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Anonymous

Answered

could not initialize photoshop because of a problem using the adobe color engine (Win 7)

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
January 5, 2011
10 replies
28622 views

Was running the lastest version of Photoshop CS5 and added a second quad graphics card and 4 more monitors. Now PS will not start and I get the error message "could not initialize photoshop because of a problem using the adobe color engine."
Computer has 2 NIVDIA Quadro4 NVS420 graphics boards with 8 Samsung SyncMaster 1920x1080 monitors. If I disable 4 of the monitors CS5 starts normally. I do not have to remove the added graphics card. When I extend the desktop again to all 8 monitors I get the error above.

How do I trouble-shoot the problem? Is it Photoshop, NIVDIA or Windows 7?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Chris Cox

Either a display profile is corrupt (in a way we haven't seen before), or the OS color engine is returning bad data about the installed profiles and displays.

My guess is that it's the OS and displays.

That could be a driver problem, but I suspect it's the OS.

8mmfilm

Participant

I've had this problem on one monitor. It was working fine before

Adam Jerugim

Community Manager

If you're experiencing this specific issue (Photoshop not launching when > 6 monitors are connected to your system) and would like to help us test a fix, please send me an email to my non-work account: travlin_adam at yahoo dot com

Thanks,

Adam

J

JDR48

Participant

What is the status of this multi-monitor-bug-fix effort now? I just set up 8-monitors only to find my Photoshop failing out of the gates.

David

Noel Carboni

Legend

TheGoodTech wrote:
I just set up 8-monitors

I want to be you.

I wonder how many people in the world are using more than 6 monitors. Not that many I bet.

-Noel

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Anonymous

Switching the number of monitors which are enabled on my desktop is very painful. I've tried a few different utilities to save positions of the monitors, icons and other configuration parameters with no luck. I cue up my PS jobs as much as possible to avoid going through the pain of changing my desktop. I then often find myself leaving monitors off until the pain of the reduced desktop space exceeds the pain of switching the monitors back on.

I hope this is resolved soon.

ben-erwin

Known Participant

I too have ATI cards and 7 (sometimes 8 when I turn the HD TV on as a monitor) and experience the same issue.
So, it's not an NVIDIA issue, it's not a driver or Windows 7 issue, it's an Adobe not testing it's product on upwards of 6 monitors issue.

I recently had an issue with Illustrator not running on more than 3 monitors, but that was resolved by making Display 1 my primary display.
This is a straight up Adobe bug.

I keep photoshop open all day so having one of my monitors turned off so photoshop work is mor than annoying, it's limiting and inconvenient.
I don't have 7 monitors and CS5 so I can't enjoy both.

Adobe, patch this, and push it down as an update, please.

ben-erwin

Known Participant

Adding> I just discoved that if you turn off any monitors above the sixth, then load photoshop, then turn back on the seventh, Photoshop will crash.

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andrewpweyrich

Participating Frequently

Thanks for posting your experience Ben. Welcome to the impaired Adobe club :). Yea - I have a workstation that runs 8 monitors and I really do use all 8 monitors at times. There have been motherboards with 3 PCI-e slots for maybe 4 years now - and ATI has had their eyefinity technology out for 2 years enabling 3-6 monitors PER VIDEO CARD.

It boggles my mind that Adobe has let its flagship product sit like this for at least 2 years where you cannot use it. One Adobe guy did respond to this thread and his response was 'we are looking into it - why are you using more than 6 monitors?' Really? Maybe because I own your Master Collection and there are enough apps in there to fill up more than 6 - how about that answer!

And Photoshop is my most used Adobe app - I refused to get rid of my two monitors to use Photoshop so I typically just leave them off on a daily basis so I don't have to keep turning them on and off - but it is frustrating when I need to use all 8 montiors.

ADOBE IF YOU ARE LISTENING - PLEASE FIX THIS IN MAINTENANCE RELEASE 12.05. You didn't in maintenance release 12.04 - us multi-monitor people need Photoshop back!

Andrew

A

Anonymous

On my 8 monitor system described above, I updated Photoshop to version 12.0.4. PS CS5 still fails to start due to the Adobe Color Engine problem also described previously.

The only work around I have found is:

Disable 2 monitors so only 6 are active

Start PS CS5

You can't re-enable the 2 additional monitors until you exit out of PS. If I do it crashes.

Disabling monitors is pretty messy. If I find a clean way to do this I will post it also.

A

andrewpweyrich

Participating Frequently

thanks Ron. i hve found the same thing. i wish Adobe would do an update to fix this!

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andrewpweyrich

Participating Frequently

Has anyone figured out a solution to this besides updating drivers? I have 7 monitors and when I disable 1 and go back to 6 monitors - it works fine.....but it is annoying - oh and I have ATI cards....

Chris Cox

Legend

We're still investigating a problem with an OS API when 6 or more displays are connected.

A

andrewpweyrich

Participating Frequently

An even better picture of all 10 monitors on with Photoshop running in the middle.

I dont know why it keeps making my picture black and white but you get the idea...

M

Michael_Verheyden

Participant

Well, not exactly a full solution yet (at least for my setup), but I am certain now that this issue is (mostly) caused by nVidia's drivers. You may be able to fix your setup by simply installing the latest drivers for your NVS420 cards (266.45 for Win 7/64 rel. 01/12/2011).

Since you are using two identical cards, this could do the trick.

Caveats - Make sure you:

1. Select Custom Install, the Express Install will most likely not work properly.
2. Unselect the Audio Driver (if available), the nVidia HD(MI) Audio driver could
screw up your speech recognition (if you use it) or other audio software - it did for me.
3. Select Clean Install. If you don't, files like C:\Windows\System32\drivers\nvlddmkm.sys
and several other driver related files will not be overwritten, causing all sorts of neat effects.
4. After the Install is complete, reboot your system whether the Installer prompts you or not.

After testing various configurations, disabling two - six of my eight monitors I am at this point:

I am now using nVidia's lastest and greatest piece of crap (read driver), version 266.58, released just two days ago. After an initial snag with maximized windows extending to the bottom of the main monitor (underneath the taskbar), a re-install & reboot solved that issue.

All three driver versions tested (260.89, 260.99, 266.58) now allow me to start PhotoShop without any problems; providing I first disable the two monitors fed by my onboard graphics (nVidia 780a based), leaving me with six monitors connected to three GTS-450 cards. I can even re-enable the two other monitors once the program is open, and it continues to work fine. However, I must disconnect them again for the next start of PhotoShop.

On an interesting side note:

After disabling six monitors (leaving only two on a GTS-450), I was also able to open and run SoundBooth CS5, which previously would not open, citing the audio driver as the problem. After sucessfully starting SoundBooth I could re-enable all six other monitors (incl. onboards),

and that program now opens and works fine with all 8 monitors connected. [ODD !!!]

Other than Adobe Software, I've had only one other issue with my setup:

When playing online poker at PokerStars, occasionally and quite randomly one of multiple tables would freeze up. I'll try disabling the two onboard monitors for that program as well to see whether the random freezes stop.

Overall, while I think that Adobe produces fine software and nVidia has been in need of an overhaul for quite some time now, I also think that Adobe and nVidia software engineers need to work more closely together to ensure that problems like this don't arise in the first place after a product has been released to the public. IMHO, this is avoidable!

PS:

Here's a link to a great tool for multiple monitors, Display Fusion by Binary Fortress.

I use the free version, it allows you to do cool things like have individual wallpapers for all

your monitors, or stretch a single image across all monitors. With the Pro Version ($25),

you can also add individually customizable taskbars to each monitor, and a lot more.

http://www.displayfusion.com/

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Anonymous

The NVS420 driver I had before was 259.81 dated 8-2-2010. I updated to 266.45 has you described below including Clean Install.

After a re-boot I still get the error, Could not initialize Photoshop because of a problem using the Adobe Color Engine.

Before the error I also get the following message several times, "The monitor profile "Samsung - Natural Color Pro 1.0 ICM" appears to be defective. Please rerun your monitor calibration software.

In the NIVIDIA Control Panel I tried "Use NIVIDIA settings" and "Other applications control the color settings" but still get both errors above.

Selected Control Panel - Display - Screen Resolution - Advanced settings then on the Color Management tab clicked Color Management

Under All Profiles tab removed "Samsung - Natural Color Pro 1.0 ICM (file SM2233SB.icm). Now the second error is gone but the first error is still there so I'm still stuck with Photoshop not working.

Only 1 monitor, the main windows display or default windows monitor had a ICC Profile associated with it, "sRGB display profile with display hardware configuration data derived from calibration (default)" (file CalibratedDisplayProfile-15.icc). I deleted this also even though there was no error message because Photoshop tries to start on this monitor. This also did not prevent the error.

I tried changing the main windows display to be the same display that the BIOS boot shows up on and this also did not correct the problem.

Of course if I making any progress I will let you know.

A

Anonymous

Installed the latest Nvidia drivers 267.17 dated March 2, 2011.

Photoshop still crashes on start up with the same color engine error described above.

M

Michael_Verheyden

Participant

My 8 monitor system was running PhotoShop fine with 3 nVidia based GTS250 cards

plus onboard graphics. (No SLI Bridge installed) Since I rebuilt my machine last month,

ugrading my drive systems, as well upgrading all three graphics cards to GTS450s,

I am currently having the same issue with PhotoShop.

I'll post again if I find a solution; please do the same.

PS: If your version of the nVidia control panel still has a checkbox for SLI, make sure

it is unchecked. Meanwhile I'll try disabling all but two monitors to see whether I

can get PhotoShop to crank over. If it does, I may just have to install the previous

nVidia driver (260.89 vs. the newer 260.99), in which the control panel did have a

checkbox for SLI, if my memory serves me right. Although none of that should

really matter as long as no physical SLI Bridge is installed.

PhotoShop CS5 Extended

Windows 7 Ultimate - 64bit

& a ton of hardware (almost literally)

Chris CoxCorrect answer

Legend

Either a display profile is corrupt (in a way we haven't seen before), or the OS color engine is returning bad data about the installed profiles and displays.

My guess is that it's the OS and displays.

That could be a driver problem, but I suspect it's the OS.

A

Anonymous

Hi,

PS does not support SLI.

A

Anonymous

There are 4 Quadro NVS 420 reported for both graphics cards. Viewing System Topology in the NIVIDIA Control Panel shows Disabled: SLI Multi View for all of them.

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