P: Text tool Problem: A bunch of small text is all over my screen

[Rebeca5C7A]

So like usual, I made a text box to start typing but I don't know what happened because now there is the same word in various small fonts all over my work. I have no idea where it came from. If you look at the photo, there is the word "Jin" in white everywhere and I can't seem to remove it.

[Benjamin Trissel]

Hi J Lo 06 - can you share the document? I'd like to examine it and see what is going on.

[J Lo 06]

Benjamin, thank you for the response. I'm trying to build this out for work so when this happens every couple of days, it's infuriating. Something's when I reposition the text layer, it hides it, but it still remains. Here's the photo. 

[J Lo 06]

The "ghost" text is actually the last line of text I had on the document, on the same text layer. I 86'd that last line and the ghost text remained. I re-typed in. The ghost test remained. So ultimately, I just deleted the text, shifted that text layer down a few levels which covered up the ghost text and adjusted the sizes of the other layers to cover up the remaining floating text. 

[J Lo 06]

[Benjamin Trissel]

Thats plain weird. If you can, can you send me the document?

[email address removed by moderator as per forum guidelines]

[J Lo 06]

Just sent. - Jason

[Benjamin Trissel]

Got it! Thanks! I will let you know what I am able to find. Appreciated!

[Benjamin Trissel]

For future reference, I was able to make the artifacts go away by selecting the text tool and tapping on the canvas. That adjusted the problematic layer, somehow, and got rid of those artifacts. Not sure why they are there yet.

[J Lo 06]

Okay, we'll, at least there's a way to fix it in the meantime. The real question is why is it happening. Lol. 

[Benjamin Trissel]

Yeah 🙂 this will be interesting to figure out. Thanks for helping out!

[J Lo 06]

Thank you sir. You're the ones who make these programs great and user friendly.

[Benjamin Trissel]

Just wanted to follow up. We have figured out the issue and we are in the process of figuring out how to fix it. In the meantime, the workarounds are thus: Either open the text frame, which seems to make the fragments disappear, or use a paragraph text frame (tap-drag a text frame, rather than just tap with the text tool.) the problem appears to be specifically related to point text frames. Hope that helps. I'll let you know when a fix is in place.

[LaurelL]

Me too. In May 2022. Never happened before. I typed 42nd and now it patterns 42nd all over the page. Future. Pretty crappy. 

[natlas27]

I am having the same issue.

[Bobmattphoto]

Did this ever get resolved? Had the same issue on a file today.

[Skeney]

I found resetting the character in the drop-down menu of the character window eliminated this problem.

[ybwm]

I'm having this issue too 😢 

[ThoughtNozzle]

It's now January of 2023 and this bug is still present in PSD 24.1.1, on the Mac. The text of one layer has repeated across the document, sometimes outlined in red.

BUT…

After I started turning layers and groups off and on, I saw that the repeats disappeared sometimes. After digging deeper, I found that certain layers with drop shadows or field blurs seemed to be related.

After I opened a smart object – a bitmap with transparency that I'd applied a Field Blur to at the Smart Object level – I found that the inner art had a drop shadow layer effect that was made hidden.

Once I deleted that layer (unneeded) effect and saved the smart object, I went back to the parent file and the repeats were gone.

To be clear, the smart object was on a completely different, unrelated layer, without any kind of link. It was also several layers below the type layer. And FWIW, I was working in Rosetta when it appeared – for the sake of a legacy plugin – but turned that off and reopened Phoshop without any change to the repeated text.

I hope this helps as a workaround for anyone seeing this bug… But Adobe still needs to fix it.

[ThoughtNozzle]

And of course, I spoke too soon. The issue keeps returning when I edit type layers. Masking can help, but doesn't always, and is obviously a kludge. I've tried changing typefaces, but no joy. 

What's up, Adobe?

[ThoughtNozzle]

--- FIXED FOR NOW WITH VERSION ROLLBACK ---

And yet another follow-up. I tried PSD 24.1.0 (earlier version) on a laptop I have, and the bug wasn't there. It is running Monterey and the main machine's running Ventura, so...

I rolled back the version of PSD on my main machine (Mac Studio) from 24.1.1. to 24.1.0, and the problem seems to be gone.

To fix the corrupted file, I just went into each smart object layer that was presenting a glitch and made some minor change, then saved. When I returned to the parent file, the glitch for that layer was gone.

So, rolling back and re-rendering each glitched layer does the trick.

Reporting bug to Adobe.

[ThoughtNozzle]

An intermittent bug – or similar – previously reported in community posts like this one:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/repeating-text-pattern-bug/td-p/10372...

...seems to be present in Photoshop 24.1.1 for Mac. Running Ventura 13.1, on Mac Studio M1 Ultra with 128 GB RAM.

Once type is composed – either point type or area – and the Enter key is hit, all or part of the text may appear repeated in various locations across the screen. The point size of the repeats does not necessarily match the original, seems to always be smaller, and can be as small as 2 pixels.

I found that some of the repeated text instances on a layer can take on the Layer Style of a completely separate type layer – for example, a stroke.

The repeated text – or string of pixels if really small – can appear on totally different layers, and sometimes (not always) be plocked by a layer mask on that layer.

At other times, the repeats act like a masking element themselves, and knock out the bitmap art on the affected layer (not the original text layer). This can happen even if there is no mask on the layer.

It seems as though the rendering of certain kinds of shadow effects my be involved; when I rasterized a field blur on one smart object layer, saved, and returned to the parent document, the glitch in that layer had cleared. Same with a drop shadow in another smart layer.

The fonts involved are of various kinds and origins, including SkyFonts or other SAAS type services, although not Type 1.

Rasterizing text layers can allow the glitched to me banually cleared, but my solid fix was to roll back to 24.1.0. Haven't seen the issue since. Re-opening the glitched document, then re-rendering each affected layer by making small changes can clear that layer's repeats.

I can temporarily reinstall 24.1.1 if you need screen grabs.

Thanks.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Hi @ThoughtNozzle have you gone into Preferences/Technology Preview and checked "Disable Native Canvas"?

[ThoughtNozzle]

Hi, Kevin…

Thanks for the tip…

I have not. Is this a confirmed fix? I'm hesitant to to reinstall and then roll back again if it doesn't work. (Just now getting my workspace back to normal.)

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

No a guarantee, but it's been known to help with display glitches in PS on the Mac.

You can install more than one version of Photoshop so you dont have to lose your current. When you install click to not remove older versions.

Also once in 24.1.1 - you can use Edit>Migrate Presets to bring your workspaces forward to the new version.

[ThoughtNozzle]

Well, that seems to have done it. I went back into deprecated versions of my PSD files, clicked in the text layers and hit Enter to re-render, and the artifacts disappeared. Thanks for that!

As for updating… the CC app used to present a dropdown for each Update button that gave options to remove old versions and migrate settings, but it no longer has that in the Updates list; the options are only available now when you have Auto Update turned on… and I generally do mine manually. The Updates list now only has the Update button itself. Used to be easy to know what ws happening.

Or did they move it to preferences for manual updates and I missed it?

Thanks again for the help.