Community Expert

P: Layer masks degrades/displays incorrectly at each new action

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 26, 2025
18 replies
4151 views

It's been happening for a very long time and I usually just go back in the history, save and open again, but this time it bugged me a bit so I decided to post it as a bug:

It happens at random, sometime I can go without it happening for several months and then it happens again, with completely random files.

Basically you can look at the video and you'll see the mask starts to degrade as ifi it was corrupted file or something similar.

For the amount of time I have seen it happening, I have had 4 computers, both laptops and desktops, countless different Photoshop versions (I try to always be up to date)
Just to state that there will be no point sending a file to someone else to check, as saving it at a state where the mask is correct and open it again solves the issue. If I save at a corrupted state, Photoshop saves the corrupted state and one cannot recover the original state.

I never save the corrupted state as it's client's work, and it didn't happen today so I couldn't share a .psd here, but I will share in a comment if it happens again (and the files are shareable)

To reiterate: it's absolutely random (I honestly think it's been happening for at least 10 years, but difficult to be exact on this)

It never happens with a vector mask.
My GPUs have always been compatible.

I am not too bothered as I have been living with it for quite a long time, but just in case it can get resolved....

Recording_2025-02-25_133706.zip

Windows

F

folcom

Participant

I want to report a bug, that wasn't fixed in a while. When working on bigger files over 800MB apparently layer masks seem to break, which in this example work still fine when selecting the mask bounds with cmd+ left mouse click, same when visualizing the mask option + left mouse click ... but sometimes make me lose the selcetion masked.

Do you have any work arounds?
Would really appreciate it, thanks in advance 🙂

Folco

A

Aleke

Community Manager

Hi @folcom! Welcome to the community!

I gave this a try on my end but wasn’t able to reproduce the issue. When you get a chance, could you share a short screen recording showing what’s happening? That would really help us understand what’s going on.

It’d also be great if you could include your system info. You can find it in Photoshop under Help > System Info. Just copy the details into a text file and attach it to your reply, or feel free to share it through Google Drive, WeTransfer, or whatever works best for you.

Thanks a bunch! 😊
Alek

*(If you mention me with an @, like @Aleke, I’ll get a notification and can respond faster.)*

F

folcom

Participant

Dear @Aleke dear @Claire H. thank you so much for having a look into it, sadly every now and then its happening if either surpass around layer 50-60 or when the file size gets over 700-800mb. I'm using a MacBook M3 Pro wit 16GB of RAM and 512GB of ssd storage. Something else that occured to me just a few days ago was the following

Folco

L

LAMY2017

Legend

Good catch on restarting Ps, @c.pfaffenbichler

I remember the bad old days when not only the app but the machine had to be restarted for many changes to take effect.

Larry

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

@Hyanri , are you sure this happens even if GPU usage is turned off completely (which only takes effect after restarting Photoshop)?

H

Hyanri

Inspiring

I have this issue for a while now (as early as 2023), different computers, different Adobe accounts, different works. As long as layer masks are involved, especially in cases where there are at least three layer masks, Photoshop seem to break them regardless of graphic settings and editing. Sometimes they become blocks of rectangles, sometimes like horizontal TV noise - most times you just have to move the blur value and put it where you need it to refresh it, but it's a lot of work once you have a lot of layers. Generally given solutions does not help. It's happens randomly, too so I can't help narrowing a lead to how the problem starts; anything as regular as moving objects (with no mask layer) breaks the mask layers of other elements thus can happen to any file and not file specific I've rarely seen this issue brought up so I'm replying so I can be updated when a fix happens, or if there's something I can do to help.

D

davenadeau

Known Participant

I've been having this issue for a while.

If I create a Color Fill layer with a mask for a drop shadow, for example, and feather it in the Layer Mask's Properties panel, the mask will shut itself off if I zoom in or out. The mask in the layers panel does not show the red X when the mask shows as turned off. Wierder still, the Mask will turn itself back on at random different zooms.

Any ideas? The masks save correctly and are fine when I flatten the file. Really annoying.

L

LAMY2017

Legend

A screenshot or movie would help us understand how you are using a Color Fill layer with a mask for a drop shadow.

What levels of zoom are you using when you zoom in or out?

Larry

D

davenadeau

Known Participant

Yeah, that's the really annoying part, I can't reproduce it every time and the image I'm working on is part of an open job, so I can't show it.

As for the other items, I create a Color Fill layer of black. Place it under the item for drop shadow, make a selection from the item's layer, fill with white on the Color Fill's Layer Mask. Properties Panel, set Feather to 20%

Views as normal at 66.7% and higher. Views as Layer Mask off in viewing zoom 50, 33.3, 25, and 16.7%. Lower than that, it's back to masks on.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the file is 7965x5313 px, CMYK, total file size with layer is 1.25G

Imaginerie

Author

Community Expert

Good, so we can say it looks like the same issue everyone has. We have to wait for the team to come back with a solution.
I resorted to save my files without the feathering on, and put it back whenever I see it's not happening. Fingers crossed!

M

MyronKa

Known Participant

Yes, the mask blur was 1.2

Imaginerie

Author

Community Expert

@Sarah13242 I tested that long ago, but unfortunately, no luck. It doesn't seem to be related for me.

Imaginerie

Author

Community Expert

@MyronKa That's exactly the same issue that everyone is having. Can you confirm that
1 - It only happens when a mask have any amount of feathering on it?

2 - That the problem disapears when you put the feather back to 0 ?

M

MyronKa

Known Participant

Layer mask thumbnails sometimes display incorrectly in the Layers panel. Instead of showing the actual content of the mask (such as a shape or gradient), the thumbnail randomly appears filled with chaotic horizontal stripes.

This issue occurs intermittently — not as a result of a specific action, but seemingly at random. The mask itself remains functional and continues to affect the image correctly — the bug only affects its visual preview.
After editing the mask again, everything is fixed.

Expected Result:
Mask thumbnails should consistently and accurately display the true contents of the mask.

Actual Result:
The thumbnail is visually corrupted — showing only irregular striped patterns that do not reflect the real mask.

App Version: Adobe Photoshop 26.6
Platform/OS: macOS Sequoia 15.3.2 (MacBook Pro M2 Max, 32Gb)

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