P: Photoshop 26.6.0 is selecting non-current canvases

[donbarrum]

THe latest version of Photoshop has a new very annoying bug! If you have multiple canvases open in photoshop, it constantly keep selecting the underlying/non current canvases especially when they are hidden behind the canvas you are working on. Therefore you need to keep each canvas distant from eachother or open as few images as possible. This is super annoying! See video
PS! Rolling back to Photoshop 25.5 and it works. 26.0 and 26.1 the bug appears. 
Can you please fix this asap adobe!?

[Claire H.]

Updating status to Investigating. 

Hi @donbarrum, thanks for reaching and sending all of your info. I have forwarded it to our engineering team for further investigation and will let you know when we have a fix. Thanks again! ^CH

[Claire H.]

Hi @donbarrum, Can you send us your Dxdiag on the computers you are experiencing the issue?

• Press Start > type dxdiag > press Enter.
• Save the report as a .txt file and attach it.

We are looking further into the matter. Thanks!

[donbarrum]

@Claire H.  Hi, sure, here are the dxdiag from both my computers, which both have the problem. I don't seem to be allowed to attach txt files to the post, so here's a dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/t/eEMORCUpe5cslktQ

[CJButler]

We're looking at it now. I've tried with a couple of versions of PS but cannot reproduce. I've asked another engineer to help, but so far we cannot, so I expect there's some secret sauce we're missing. The bug is still open and I agree it's annoying. We'll keep trying.

[donbarrum]

thanks for investigating. That's very strange you cannot reproduce it, since I have it on both my computers and they have different cpus and hardware. One is amd and the other is intel. Only thing in common is the Nvidia card. But could it be because I have photoshop on a second display, a wacom display? There's quite a bit of bugs with photoshop that appear with a wacom that you don't experience when using a mouse and one screen. 

[Stephen - HU3D]

This problem is still persisting for me to, it's becoming quite annoying now. I have photoshop updated to the latest version, basic system spec as follows:

Windows 11 pro (all updates installed) 

AMD 9950x

96GB Ram

Geforce RTX 5080 on Studio drivers (latest update installed)

Operating dual 1440 monitors

[CJButler]

Nothing is ruled out at this point, although I do have and use a Wacom Cintique on one of my Windows System. That was the first one I tried. It is also a dual monitor setup. I watched the videos and tried for a bit, but could not reproduce. We'll keep looking and see if we can find someone internally who has an environment that can reproduce. Right now, it's a mystery.

[donbarrum]

Let me know if there's anything I can assist with, shared screen session or whatever. 

[CJButler]

@donbarrum 

We're still trying to reproduce. A couple of things to try that may help narrow things down:

1. Try turning OFF Edit > Preferences > Technology Previews... > Enable Modern User Interface
2. Try turning OFF Window > Contextual Task Bar
3. What happens when you don't use Floating Windows, but instead use Docked Windows in the Application Frame. In that case, the foreground window should cover the entire canvas space. Do you still get unexpected switching to a different (background) window?

And some questions:

1. Is Edit > Preferences > Tools > Overscroll ON or OFF?
2. Do you normally run with Move Tool > Auto-Select = OFF, and then use the space bar (a keyboard event) to switch to the Hand Tool? Is that your normal workflow? What happens if you switch to the Hand Tool directly, without using the space bar to switch from the Move Tool to the Hand Tool?

[donbarrum]

Hi, I just tried. Good news, I guess, the first thing you suggested, turning off the "Enable Modern User Interface" fixed it right away.  I don't know what modern user interface does to the UI ? But at least that is the culprit. Do you want me to test the other things on and off as well?

[CJButler]

@donbarrum 

Yes please, if you wouldn't mind. Try each of the suggestions one at a time. That would be helpful data.

I have a theory that might be in play: As you hit the space bar, and then drag with your mouse-down, is the space bar going up and down during the drag? Or is it just staying down? What I think is happening is that some other user interface element (I don't know which one - it is probably not be the other document window) is getting told to update itself, and it does a WM_ACTIVATE right in the middle of the drag. At that moment, the space bar is still down, so we get a WM_KEY event that gets redirected to the other (unknown) Window, which then decides to activate the Document Window that is in the background. I know a bug in this area was fixed this Friday, May 30, in our code base that will be released in 26.8, but I don't know if that fix affects the problem you are observing.

In general, if the update code for the unknown window decides that it doesn't need to do the WM_ACTIVATE, then the bug does not reproduce, which is why it is not seen by everyone. Furthermore, this behavior is all Windows only. Mac OS users would not be affected. /EndTheory

That "Modern UI" switch helps localize the code that possible caused the issue. Eventually this will be the new code as we retrofit Photoshop to be more modern. But that's a long-term task, and will likely take over a year. It's akin to changing parts on a car while everyone is still driving it. I won't comment on the strategy, as that decision has been made.

[donbarrum]

@CJButler  Ok I will test all of them. But just to quickly answer your theory. I'm afraid that's wrong. I don't need to use Space at all. It happens when I only hold down ctrl to auto-select a layer. Or when I want to pick a color using alt+ clicking mouse on the canvas. And it even happens without the canvases overlapping. I can have one canvas on the left side of the screen and try to select a layer on the right canvas, and suddenly the left/opposite canvas gets highlighted and the layers tab updaes with everything that the other image has and back again. So it flip flops and creates immense lags when you paint and pick colors constantly or select layers. If you understand what I mean?

[Stephen - HU3D]

I can confirm the same, this happens without the use of space bar, and on both over lapping and spaced out windows. But when using the space it rapidly flicks between the two windows. 

[donbarrum]

And, here are the answers to the other questions: @CJButler 

-turning off the Contextual Task Bar also fixes it. And it doesn't start again when I turn it on unless I create or load new images. 
-Docked windows also works, it doesnt jump to any of the other images then. 

Answers to questions:
I use overscroll (ON)

I do not use move tool auto select (off)
I use the space bar to pan, but not with auto select though. 

What happens when I use the hand tool without space: the same thing happens, it selects other canvases. But as mentioned this happens with anything else than hand tool as well (fill, pick color, pick layer using short cuts and when selecting them in the menu)

[CJButler]

@DonBar @Stephen - HU3D 

Thanks - that's interesting information.

Just to confirm, the bad behavior happens without ANY keyboard events. Just selecting tools and using the mouse? No keyboard chording with the mouse? Any only while the mouse-button is still down during the drag? Or when the mouse-button comes up?

(edit add: And just to confirm, none of this is intentional behavior. It sounds like a pretty horrific user experience. I just wish we could see it happen under a debugger and figure out the conditions that allow it to happen.)

[donbarrum]

@CJButler yes that's right. You don't need to use the keyboard. And you don't need to drag the mouse either, it happens when you click in the image/canvas with either of the tools I mentioned (probably any tool that allows a click). Example: I select the pick color tool, find a place on the canvas to click, I click the mouse and boom the another image below is now on top. Or, like on the video i posted previously, I open or create 3 images in photoshop and all ready then the second or third image appear below any of the ones that are allready opened, without clicking anywhere on the image. So you don't really know which image is active. And yeah you are right 🙂 it's quite frustrating 😉 PS! And of course this is not an inentional behaviour or me doing something wrong. I have more than 30 years of experience in photoshop, and this bug never happened before Photoshop 26.6. If I roll back to Photoshpo 26.5 its all good. 

[CJButler]

@donbarrum We've finally had someone reproduce in-house late last night, which is a huge leap forward in diagnosing the issue. We still don't know the cause, but we're able to actively hunt the bug now. We do know that the other fix put in last Friday which I had speculated might resolve the issue - does not. It's something else.

(In your OP, you indicated it happened in 26.0 and 26.1. Did it go away for 26.5 and then reappear in 26.6 and later?)

[donbarrum]

Hi that is great news! sorry then I miswrote. I meant I downgraded from 26.7, it was still in 26.6, but not in 26.5. I didn't go further back then. So it's safe to assume it appeared in 26.6

[CJButler]

We think we found the problematic code. The fix affects Windows only and has been made in the 26.8 release branch a few minutes ago.

[donbarrum]

Hurray! Thank you for listening and taking the time to find and fix it 🙏🏻😊

[zsolt_6914]

Same problem, updated win 11, gpu and adobe. I use 3 monintors. 

[AxelMatt]

@zsolt_6914  

Unfortunately you don't have gave us any informations about your system. So all proposed solutions are a guesswork.

Please describe more detailed. What you've done before the error occure? Desribe the steps how to reproduce the issue. What you've tried to aolve the problem?

Is your system up-to-date? Do you have installed all recent updates and patches for the operating system and the device drivers, especially the graphic driver. If you have a NVidia graphic card installed, make sure that you are using the recent Studio version of the driver, not the Game Ready version.

Maybe you can post your Photoshop system info. In Photoshop goto Help > System Info and hit the copy button. Then paste the entire informations into this thread

[donbarrum]

The problem/bug is in under investigation to be fixed by adobe, they have managed to reproduce it. For now you can just turn off "enable modern user interface" in Preferences/Technology previews.