30 Bit Display - banding appears when mouse is idle and disappears when mouse is moved

No windows automatic colour management here. So far, it appears that somewhere between NVidia Studio driver 546.33 and 555.99 a change was introduced which breaks the 30 bit (10 bit/channel) display pipeline.

What I need to check for is another app that uses the 30 bit display so that I can test whether this only impacts Photoshop or not. That would confirm whether it is NVidia or Adobe that needs the bug report.

Dave

Actually I can't imagine that's the problem with 12.gen i7, RTX3060, Eizo CG/colornavigator and Windows 11. It's a pretty current upper-end desktop machine.

I've just put that mystery on the shelf for now, it hasn't given me any problems so far. Until possibly this, we'll see.

@D Fosse  The absence of Windows Auto Color Management on my computers is a mystery I have been unable to solve since it was announced. However, I have just found this link that suggests it may not be available on all platforms due to hardware constraints. My photo editing PC has an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU without integrated graphics while my gaming PC has a 7th gen Core i9-7920X CPU. Like you, I do not see the Auto Color Management option in Control Panel on either of my computers, but given the requirements outlined on that link, it looks like neither machine qualifies for it. You should check your hardware to see whether your platform also fails to qualify.

Thanks for the hint Dave - I also have my old driver installation files, including 546.33, which I downloaded in December 2023. I installed that as a Clean Install and, as per your experience, that fully restored 10 bit display in Photoshop. The next most recent driver that I had after that was 555.99, which I downloaded in June 2024. I installed that as well, but it also does not run at 10 bits. It looks like something broke/changed after 546.33.

So I'll stick with 546.33 for the time being, assuming there are no stability issues.

I'm travelling with a laptop now, so I can't check this yet, but I will (RTX 3060/CG2730).

Could this be connected to the new "automatic color management" checkbox in Windows? Apparently this component in Windows is still a bit buggy. I seem to remember one poster reporting that this checkbox had to be either on or off to get 30 bit display to work.

To be honest I have no idea what "automatic color management" is supposed to do, except some vague indications about using wide gamut displays in Windows-native applications that don't support color management on application level. Supposedly it should work as it always has when set to "off". But some users, myself included, aren't even getting that checkbox in Windows settings at all.

I don't see an issue with the mouse, but I did notice 10-bit display was enabled in Photoshop, NVidia control panel, and confirmed in Windows settings but I was not actually getting 10 bits displayed. I tested your ramp in Photoshop 2025, 2024 and 2023 all were enabled for 10 bit and none were actually displaying it.

I tried a few recent NVidia Studio drivers (576.02, 566.36, 561.09) each time choosing Advanced Options and clicking 'Clean Install' all of which showed the same issue. In the end I stepped back to an older driver for which I had the installation files on my PC (546.33). 10 bit display was restored immediately in all versions of Photoshop. You might want to try a similar older driver, although the oldest I saw on NVidia's download site was 561.09.

Whether the issue is in the recent drivers, or whether it is the way Photoshop has implemented 10-bit display and has become incompatible with the recent drivers, I don't know. The older driver does work though.

OS Windows 11 Pro 24H2, NVidia RTX3090 (now at 546.33), Dual Eizo CS2731s

Dave