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Participant
September 30, 2026
Question

Photoshop 2026 - Filter Dialog Boxes Not Opening

  • September 30, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 25 views

I'm having a problem with several filters in Photoshop 2026. My document is set to RGB Color, 8 Bits/Channel, so it meets the requirements for these filters to work.

The filters are not grayed out or disabled in the Filter menu. They are available and can be selected, but when I click them, their dialog boxes simply do not appear.

For example:

• Smart Blur: the dialog box does not open.
• Radial Blur: the dialog box does not open.
• Median: the dialog box does not appear, and the filter is immediately applied to the image at what seems to be maximum intensity.
• Distort filters: none of the ones I've tried display their dialog boxes, so I cannot adjust their settings.

I also have plenty of free scratch disk space, approximately 300 GB.

The main issue seems to be that Photoshop recognizes these filters as available, but is either skipping or failing to display their configuration dialogs.

What could cause filter dialog boxes to stop appearing even though the filters themselves are enabled? Is there a preference, setting, GPU issue, corrupted configuration, or other known problem that could cause this behavior?

    3 replies

    Anshul_Saini
    Community Manager
    Community Manager
    September 30, 2026

    Hi @Tranquil_Wish4be9,

    Thanks for the detailed report. I understand how disruptive this is when the filters work, but their settings dialogs don’t appear.

    Could you please try the following:

    Go to Preferences > Technology Previews, uncheck Enable Modern User Interface, and then restart Photoshop for the change to take effect.

    After restarting, please test Smart Blur, Radial Blur, Median, and one of the Distort filters again and let me know whether their dialog boxes appear.

    If the issue persists, please also share Help > System Info so we can investigate further.

    Please let me know how it goes, and I’ll be happy to help further.

    Best,
    Anshul Saini

    Trevor.Dennis
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 30, 2026

    ​@Anshul_Saini I am pretty sure I saw a similar post very recently.  Of course, I can’t find it now.

    Spas K.
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 30, 2026

    What happens if you apply them on a smart object? Can you apply them on one and double-click the icon in the layer panel to try and open them? 

    I assume you've checked that they are not opening off screen / on another monitor.