Helicon Soft Forum

We're happy with OpenCL for as long as it's supported. If or when it is no longer an option, then we will deal with that problem and try offering a solution.

In 8.0.0 beta Open CL still does not work here. MacOS Monterey 12.1 on M1 MacMini 16GB.
If M1-option is choosen in the settings, it tells me on programm-start that OpenCL could not be initialised.

Walter72 wrote: 26.12.2021 11:08 In 8.0.0 beta Open CL still does not work here. MacOS Monterey 12.1 on M1 MacMini 16GB.
If M1-option is choosen in the settings, it tells me on programm-start that OpenCL could not be initialised.

We have updated Helicon Focus, the new version is 8.0.1 and it works with M1 on macOS 12.1 (and doesn't work on older versions of macOS).

Hi, where to download updated beta? Thanks

Hi! As always, from the Downloads page of our website: https://www.heliconsoft.com/software-downloads/
Here are the direct links to the latest Helicon Focus for Windows and Mac.

So, now we have Monterey 12.2 Release candidate, and latest beta of HeliconFocus doesnt work with GPU acceleration on MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro version)
https://andreylv.d.pr/ZnCpro

Same question here. I see that the M1 is supposed to be supported but as of 1/23/2022 and the latest version of Helicon, the program throws an error if M1 is selected in the preferences.

You need the latest version of Helicon Focus (8.0.1) as well as the latest macOS (12.1).

It works now on my MacMini M1 with MacOS12.1.
Well, the benefit of using these weak 8 GPU-cores on M1 is not great but for me it is OK, I do not use Helicon Focus so often these days since I am not making this many macroimages any more. There might be more improvement on M1 Pro and Max.

8.0.2 with Monterey 12.2 on MacMini M1: Finally I could see a slight improvement in speed. But speed seems to depend on which raw-conversion you are choosing when dealing with raw images. The Adobe-dng converter is the slowest option for me when stacking orf-files from my Olympus. The built-in dcraw-loader is faster and has the best options. Even faster is the OSX-raw converter but this one offers no options at all.
OK, so far so good, I can work with that.

Benchmarks are now around 240 instead of 120 like before (better but not great - it still is what it is: just onboard-graphics), but as I stated above - when it comes to raw, check your raw-conversion settings, this process can slow down the work very badly, HeliconFocus seems to wait most of the time for the images to be loaded when Adobe-DNG converter is selected.

Make sure your "Parallel image loading" option in Preferences - Performance is not set to "Disabled".
240 is about the same we're getting on our M1 Mac Mini (not Max or Pro, the "old" M1), and it's almost twice as fast as CPU only. So the overall speed is nothing groundbreaking, but the gain from using OpenCL is significant (not to mention that your CPU is left free to do other tasks, like doing raw decoding on the next image while the current image is being processed via OpenCL).

Yes, I have parallel image loading active. But the Adobe DNG converter is loading 4-5 images and converts them, then you have to wait, then they get processed, and the next images will be loaded and so on. And yes, I did update my Adobe DNG-converter just an hour ago. It is just terrific slow.
It makes no difference if I load the images directly from SD-card or if I copy them to the superfast SSD harddrive.
All other options are much faster, so I will work with them.

I hope you decide to support Metal as OpenCL is now dead.

I prefer to use your product, but am open to switching. I also hope that you switch over to Metal.

12.3 Monterey was released today. M1 Pro macbook pro still doesnt work with GPU acceleration
Please, look at the attached screenshot
https://andreylv.d.pr/p7DM0j