Images Won't Open Correctly After Installing Beta

[John Ellenberger]

Roughly around the time I installed the Beta I began having a serious problem where the color table system system seems to be corrupt and I can't even get Photoshop to give me the default B&W colors--pressing on the default gets me black and dark green.  If I open a .psd created on my other desktop I just get sold blue with a few highlights showing through.  Basically it's unusable.  I have updated the OS, updated the Nvidia drivers and updated all the Adobe apps.  Since the same thing happens with the Windows default  photo viewer I suspect something is bad at the OS (or hardware level?).  I basically can't use the machine for images but video (Premiere, etc.) is working fine.  I have no idea how to get this fixed.

A screen shot of an open .psd file that I created on my other desktop is attached.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

Hi @John Ellenberger it looks like a corrupted monitor profile. Try resetting your Photoshop preferences manually.
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html#reset-preferences

If that does not resolve, go to Edit>Color Settings and change your Color Profile.

[John Ellenberger]

Sorry none of them had any impact on the problem. I still have an almost
all bright green palette that won't change. I think this problem is
outside the app. Is there some NVIDIA or Windooz diagnostic I can run to
see if there's a lower level issue?

[Per Berntsen]

If you have HDR enabled in Windows display settings (HD settings), try disabling it.

[John Ellenberger]

Display settings say "HDR unsupported" so its not on.

[John Ellenberger]

In addition I have tried to turn off the Spyder color calibration.  Reset the NVIDIA color settings.  Looked at the Windooz display settings.  Nothing has any impact on the problem.  Opening image files in Photoshop or even the Windows Photo Viewer gets an all blue image.  Strangely if I open a .psd file created on my other desktop it opens correctly in AI but in Photoshop I get the "embedded color profile does not match RGB working space but none of the options result in a valid display of the image.  The color subsystem is all bright green and you can't set colors at all.

[D Fosse]

Obvious question: have you uninstalled the beta?

[John Ellenberger]

Just did that per your suggestion and it had no impact. The reason I said
"round the time I installed the Beta" is that enough things change on this
heavily used desktop that I can't be sure when exactly the problem was
triggered. For example in the same timeframe my boot SSD was filling up
and I had to clone my boot drive to a larger SSD which I guess suggests its
time to run the good old Windooz "fix corrupt system files" utility.

Just did a *sfc /scannow *and it found no corrupt system files.

Running out of ideas.

[John Ellenberger]

Ran all the 2D and 3D benchmarks on the NVIDIA card and the Direct X diagnostics and it doesn't appear to be a problem with the graphics card.

[Per Berntsen]

Have you tried to disable the GPU in Preferences > Performance?

[John Ellenberger]

No I can try that but since the same thing is happening in all the 2D image applications I would not expect that to make a difference.  I checked the NVIDIA hardware and it seems to pass the tests that I could dig up.  I am next going to try a "Clean Boot" which turns off most of the drivers and services to see if the problem still exists.  Beyond that I guess I can disable the NVIDIA and boot with the onboard graphics but thats going to be tricky since I am currently plugged in to the Displayport on the NVIDIA.   What's weird is that the machine blasts through thge Perfmark graphics test suite (and DirectX) with no problems.  Somethings corrupted somewhere.  Meanwhile I guess the machine in the basement is my only 2D graphics box.

[Per Berntsen]

You could try to disable hardware acceleration in Windows, which should disable the GPU in Photos as well.

If that fixes the issue in Photoshop as well as in Photos, maybe your graphics card is defective in some way.

I don't know much about hardware, just a guess ...

[John Ellenberger]

I just tried disabling GPU acceleration at the Windows setting level an the problem was still there.  Going to have to do a clean boot and pick through the various flotsam floating around the system at runtime.  Come to think of it Adobe has 15 or more "helpers" running in the background.  That might be a place to start in fact.

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

Come to think of it Adobe has 15 or more "helpers" running in the background.  That might be a place to start in fact.

By @John Ellenberger

I can tell you with 100% certainty that this is not the problem.

This still looks very much like the GPU to me. Even if you have turned off all GPU acceleration and GPU processing, the GPU is still putting things up on screen.

Uninstall the driver and do a clean install of a new driver. The Nvidia "clean install" option should remove all traces of the old driver.

Also make sure to uncheck all the extra components in the driver package. You don't need any of it. Just install the base driver.

Oh, one more thing: it could also be a damaged/corrupt monitor profile. Run your Spyder again. Note that this isn't about the calibration tables, it's about the icc profile made by the Spyder software after it's finished calibrating the screen. Those are two different things.

[John Ellenberger]

Thank you thank you!   Ran the DDU clean up / reinstall.   After it finished installing an older NVIDIA driver things were back.  I'm a little reluctant to update to the latest Studio driver.   Any advice on that?

[D Fosse]

You know what they say: never split a winning team. If it works well, leave it.

You may need to update at a later point, but for now, you'll be fine. You basically update when things stop working as they should. I know Adobe recommends six months, but that's a general advice to let people know they shouldn't let it go too long.