P: Photoshop 27.8 GPU Rendering Artifacts and Color Banding due to Precise color management for HDR display setting under technology previews

unchecking “Precise color management for HDR display” fixed it.   SUPER THANKS for your help!!  😘

A few other users have reported this. I can’t find all the threads now, so here’s just one.

https://community.adobe.com/questions-712/photoshop-27-8-all-colors-are-washed-out-1628459

My suggestion here apparently didn’t solve it, but it’s clear that the problem is somewhere in the intersection between monitor profile and GPU (since disabling GPU fixes it). The data are not correctly converted into the monitor profile.

It is not necessary to change anything in Color Settings. That’s not where the problem is. The working space doesn’t matter as long as there is an embedded profile in the document.

I’d still rerun the monitor profiling software as first resort. But I seem to remember that some users mentioned that unchecking “Precise color management for HDR display” fixed it. If that’s correct, it’s either a GPU driver bug or a bug in Photoshop’s graphics code.

Hey, @Rostrobowitsj. Welcome to the Photoshop Community. I'll help you figure this out. Please share the system information from Photoshop Help > System Info. Copy and paste it into a text document, then upload and attach it here.

As per our Experts:

A system update or GPU driver update loads a manufacturer-specific wide-gamut monitor profile. Photoshop (which is color-managed) applies gamut compression through that profile, making colors appear desaturated. Non-color-managed apps (browsers, Windows Photo Viewer) simply pump raw RGB to the display, so they look "correct."

Apart from Photoshop's update, are there any other recent changes on your machine?

Quick Checklist for now:

1. Edit > Color Settings — confirm Working Space is sRGB (or your intended space)

2. Preferences/Settings > Performance > GPU Settings — toggle GPU acceleration off to test

3. macOS color profile — verify it hasn't been changed by the update

Thanks!

Sameer K

(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

colours are washed out after update to Photoshop 27.8

Hardware: iMac Pro 2017 MacOS 15.7.7 Sequoia

Monitor: Eizo CG247X 

The problem does not occur when ( in Preferences ) “Use Graphics Processor” is switched OFF!

( bet then filter Liquify and Rotate Image and many more functions don’t work properly anymore!

PLEASE FIX THIS PROBLEM QUICKLY ADOBE !!!!!!!!

Not seeing this here, but some users have reported problems when “Precise color management for HDR display” is checked in Preferences > Technology Previews.

Other than that, this has to be somewhere in the intersection of monitor profile and GPU. The actual conversion from document profile into monitor profile is executed in the GPU at default settings, and some monitor profiles may not work correctly in GPU code. Empirically, LUT profiles and/or v4 profiles have proven to be problematic in many cases.  

So go into DisplayCAL again and make sure it’s set to make v2 matrix profiles, and generally simplify as many settings as possible. Make a new profile and try that. Or you could try a generic profile just to test, like sRGB, Adobe RGB or Display P3 depending on type of display.. 

Some other users have reported that going to Photoshop 2026>Settings>Technology Previews, unchecking Precise color management for HDR display and restarting Photoshop rather than disabling the GPU resolves the the CMYK banding/artifact issue.

H ​@Chris Gilcher,

Thanks for taking the time to investigate this further and for sharing the additional observations.

I was able to reproduce the same behavior on my end. With Use Graphics Processor enabled, I see the same rendering issue on CMYK documents. After disabling GPU acceleration and restarting Photoshop, the CMYK document renders correctly, and there are no rendering artifacts, color banding, or posterization.

Based on that, this appears to be related to GPU rendering rather than the CMYK conversion itself, which aligns with your findings.

I’ve shared this with the product team for further investigation and will update this thread as soon as I hear back or if they need any additional information.

Thanks again for the thorough report and testing.

Best,
Anshul Saini

I performed some additional testing and found another important clue.

The issue is not limited to RGB → CMYK conversion.

If I open an image that is already in CMYK, the same rendering artifacts are visible as long as GPU acceleration is enabled.

This means the image data itself is not being corrupted during conversion. Instead, the problem appears to be related to Photoshop's GPU rendering/display of CMYK documents.

As soon as I disable Use Graphics Processor and restart Photoshop, the exact same CMYK file displays perfectly without any artifacts.

This makes me believe the issue is related to the Metal GPU rendering pipeline for CMYK documents rather than the color conversion process itself.

Has anyone else with Apple Silicon hardware (especially an M2 Ultra) been able to reproduce this behavior?

FYI, I have used LUT profiles on many macs for many years. So you can blame the Mac, but I have much much experience with LUTs on Macs and also using Adobe products.

Hello ​@Comickidz20 ,

What version of photoshop are you on now? If you roll back to a previous version does it still happen?

Could you provide your system info by going to Help>System info...

You may also want to try to update your graphics card drivers as something to try. If you have an nvidia card. use their studio drivers.