Enable use of GPU for calculations
Using the GPU (the graphics card) for calculations demands a high-performance graphics card with up-to-date drivers and support for CUDA or OpenCL. If no supported graphics card is found, the options for GPU-accelerated calculations are grayed out.
Supported graphics cards:
- All NVIDIA graphics cards with OpenCL support and the latest drivers
- All NVIDIA cards with support for CUDA with compute capability 3.0 or higher, including the latest drivers (minimum: NVIDIA Driver Release 398.26)
- ATI/AMD Radeon HD 5000 or higher with the latest drivers (minimum: AMD Catalyst 14.4)
- Intel HD Graphics 2500 or Intel HD Graphics 4000 or higher with the latest drivers
Computers can have multiple graphics cards, and therefore, all available, supported cards on your computer are listed and can be selected under Graphics card. Click Benchmark to compare acceleration between the processor and the selected graphics card. If the graphics card does not have sufficient memory or its drivers are outdated, benchmarking may not work correctly.
GPU acceleration speeds up the following functions:
- Gaussian blurring
- Overall blurring
- Smart blurring (including Develop)
- Enhance Color Temperature
- Smart sharpening (including Develop)
- Unsharp Mask (including Develop)
- High Pass
- Oil Painting
- Cartoon
- Tilt-shift Effect
- Tone Mapping
- Remove Noise (including Develop)
- Mix Channels
- Lens Flare
Hardware Acceleration
With hardware acceleration turned on, pictures are shown more quickly, especially when you are not using the default zoom level.
If you are have any of these options active, we strongly recommend installing the latest driver for your graphics card. Also, install only drivers that have received WHQL certification—these have been tested and approved by Microsoft.
These functions’ performance and stability directly depend on the quality of your graphics card’s drivers. Zoner Photo Studio cannot influence those drivers’ quality. If corruption appears in your pictures, or the program crashes, while you are using our hardware acceleration functions, then install the latest drivers for your graphics card. If that does not help, turn off these functions.
HDR
The Develop – Enable HDR adjustments in Develop by default for HDR photos setting determines how the Develop module treats files that are not RAW files and contain HDR data. Three options are available:
Off – files will be edited in standard dynamic range.
On – files will be edited in high dynamic range, which means that the HDR button in the Color Style section in the Develop module will be automatically turned on.
Automatic – files will be edited in high dynamic range if the user has an HDR monitor and the use of HDR has been turned on within the operating system’s settings. If these conditions have not been met, files will be adjusted in standard dynamic range.
Undeveloped SDR files that are not RAW files are always edited in standard dynamic range. Undeveloped RAWs will be adjusted based on the choice of default setting in the Develop module.
HEIF format support
HEIF / HEIC is a modern image format that uses HEVC (H.265) compression and makes it possible to save images at high quality while retaining a small file size.
Use the Enable HEIF format support option to enable saving to this format. For this feature to work correctly, HEVC codecs must be installed on your computer. If they are not, click the HEVC Video Extension button to go to the Windows Store and install the codecs. If the HEVC codecs install without problems, you can then use the HEIF format when saving your pictures—e.g. in the Editor, in the Batch Filter, in Export, etc.
This function is only available on Windows 10.
For additional information on how to enable the saving and loading of HEIF images, visit our support pages.