Unable to save changes to HEIC images from Topaz Photo A! 3.0.3 plug-in to Apple Photos

[GiacomoB]

Screenshot 2024-05-31 at 11.16.26 AM|576x520

Steps to reproduce issue:

1. View HEIC photo taken on iPhone in Apple Photos (iPhone 14 Pro running 17.5.1 & Intel Mac running macOS 14.5)
2. Click Edit in Apple Photos on Intel Mac
3. Open Topaz Photo AI plugin for this HEIC image.
4. Plugin makes automatic enhancements. Click Export button in Topaz Photo AI plugin to start process of returning image enhancements to Apple Photos.
5. Click Save button - see attached snapshot which shows failure of plugin.

This process has perhaps never worked. But if I use Affinity Photo’s Apple Photo’s plugin to Edit HEIC image, and then use Topaz Photo AI’s Affinity plugin, everything works correctly.

Topaz Photo AI [v3.x.x] on [Windows/Mac]

[jo.vo]

That’s a really old issue present at least since the 2.x versions of TPAI.
I guess they have absolutely no clue on how to fix this or they simply don’t care - or both…

[GiacomoB]

One thing I’ve wondered is whether the change needs to be made in LensFun and whether they could contribute to the open source database of photographic lenses to fix this, instead of waiting for someone else to deal with it!

[jo.vo]

This surely doesn’t have anything to do with LensFun.

This issue only occurs for portrait oriented images, landscape one do work. Also, if you do any edit on the image in Apple Fotos before sending it to TPAI it also works (so one can use this as an ugly workaround).
So this issue apparently is down to the way TPAI interacts with Apple Fotos.

[GiacomoB]

Wow. You are some bug hunter. You are absolutely correct. The bug occurs only for unmodified portrait HEIC images. I wonder if this also happens on the Windows or iPad versions.

Obviously, if Topaz cared about fixing it, with this information, they could fix it in a snap. I first saw it in a V.2 version and reported it then, but I had not tracked as carefully as you have.

[jo.vo]

Well, it has been reported quite a few times and with all this info in those threads:

TPAI still has problems with saving back edited photos to Apple Photos

Hello, when I use Topaz to edit photos inside Apple Pictures on my Mac, from time to time I get this error message trying to apply the changes: [Bildschirmfoto 2024-01-08 um 11.20.20] It says the changes cannot be saved, because there occured an error while saving. Try again later. After that all changes are lost. Any idea what I can do? Regards, Christoph

https://community.topazlabs.com/t/tpai-2-3-2-still-has-problems-with-saving-back-edited-photos-to-apple-photos/63090/2

Some time it was even been told to be worked on…

[GiacomoB]

I couldn’t find this in a board search. Perhaps this conversation will shake some dust loose. A FEW people may be pleased (quite a few I imagine).

But thanks. At least now I can do some minor tweak to portrait mode HEIC files before I move them to TPAI. This, however, breaks my workflow, since when I have a large number of similar travel images I like to move iPhone images to a folder on the Desktop where I use the Finder Rename feature BEFORE I move them into Apple Photos. Oh well.