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September 24, 2026

Cryptomatte broken

  • September 24, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 15 views

Hi there, I’m on 2026.5.0 on a Mac Studio M2 chip running MacOS 26.6.2. Cryptomatte is not working consistently in this latest version. When freshly opened for the first time, I can apply Cryptomatte and select a single color to create a matte and after that the plugin becomes almost entirely unresponsive. Shift+clicking other colors does nothing in the viewport. Deselecting the current color does nothing in the viewport. The only indication I have that something is happening under the hood is that when I shift click to add colors to the matter I see the additional color ID being added to the list of color IDs that cryptomatte is using, but the minute I move my cursor off of said color, the ID disappears and nothing happens. The viewport is unchanged by this as well. Clicking a second color and seeing the ID list update is only showing in the effect control panel. the additional selected color in the viewport remains its original color. Once this behavior begins it occurs in every other instance of cryptomatte until I quit and restart. Applying it to other objects or deleting the existing copy of the effect and reapplying does nothing to fix the issue. Obviously this is creating a big bottleneck for getting things done with custom mattes so I am rolling back to 2026.3 and hoping for the best. Anecdotally a friend of mine was testing things on his PC in 2026.5.0 and said that Cryptomatte was working consistently for him, so perhaps it is a Mac specific issue?

    1 reply

    Nishu Kushwaha
    Community Manager
    Community Manager
    September 29, 2026

    Hi there, sorry to hear about the issue.

    A few things that would help:

    1. Is there a specific step that consistently triggers the unresponsive behavior?

    2. Is it happening in a specific project or with a specific file, or across all projects?

    3. If possible, could you share a short screen recording that shows the problem?

    4. Have you tried running AE in Safe Mode with third-party plug-ins disabled (https://adobe.ly/4ypsAPO) and clearing the media cache (Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache)?

    Let me know how it goes.


    Thanks,
    Nishu