P: GPU issues on macOS/MacBook Pro 15" (image turns black switching tabs)

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hello,

a Photoshop forum user suggested me to post here my issues with Photoshop and a MacBook Pro 15" GPU. So here I am! I don't know if it is better to report here the same text, so to start I invite you to take a look to the original post here.

I really hope in a fast and official feedback.

Thanks.

[Andrew_Sender]

Hi,

Thank you for sharing your system info and other posts.  You mentioned this plugin "Nik Collection".  Is that from here: https://nikcollection.dxo.com/?

I also noticed the canvases that were completely black are your camera raw imports.  And the ones looking okay are PSD files.  To me it sounds like the plugin could be causing GPU problems.  Is this plugin required to do your work?

Sincerely,

Andrew

[J453]

It may help if we could see your Photoshop System Info. Launch Photoshop, and select Help >System Info...and copy/paste the text in a reply.

Might be specific to a card. I wasn't able to reproduce offhand.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hi *cloudres . My name is Sympa and I am an engineer on the GPU team for Adobe Photoshop. First I want to acknowledge that if I was in the same situation I'd be super frustrated too. It can be really difficult when a tool you need doesn't work out of the box. I suspect you're right that there is a GPU issue here and I'd like to help you to triage it. If we can get enough information here we might be able to isolate the issue and commit a fix for it or provide other ways to get you back to a working state. You've provided some of the info amongst other threads but it would hugely helpful if you could provide answers to all of the below requested pieces of information. (Responding here will also help us to have one report with all the info we need)

• Are your applications installed in the default operating system directory or a custom directory. If custom, please specify the path being used?
• Have you turned off GPU in preferences → performance?:
• What input device are you using (mouse, trackpad, tablet) (What make and model?)
• Do you have updated drivers for peripherals (Wintab, Wacom), and GPU (NVidia, AMD):
• Is your hardware older than 7 years old?:
• Is the GPU being run in a virtualized environment?:
• Is the problem is related to the OpenCL checkbox in preferences → performance → advanced being grayed out?:
• Is there a CL device in the help → system info log?:
• Does turning on this setting fix your issue? legacy compositing in preferences → performance:
• Did this behave correctly in a previous version of photoshop (which?):
• Is the issue reproducible on both Mac & Windows?:
• Reproducibility (sometimes? 100%?):
• Include file that reproduces this issue:
• Attach to bug report a screen recording of you reproducing this issue (use loom to upload screen recording):
• Attach to bug report a screen recording of expected behavior:
• Attach to bug report the log from help → system info:

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hey, are you kidding me? No-one available to help me from Adobe? Is there a official support to talk? 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hello? Is there someone available to help me?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Thanks for sticking with it and letting us know of their response. We did not have luck in getting one from them. Apologies again that you are having this experience and I hope DXO is able to resolve the bug for you. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Dear *Sympa

I'll try one more time with disabling the graphics processor by Photoshop preferences and I'll let you know.

In the meanwhile DXO answered me in that way:

The code that was used to write Nik Collection 1, 2 and 3 by DxO is directly inherited from the very first version published by the company Nik Software 25 years ago now. This code is old and extremely difficult to modify or simplify. The bugs already known in the original version therefore also exist in the current version and we cannot correct them because of what I have just explained to you. Our teams of developers are currently working on the complete rewriting of the program in a modern language (code) that they will master and can easily correct later. The culmination of this work will come with version 4 of Nik Collection scheduled for next year around June 2021.

Honestly I'm not sure that what they said is true, because if that problems was already there, I should have that issues with Nik Collection ver. 2, but they occurred only with the last one, the third version (together with last version of Photoshop).

I hope that you can be more lucky than me contacting them to fix the issue. But first let me thanks for your time. I'm appreciating it! 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

*cloudres One more request. Can you go to Photoshop -> Preferences -> Performance -> Use Graphics Processor OFF

Then restart photoshop. Then use your usual workflow. Please let us know if the black canvas screen still reproduces. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

*cloudres We will be reaching out to DXO/Nik to resolve their bug. Appreciate your understanding and really value your feedback. Thank you. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

*Sympa in the meanwhile I shared this thread with the DxO support. If confirmed that the issue could be really related to that plugins, I'd like to you can talk together about it.

They are really a lot of months that I'm trying for a fix to the issue. I'm literally exhausted. Never dreamed to pay to have all these issue with some professional apps.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

*Sympa if I remember well, the issue was present also after that I saved all PSD files, working only on Photoshop. But to be sure to 110% I would like to do another test.

As Nik Collection plugins are very known it could be appreciate if you can talk together about that. Is it a thing that you usually do or not?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

To be clear - you are able to reproduce without at all using Nik collection? I'm asking because I do see reports on their forums of the same issue. https://feedback.dxo.com/t/black-image-upon-opening-or-sending-to-nik-from-photolab/12427

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

*Sympa my experience says that the issue is present also on Photoshop. Because I had the same problem working on more PSD files only. Without working on Nik Collection plugins.

I recorded for a lot of time this result, because to quick my process during last months avoiding the issue, I started to work in this way:

1. I usually imported all NEF files in Photoshop and worked them in Nik Collection;
2. Considering that sometimes when I came back to Photoshop, the app crashed or there was this problem between windows, I usually saved a PSD file and closed Photoshop. Again and again, because the issue was been fix when I rebooted Photoshop;
3. After that all pictures were in PSD and finish all the work with Nik Collection, I worked only with Photoshop;
4. Here the issue usually occurred again, also without working on Nik Collection plugins.

That's my experience.

Now I haven't works to do, so I need to re-create a classic situation. Maybe I'll need for some days to try.

Did these informations help you in some way? Is there some problem with this video card model?

Thanks.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

The video was a huge help. I do see the issue. Are you able to reproduce without using color effects pro? We have no other reports of this type of artifact so it may be that they have a bug they are propagating to Photoshop. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hey *Sympa

this morning I had the idea to re-create the ICC profile after one year. Same profile, just probably made with new algorithm by X-Rite. Now I just tried to work only one picture and I don't want to call a win, but it seems to be a little of bit better. No-one Photoshop crash. Zoom works well.

But some issue is still present, as you can see on this new video screenshot. It is perfectly visible after a minute.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

You can "cheat" the video recording software by downscaling your monitor resolution. 

System Preferences -> Displays -> Scaled - "Larger Text"

I verified just now that this will reduce the monitor resolution such that when you record you are already recording at a lower resolution. 

Hope this helps. -Sympa

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

*Sympa I use often that app, but as I told you it isn't possible to select first the quality. Only after for exporting. My problem is that with a retina monitor, the quality recorded on screen is huge. So with Photoshop opened and recording also, my RAM and CPU can't do both things together. Do you know a way to make a video-screenshot directly in 480 or 720p?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

@cloudres thank you for trying!! Apple has a builtin screen recording utility you can try using instead.

spotlight search for an app called "screenshot.app". With this you can choose to record either all or partial portion of your screen. When youre done recording hit the "stop" symbol in the to right of your menu bar. It'll open the file in quicktime.

In quicktime choose file export 720p. This'll make the file considerably smaller and easier to share. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

*Sympa I tried to do it one time with QuickTime, but as the video is recorded in retina resolutions for a couple of minutes, it requests a lot of memory. Is there a way that you know to record a video-screenshot in low resolution? I can't do this with QuickTime, because the system starts to go down few seconds after.

Alternatively I can show you it in a call with shared screen. Please let me know!

Thanks a lot for your time.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

*cloudres Could you provide a screen recording after restarting photoshop, showing the exact steps / process you followed to get to the bad GPU state? The screen recording you have now shows the problem well, but not the steps to get there. This will help us to further isolate if theres a specific area of photoshop that we can triage further.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Thank you very much. Will discuss with the team.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

• Are your applications installed in the default operating system directory or a custom directory. If custom, please specify the path being used?

Default directory.

• Have you turned off GPU in preferences → performance?:

I tried with the GPU on and also off. But the result is the same. I also tried to disable the change of the video card by Apple preference, but it didn't help.

• What input device are you using (mouse, trackpad, tablet) (What make and model?)

I'm using only a mouse Logitech M590. Nothing else.

• Do you have updated drivers for peripherals (Wintab, Wacom), and GPU (NVidia, AMD):

On a MacBook I can't update the driver of the video card. But the OS is to the last version, today 10.15.7 (19H2).

• Is your hardware older than 7 years old?:

No, I use MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017) bought 2 years ago.

• Is the GPU being run in a virtualized environment?:

No.

• Is the problem is related to the OpenCL checkbox in preferences → performance → advanced being grayed out?:

The problem is present in both cases. With OpenCL on and off.

• Is there a CL device in the help → system info log?:

I don't know what you mean, but you can find my system info log on the link mentioned by @andrew_sender

• Does turning on this setting fix your issue? legacy compositing in preferences → performance:

I don't know what do you mean. 

• Did this behave correctly in a previous version of photoshop (which?):

I don't remember the exactly version, but during 2020 there were been a major update during the first semester. In that occasion the problems started.

• Is the issue reproducible on both Mac & Windows?:

I use only Mac OS.

• Reproducibility (sometimes? 100%?):

The issue occurred very often when I work on a second pictures sequentially. Or when I zoom a picture or when I switch between panels on Photoshop. The result is the same that you can see on the video-screenshot linked.

• Include file that reproduces this issue:

It happen with all NEF, DNG and PSD files that I worked. All of them have more than 10/15 megapixels. All files was developed by Adobe Camera Raw and loaded in Photoshop in 16 bit.

• Attach to bug report a screen recording of you reproducing this issue (use loom to upload screen recording):

Here it is a video-screenshot.

• Attach to bug report a screen recording of expected behavior:

I think that you can imagine how it should works 😅

• Attach to bug report the log from help → system info:

Already done. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hi *cloudres  Please answer the questions I supplied. Will not be able to look further until the diagnostic information requested has been filled out. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Please let me know if you need other informations. Me and many other persons need a fix asap. This problem is going on since many months.