Photoshop 21.1 Blank Camera Raw Dialog iMac Catalina 10.15.3

[Mauiboy]

When opening a Nikon raw file from Bridge, Photoshop 21.1 launches, then opens the Camera Raw dialog, as expected. But the Camera Raw window is corruptly displayed. All labels, drop down lists, and dialog content is blank. The image area shows the image being edited.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled twice, with a restart in between. I've cleared the preferences. I've tried turning off graphics acceleration. Nothing corrects this problem. See image.

When resizing the Camera Raw window, the dialog controls smear and do not repaint correctly.

I've uninstalled and now installed Photoshop v 20.0.8. It works fine. None of the display issues and it runs with graphics acceleration enabled. I'm running a brand new iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019) with Catalina 10.15.3 with all patches applied. This Mac has a Radeon Pro 575X 4 GB which is correctly recognized in the preferences.

Camera Raw dialog controls are not rendered.

[Just Shoot Me]

First for some reason you are using an OLDER version of ACR. The ACR version that is supposed to be installed with PS 21.1 is 12.2.

You seem to be using 11.4.1.

Open the CC DTA and Update whatever comes up as needing updating.

[Mauiboy]

Thanks for flagging that. As it turns out, CC DTA offers no additional updates. I’ve tried uninstalling all versions of Photoshop and reinstalling latest Photoshop.  I may have to uninstall Bridge and Lightroom Classic as well to get this cleaned up.

Would be great if I could force the CR12 update somehow with less effort.

Anyone know if there’s a way to do that?

In the below, I've downgraded Photoshop to 20.0.8, but Lightroom Classic and Bridge are fully up to date. What you see here is that no update is offered for Camera Raw (and no dots menu to select a different version):

[Just Shoot Me]

What version of Mac OS are you running?

[Mauiboy]

I’m running …

macOS Catalina 10.15.3 (19D76) 

...on...

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019)

3.1 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i5

8 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

Radeon Pro 575X 4 GB

[Just Shoot Me · Accepted solution]

Hate to say this but you might have to Unistall everything and reinstall.

When was the last time you restarted your Mac? Try that first. But if you still can't get the most current updates then it might be time to Clean Out Adobe software and reinstall.

[Mauiboy]

ugh. Not unexpected I guess.

I was offline for a few minutes. shutdown and installed additional memory, now 40GB. So I just restarted.

So...

Uninstall the CC apps, but not the CC tool itself. Then, reinstall everything, starting with Photoshop 21.1. 

Do you know what I should look for after uninstalling to be sure this was clean? Are there plists buried somewhere that might interfere with a clean install?

[Mauiboy]

Sorry, should have mentioned. Restarting did not fix the problem back when I had PS 21.1 loaded. And clearing the preferences also did not help. However, I did not restart between uninstalling and reinstalling.

[Mauiboy · Accepted solution]

Success!

Uninstalled Photoshop and Bridge, and Camera Raw was also uninstalled automatically. Restarted. Installed Photoshop 21.1. Camera Raw 12.2 was installed. Verified everything was copacetic and then installed Bridge.

All functioning now. Happy.

Very grateful to Just Shoot Me for flagging the problem.