Document Window Visual Glitch

Hi @daniellieske quick question - have you tried uninstalling the third party color picker completely and see if the issue occurs?

@daniellieske 

Have you tried disabling your GPU?

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/troubleshoot-gpu-graphics-card.html#multiple-gpus

Also, curious if you see the same thing in Ps Beta, you can download it and see if this might be an issue that is fixed in the upcoming release.

Thank YOU, Cory, for sticking with me and my strange problem!

I tried changing the setting you suggested, but to no effect.

Thank you for the update and info @daniellieske 

Go to Preferences > Technology Previews... and check "Disable Native Canvas" - then restart Photoshop. Does the problem still occur? 

Dear Cory,

It took me a while to find a good moment to perform the suggested reset of my Photoshop preferences. I started a clean version of Photoshop and the problem still persists. I've recorded another video to once again illustrate the effect, now in a vanilla Photoshop 24.4.1: https://wormworldsaga.com/PSWindowFlicker_02.mp4

In the video you can see how I:

1. Paint in a document without touching any palette before.

2. Paint after touching the Properties palette (notice the document window AND application window top right corner icon flicker)
3. Paint after touching the Library palette (notice the lag of the brush and the application window top right corner icons NOT flickering).

Please note that the soft shadow of the document window is also flickering, which adds to the annoyance. I'd like to point out, that the previous version of Photoshop (23.5.5.) does not display a soft shadow around the docoment window at all. For me that indicates that the new Photoshop version handles document windows differently and that might be connected to the whole issue. 

Thank you @daniellieske have you tried to reinstall a clean set of prefs?

Let's make sure we're in a default state and there are no stale settings somewhere: 

Restore your preferences using this manual method:  

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html#Manually  

Does it work correctly? 

If that doesn't solve it, you can quit Photoshop and put the Settings folder back. 

Update: “Older GPU mode (pre 2016)” does not change anything.

I have to correct myself: the Color palette actually does not trigger the effect. Other palettes like History, Actions, Brushes, Layers, Channels, Paths, Info, Tool Presets and Brush Settings are also not causing the issue. Palettes that DO cause the issue are (not a complete list): Library, Properties, Characters, Styles.

I'm investigating as I write this and I'm making an interesting observation: All palettes that cause the issue seem to have pulldown menues as a common element. After understanding that, I tried the pulldown menue in the Layers palette and this DOES cause the issue although normal layer selecting in that palette does not cause the problem. 

So, my best guess is that there's a problem with certain UI elements and how they are opened. Presumably in a way that draws the focus away from Photoshop and from that point on constantly switches between the document window and whatever app is in focus when I'm not clicking into the document window. I can't quite believe that I'm the only one having this issue, to be honest.  

Thank you for the update @daniellieske 

Go to Preferences > Technology Previews... and enable “Older GPU mode (pre 2016)” - Restart Photoshop. Does the problem persist?

Dear Cory, 

first I thought that the problem would be exclusive to the third party panels I'm using and I actually contacted the publisher of the tools about the issue. However, he could not replicate my problem and I quickly switched back to an older version of Photoshop to solve the issue for me. After investigating the issue further today, I noticed that the issue is also caused by native Photoshop palettes. I haven't tested all the palettes but it happens at least with the Library palette (which also causes the horrible brush lag) and also the Properties palette and the Color Palette. Curiously, the latter two don't cause brush lag, only the window flickering. In these experiments, the third party extensions were disabled and Photoshop was freshly started.

Anyway, thanks for reacting to my post and I hope I can help to find and/or resolve the source of this issue. I've attached my system info as a text file to my original post.

Greetings, 

DanieL