Time to support Apple Photos

When Apple stopped development of Aperture three years ago, it was understandable that Topaz stopped supporting Aperture. Apple’s “replacement”, Photos, was more of a toy app then.

In the latest versions n of Apple’s system, High Sierra, Photos gets major enhancements. More and more apps now plug in to Photos. For example, combined with the RAW Power app, serious editing can be done.

It’s time for Topaz to look again at supporting Photos, especially in view of its promises of “free upgrades for life” (I am still using Aperture) and “unlimited support”.

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It is very simple to call Topaz Studio using the edit in option. See the Photos help and then call Studio.

Photos still does not support PS plugins but Studio does.

Thank you Don.

I had just about given up on Topaz, which used to be my most used plug in by far. Lack of previous support with Apple Photos and increasing difficulty using it with Aperture meant I used other products or did without. I’ll have a good play with Studio, which looks promising.

Initially, there appears to be a problem with some smaller fonts which are almost unreadable. Not sure if this is Topaz Studio or MacOS 10.13 (being new). For want of a picture, I’ll just describe them as highly pixellated, so I can’t read some of the text Studio puts on the screen.

What is your screen resolution?

Hi Don

I have a late 2012 iMac. Display info below

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 2 GB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x11a3
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: 3707
Metal: Supported, feature set OSX_GPUFamily1 v2
Displays:
iMac:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 2560 x 1440
Framebuffer Depth: 24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Automatically Adjust Brightness: No
Connection Type: DisplayPort

Hi,

I guess it must depend on the resolution of your screen, try changing to 1920-by-1080 resolution and see if it is any better. I gather the screen is 21.5 inch.

If it is because of the resolution you need to raise a Technical Support request at the link above to get the developers to see what they can do with it.

Or, I’m not sure about Mac’s, you could try to boost the resolution of text & apps from 100% to 125% like we can do on Windows … even on my 1920 x 1080 15.6" screen I have to run it at 125% but on my other 24" @ 1920x1080 it is great at 100%.

Hi Don

I just tried to recreate the problem. It took a while but in essence it started to recur when

a. I invoked Edit With on Studio
b. Did some stuff
c. Exited from Studio

and repeat once or twice.

My screen is 27".

You can see a screen capture here: (look at the text on the top left) https://78.media.tumblr.com/9e696e6825f7095ae46d4d3253b3e7b9/tumblr_oxcnmnCnwl1teil95o1_1280.jpg

So the text was clear and crisp the first time I invoked Studio but got progressively more blocky with each subsequent invocation.

It’s obviously possible this is a MacOS 10.13 issue.

You are right it may well be a High Sierra issue…

@JoeFedric-TL may have an idea about this issue.

The text corruption has nothing to do with the OS version. This is a graphics issue, rendering QT Text items, only. In my investigations, I’ve found that this happens most frequently with users that are leveraging NVIDIA Web Drivers on their Mac, which we don’t test against at this time. My advice, if you’re using the NVIDIA Web Drivers, is to head to the NVIDIA Driver Manager in System Preferences, and switch to the macOS driver, and restart. Then, give it another try.

We support our products. The host editors we choose to support are not promised anywhere, and as long as we’re selling our product, we will support it.

Free updates will come in the form in which we are able to deliver them. We also cannot support every host editor, or even very many. It’s unfortunate, but true.

The Joe-Fredric.

I don’t see where I can change the driver in System Preferences. Its not in the Display settings.

I started being a Topaz user several years ago. I find it a disappointment that Topaz can’t provide plug-in support when several others do. “Edit With” is clunky in comparison, although usable.

I’m sorry you feel that way! We haven’t really had many customers coming forward asking for it, so it never became a priority.

Fair enough. A smart marketing plan depends on enough customers wanting and being prepared to pay for something.

Still a little confused as to why the text gets progressively worse with multiple “Edit With” calls to Studio.