When I open a photo in AI Sharpen the progress indicator freezes at 2% for several seconds, more that 30. It has stopped working completely when applying a mask or saving photos on several instances.
Dell XPS 8910
Windows 10, latest upgrades
32 gig memory
Intel i7 Processor
NVIDIA 1050 Ti w/4GB
Which version is that?
Please open Sharpen AI, go to Help-> Graphics info and press Copy then post the info here.
The freeze at 2% sounds like it is loading the model. The initial load usually takes a while as it has to unpack and load all the AI data.
If you are crashing, do you have steps to reproduce it? Does it only happen on certain images, or do all images crash when doing certain steps? You can also try changing your processing mode in the advanced section of preferences and see if this alleviates some crashing.
I don’t know about mfw1948-84871, but I have a similar problem. Yeah, I get a freeze for a while at 1 or 2% (I’m running v2.1.5, but previous versions did it too). Unpacking would explain the pause. However, there is another issue that follows: When the progress counter gets to 100%, the plugin closes, but doesn’t return control to the host program (in my case PaintShop Pro 2020). The only solution is to kill the PaintShop process, and lose all the work I’ve been doing. If I don’t kill the process, it will hang indefinitely. This happens maybe 30% of the time.
Additionally, since upgrading to 2.1.5, I’m repeatedly told there’s an upgrade available, but the “upgrade” is 2.1.0. What gives?
The upgrade is v2.1.7 … See
With PSP are you calling it as an external editor with Sharpen AI not open at the time?
If I understand you correctly, then yes. I open Sharpen AI as a plugin from PSP.
Your answer that the upgrade is 2.1.7 is followed by a block showing 2.1.0. That’s just what happens if you click the release notes link too.
EDIT: I see now that the link points to 2.1.7, though it still says 2.1.0.
It’s the 2.1.x series, the release notes in the first post show 2.1.7 as the last dot release.
It would be less confusing (and I have been confused by this) if Topaz marks the latest release download link as 2.1.x instead of 2.1.0 .
I feel we’ve strayed off this topic a little, as we were actually discussing crashes. I have the update installed and the problem persists as it did with previous versions. It seems to be sufficient cause for failure that I should happen to want to do something other than watch the progress counter while the image is being processed. As soon as Sharpen AI is no longer the focus (if you’ll pardon the expression), it fails to return control to PSP.
You still haven’t posted the details from Graphics info, and also post a screenshot of the preferences with Advanced showing.
If you are using GPU make sure there is enough memory available, advanced preferences notes:
No, but in my defence, it wasn’t me that you asked. 
Since you’re interested, my graphics info looks like this:
Application & Version: Topaz Sharpen AI Version 2.1.7
Operating System: Windows 10 (10.0)
Graphics Hardware: GeForce 940MX/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL Driver: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 376.54
CPU RAM: 8060 MB
Video RAM: 2048 MB
Preview Limit: 4335 Pixels
And the preferences look like this:
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Update your GPU drivers from the NVIDIA website, they are way out of date as the current version is 456.38 and that should help.
Well, that was weird. Nvidia always said there were no updates available for my card, but I found the version you described and it installed just fine. I’ll let you know if it helps.
Thanks a lot for the suggestion.
I now have:
OpenGL Driver: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 456.38
So… I’ve been playing with this since yesterday and I can tell you the following:
Processing is actually much slower than it was.
Preview updates are much faster than they were.
So far, the program hasn’t once crashed or failed to return control to PSP.
I’d say the increased processing time is a small price to pay given that I can tinker with the settings and get rapid previews before choosing to process the image, and that the thing actually works in the end. So, all in all, a good move. Thanks for the advice.