Large black (or white) box on top of the image in Photoshop (does not save to the file)

[jamesw12665621]

This has suddenly started - a black box (some times white )

appears over the top of the image & obscures what Im doing. Its not present when I save the file - only when Im trying to work on it. I cant see what Im doing to the image

Help !!

James

[2geedesign]

In PS go to file> preferences > performance. You should see a check box "Use graphics Processor". Uncheck that and restart PS to see if it makes any difference. I've tried that but so far I've not seen the problem occur but as it is random with me only time will tell!

[2geedesign]

I have tried this, so far the problem has not occurred but as it is a random occurance only time will tell.

[jamesw12665621]

I think this may be one for the tech guys at Adobe

James

[sandeeps16950791]

pls tell me now if u have solution for that like white or black box

I'm using iMac 2015 or its new

so its latest pls if u have any solution then send me massage pls pls pls

[jamesw12665621]

No solution on my 27" iMac (only 8 months old & running the latest OS)  - I wonder how many users this effects & if Adobe are aware of it ? Strange that it also happening on some Windows machines as well !!

James

[2geedesign]

It seems that this may be caused by a video card driver issue. Apparently on MacOS, these issues are common on MacOS 10.10, and Apple is working on solutions.

Did you try in PS go to file> preferences > performance. You should see a check box "Use graphics Processor". Uncheck that close down PS and then restart PS. Then go back and recheck the box "Use graphics Processor". Close down and then restart PS and see if it the problem persists. I've tried that and so far I've not seen the problem occur but as it is random with me only time will tell! I'm running Windows and all my drivers were up to date before the problem started so I'm thinking that maybe doing the above somehow "cleared" the conflict between PS and the graphics driver.

[jamesw12665621]

I went into preferences, then proformance & changed the advanced box to basic. Seemed to work. Thanks for your help. Much appreciated

James

[2geedesign]

Hi James

Good to hear. It would be interesting to see if the problem re-occurs if you reset back to "Advanced". As I said I did reset the performance parameters back to how they were and the problem hasn't re-occurred (yet!).

Ian

[2geedesign]

Well after 5 days of no problem the issue re-occurred again today. My GPU drivers are all up to date (updated through Nvida). I've turned off GPU usage so lets see how long it is before the problem re-occurs. Wish I could find a solution to this very annoying issue.

[jamesw12665621]

Try Purge under the Edit column - worked for me

James

[2geedesign]

Hi James

As in edit > purge > video cache?

Do you still have the "Graphics Processor Settings" still set to basic or have you reset it back to advanced?

Thanks

Ian

[jamesw12665621]

Still set to basic.

The problem occurs for me after I have been using PS for about an hour with some heavy processing using various plugins. A purge seems to cure it (for the moment).

[Chris Tarantino]

If it does come back for anyone, regardless of the GPU setting, check to see if you have animated zoom activated in your preferences. If its on, try turning it off, restart PS and see if that helps.

[jamesw12665621]

Hi - do you know what 'animated zoom' actually does ?

Thanks

James

[Chris Tarantino]

Yes. If you click and hold with the zoom tool or its keyboard equivalent the image continuously zooms in or out. This uses a lot

of cache and if you're on an under-powered video card it can tend to do what you are experiencing.

If you are seeing results with "Purging" it just might be the case as PS utilizes memory for certain things. History is a killer

so if you have your history states set high it can make the video zoom a GPU hog.

[jamesw12665621]

Makes a lot of sense - thanks for that.

Have a great weekend

James

[2geedesign]

Hi Chris

Thanks for the suggestion - I have just turned off "animated zoom activated", so lets see what happens. The problem with this issue is that it happens randomly so only time will tell if this has solved the problem. It seems to me however that there must be something happening within PS to cause this problem. It seems to me that if the video drivers are all up to date then it shouldn't matter what settings are selected within preferences - everything should work seamlessly.

Just out of interested what does "animated zoom activated" do?

[Chris Tarantino]

Hi Ian

See the explanation above to James.

But basically if you have a video card with 1 gig of VRAM and you are constantly choking out because of a lot of image changes PS has to remember those for the zooming process. Depending on the size of the file it can be an issue. If you have a video card with 2gigs or more you are less likely if ever to encounter something like the blocking. It has nothing to do with the drivers (although its good to keep them up to date) but more of the on board GPU VRAM and its throughput capabilities.

[2geedesign]

Hi Chris

Thanks for the explanation. I have the Nvidia GeForce GTX 600Ti video card which I believe has 2048 Mb GDDR5 Memory (which I assume is the same as the VRAM you reference) so I guess if I switch off the "animated zoom activated" this problem should now not occur. Would you also recommend using the "video cache purging" on a regular basis to further help the situation.

Thanks again for helping out - I really hate it when PS starts to play up!

[Chris Tarantino]

Hi Ian

Yes the VRAM is the GDDR5 memory. Old school terms...ha!

Because I don't know what your average file size is or what you are doing to manipulate these files I can only point out ways that should help mitigate the blocks. I have found that turning off that feature has success, as does anything else that taxes the AGP such as "flick panning".

Depending on which version of PS you have 2048 MB of memory on your GPU is pretty much a minimum for smooth usage of PS.

And it never hurts to using the purge function for the video cache.

[2geedesign]

Hi Chris

I am using Photoshop CC (2014) on the Adobe Photography plan. I use PS for post processing of my photography image files. Normally they start off as about 128Mb when brought into PS from ACR. After fairly basic processing - layers, levels, curves, sharpening etc. the file size typically increases to about 200 Mb max.

I've no idea what "flick panning" is but I see that I have it enabled - so I guess from you say it would do no harm to disable this function?

[Chris Tarantino]

Those file sizes are relatively small depending on what you have for RAM and scratch disc on your computer.

Flick panning is generally useful if you are zoomed in quite a bit on your images and just "flick" with the curser to make the image

slide quickly. Kind of like you are throwing it across the screen. For really zoomed in  images it beats click and drag to get around

but now that the shortcut key "H" allows you to just jump to a spot... well its all personal taste.

If you want to KEEP all of the functions you can always go in and change the AGP settings under the "performance" setting in the preferences. Try turning off OpenCL, or using the Basic settings etc.

With images that are 200MB max and just basic adjustment curves you shouldn't be seeing these squares.

[2geedesign]

I did think that my workflow shouldn't cause PS any issues - I have 64Gb Ram installed with 42Gb allocated to PS. The scratch disc currently shows 2350Gb free space.

This problem only started last weekend - prior to then I've never had an issue since buying my new computer and signing up with Adobe (13 months ago). It isn't a frequent occurance so from what you have explained it seems that by switching off the "animated zoom activated", disabling "flick panning" and regularly purging the video cache I should avoid it happening. I'm only a keen amateur photographer so I don't rely on PS for my living but as I said I hate it when PS "misbehaves" and I don't know why. But with your help you have explained the probable cause and solution - so, once again, many thanks for taking the time to help me out.

Cheers

Ian

[2geedesign]

Well, even after switching off the "animated zoom activated", disabling "flick panning" and regularly purging the video cache the problem has just re-occurred - so any more suggestions would be much appreciated.

[Farrellart]

I would try an earlier version of Photoshop (trial) from adobe.com to rule out any bugs in CC2014. If it still occurs can you try rolling back the video card drivers on a mac ( you can in windows, so I assume this is possible )?

Adobe should implement a rollback system to it's updates. Personally I don't keep the drivers and software up to date as we are basically beta testers and if profits are affected by a buggy update, that can cause missed deadlines and damage to reputation. Just because something is up to date does not mean it is stable.