Blown out Lighting Effects filter, artifacting

[joshual92785713]

I'm having an issue with the Lighting Effects filter (Filter > Render > Lighting Effects). Instead of rendering the lighting effects, Photoshop just looks to be blowing out the whites in the affected area and spitting out lots of pixelated artifacting. The appearance is almost like an embossed effect without antialiasing. It shows in the preview and in the rendered result. Example:

Stock image:

Light Effects applied:

I've tried about a dozen different files, adjusting all of the Lighting Effects sliders, switching off/on Graphics Processor, rebooting, uninstall/reinstall of Photoshop. Nothing has helped. Below is a bit of my system info:

• Adobe Photoshop Version 21.0.1 20191106.r.47 2019/11/06: 3152b481f18 x64
• Mac OS 10.15.1
• Intel CPU Family:6, Model:12, Stepping:3 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX2
• Physical processor count: 4
• Processor speed: 3500 MHz
• Built-in memory: 8192 MB
• Free memory: 3876 MB
• Memory available to Photoshop: 6410 MB

[joshual92785713 · Accepted solution]

So I have no idea why this worked, but it did.

Enable Legacy Composting in Performance preferences; reboot PS; switch texture channels in the Lighting Effects dialog from None, to any color, back to None again. Artifacting is gone and everything is rendering as it should be.

[Chuck Uebele]

There are still issues with the new compositing engine. From what I've observed with the bugs, you need the old Compositing to have the lighting effects work properly. But switching isn't enough. You have to force PS to recomposite the layer to have the change happen. The lighting effects now uses the 3D environment to render, so you have to get it to run the filter again for the change to show. Hope that makes sense.