be able to troubleshoot here.

If the Topaz suite was not designed to work under a standard MS Windows 10 environment, including MS Win 10 (a supervisor) running under a hypervisor (either type 1 or type 2), then the fact that the Topaz suite will NOT work under a hypervisor (virtual machine) should be clearly stated in the introductory details – not deeply buried. Until Topaz Photo AI was introduced, ALL of the Topaz suite ran correctly except for using the Z: drive; the latest production update of Sharpen AI does correctly use the Z: drive (as I used Sharpen AI to correct some JPEG output files from DxO Photolab elite complete current that started as Z9 lossless compressed NEF image files – with the final JPEGs from Sharpen AI accepted by the client). I do NOT use beta releases for ANY production work (for clients). (Sharpen AI still does not consistently do a great job on most feathers and some other similar “biological” features.) I assume that all of the Topaz suite, not just Photo AI, will soon fail in a hypervisor environment. I also am assuming that if Topaz for internal development and application source file storage is not using a hypervisor environment or a very stateful hardened firewall, much (all?) of the Topaz code is for sale on the dark/black criminal web and possibly being incorporated into applications from vendors beyond the reach of copyright laws (such as in the PRC).

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