Hi experts.. how to fix " could not use refine edge brush because of a program error " ?

@kumononga_19, thank you for your patience and for testing all of the suggested steps.

After reviewing the System Info you shared, I don’t see any obvious GPU or hardware issues. Photoshop is detecting and using your RTX 4060 correctly, and the graphics driver appears current.

What does stand out is that you have several third-party plugins and extensions installed, including:

• Nik Collection (Color Efex, Silver Efex, Viveza, Dfine, etc.)
• Topaz Photo AI
• Coolorus
• Other third-party filters and extensions

Normally, I’d suspect a plugin conflict, but since you already tested launching Photoshop while holding Shift to skip plugin loading and the issue still occurs, that makes this more interesting.

One observation from your testing is particularly important:

• Immediately after reinstalling or updating Photoshop, the Refine Edge Brush works correctly.
• After closing Photoshop and reopening it, the error returns.

That pattern suggests something may be getting corrupted or modified between launches rather than the installation itself being broken.

Could you try one more thing:

• Create a brand-new local administrator Windows user account
• Log into that account
• Launch Photoshop
• Test Select and Mask > Refine Edge Brush before installing any additional plugins or changing any preferences

This will help determine whether we’re dealing with:
• A profile-specific issue
• A permissions problem
• Or something that Photoshop is writing into the user profile between launches

Also, please confirm:

• Does the error occur on every image?
• Or only certain file types (JPEG, PNG, PSD, RAW, etc.)?

I don’t see anything else in the System Info that could be the issue here.

Best,
Anshul Saini