ACR - all Non-adaptive profiles set to "auto" frequently produce blue artifacts

Question

Windows 11 laptop – latest Photoshop and Camera Raw versions (rolling back three versions did not resolve the issue).I open Nikon NRW files produced by a Nikon P1100. The problem began roughly a week ago. I have been using the same profiles for years without encountering this issue.The behavior occurs with some, but not all, RAW files. When I select Adobe Color, Adobe Standard, or Adobe Vivid and apply Auto, parts of the subject develop blue artifacts. In the attached example, the artifact appears on part of a bird. In other cases, the entire bird may turn blue. Sometimes the artifacts appear along small tree branches or outlines of foliage.The artifacts are always blue.Notably, this issue does not occur when using the Adaptive Color profile.Troubleshooting performed:	In Photoshop → Edit → Preferences → Performance, I disabled “Use Graphics Processor.” This did not resolve the issue.			I toggled between the Photos and Web UI design workspace settings.			I rolled back several versions of Photoshop/Camera Raw. The issue persists.	Has anyone encountered similar behavior or found a solution?

davescm · Accepted Answer

Check whether you have the clipping warnings set in camera raw. That blue on the bird in your screenshot looks like a dark clipping warning.Dave

Conrad_C · Answer

Notably, this issuedoes not occur when using the Adaptive Color profileThat sounds consistent with what the Adaptive profiles are designed to do.One of the goals of Adaptive profiles is to make better use of dynamic range. When extreme highlights and shadow values in the image might have been clipped with a conventional profile, Adaptive profiles bring them into betterpreserve highlight and shadow detail.In the bird shot, under the defaultprofile and settingsthe darkest part of the bird clips to black, causing the blue indicator for shadow clipping to appear over the pixels with clipped shadow values.When the Adaptive Color profile is applied, it analyzes the image and generates a Profile Gain Table Map (PGTM), using it to (among other things) moveclipped shadow values back up to restore shadow detail, so the blue clipping indicator goes away.

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