Last active image turns blank gray

[Rick Meikle]

I may not be searching with the right words, but I can find no trace of this problem in the Photoshop community. When I have multiple images open, clicking into one of them makes the previously active window go blank gray immediately. (This is not grayscale. It is solid gray.) Clicking back into that window does not fix it. Making it redraw does (e.g., moving the window or any file action). Clicking back and forth between two windows, when one of them is blank gray, simply alternatives which one is blank gray. There may be a correlation with layers and/or different color spaces (sRGB vs Adobe RGB), but I can’t pin it down, and it’s just a likely a red herring. I’m running Photoshop 25.0.0 on a Mac mini M2 Pro and Sonoma. The problem has been present since acquiring the Mac mini this past spring, first running Ventura and now Sonoma, and has persisted through each version and update of Photoshop. The problem has never occurred on my 2010 Mac Pro running Mojave. I looked into the GPU settings, but nothing appeared to be a candidate.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer · Accepted solution]

Hi @Rick Meikle this is a noted issue when running Sonoma. Try going to PS Settings/Technology Preview and check "Disable Native Canvas" and relaunch PS.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/screen-flickering-stretching-images-when-tab...

[Rick Meikle]

Awesome, Kevin! Thanks so much! Yes, that did the trick. Oddly, it wasn't flicker or stretch in the slightest, and the affected image(s) never went black. (Hence, my futility at finding the post.) But "Disable Native Canvas" appears to cure all. The problem was also present in Ventura. I leapfrogged from Mojave (on Intel) to Ventura/Sonoma (on Apple Silicon) this year, and there have been various strange defects, some more pernicious than others. For example, in InDesign, GPU Performance was off by default and had to be enabled to fix a problem where any kind of drag-selecting of objects or text caused the item(s) to disappear. One would hope that Adobe (and/or Apple) would fix problems reasonably soon after they are revealed, but it's been hit-or-miss since the beginning in the 80s.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Yes there is something wrong with Sonoma accessing the Mac GPU cards. It's pretty heavily noted in the Apple forums.

[Rick Meikle]

Thanks again. I searched quite a bit using various terms, but could find nothing relevant to my particular problem. I gather that GPU issues show up in different ways for different users. I would not have connected the "native canvas" (whatever that is) with a GPU problem, nor with the problem I reported. It was a problem in Ventura, too, not just Sonoma, but I lived with it when initial searches of this forum were fruitless. I finally made my own post, which is why contributors such as yourself keep having to supply the same solution over and over.

[SteFas]

The gray canvas issue is happening to me for the first time, and I can report the "Deactivate Native Canvas" setting has been removed in PS 2024 (v25.1.0).

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@SteFas update your Sonoma to 14.1

[SteFas]

It is 14.1. Running a 27" iMac 2019 with Intel 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel i9. Several other Photoshop issues are occuring I won't go in to on this thread (tools and floating windows), but Photoshop 2023 is stable and my current workaround.