Data Driven Variables photos won't preview

[rgall]

Running PS 22.5, Mac Mojave OS.

Inexplicably when using data driven variables to do background replacement on a about 20 images the photos being used won't preview.  Only placing the images on single background, and some text.  But the photos won't preivew.  I do see in the layer panel the thumbnail of the photo, but it's scrambled into horizontal lines, as if the image was corrupted.  I can cycle through the files in the data set list, but none of the photos will show in preview.  But when I export the data sets as files, the files are all created properly.  Not being able to preview means I have to export without knowing if the process is OK before I run the export.

Thanks,

[Bojan Živković]

I can not reproduce on Windows using 22.5.4 Photoshop version. It can be display driver or something similar. Have you tried to check/uncheck Preview in Variables or Apply Data Set dialogue?

[rgall]

Thanks for the reply, but I've tried those and that doesn't help.  I also updated to 22.5.4, and result is the same.  The files build OK using Export>Data Sets as Files.  I had been using the Data Driven Variables function fine up until last week.  Then, with not apparent cause, it just stopped doing the photo preview.  Text variables change according to the CSV data file, but the photos in the file do not.  All I see is the background with no photo, and in the layers panel the thumbnail of the photo is just a bunch of colored bars.  The colors change with each data set as I scroll through.  Looks like some sort of problem reading the photo file.  But in the end all export OK.  Just wish I could get the preview back to work.

[rgall]

Further on this issue.  I did some testing to see what the problem might be.  After trying several things to isolate the issue I decided to try a different file type.  The images I wanted to replace/add a background to were PNG.  I use PNG in order to preserve transparency and to reduce the file size.  I tried using single layer PSD, and presto, the preview worked as intended.  The downside is that a single layer PSD is still about 5x the size of the PNG.  The other benefit of using a single layer PSD is that the bounding box is the full size of the PSD image.  With a PNG the bounding box is reset to something rougly at the limits of the image you are working with.  Which in my case was a head shot on transparent background.  This is tricker (at least for me) to set the right replacement method.  Now if you use As Is it places the image exactly where I want it.

If anyone has a better method I'd love to know it.  I do a lot of large format work with athlete and other head shots, so working with smaller image sizes is helpful.  Until then I'll work in single layer PSD.

Hope this is helpful to anyone else having a similar problem.

Bob Gall

[Steve250754426c9g]

I am having the same problem. Importing a data set via variables won't display the full preview of all layers in my PSDs. I can see 2 layers: a background colour and a text later, but none of my graphics. Interestingly enough this problem is only occuring on my new 2021 M1 MacBook Pro. On my 2015 intel i5 iMac using the same version of Photoshop and all settings and preferences the same on both copies of Photoshop - all varibales in the data set disply perfectly fine in preview. And as per the OP, if I actually export the data set, it works fine. It's just super annoying that I can't check the data set before exporting or doing a small batch test run on the newer MacBook Pro.