Pictures suddenly look grainy in Photoshop

[danielm35938621]

I need your help, please

When I load my photos into photoshop, they look grainy and undetailed. It is very weird.

When I look at the camera raw filter, they look fine, like they should be!

The pictures have been edited on another pc with photoshop before (with the camera raw filter), but I never had something like that happen. Now it is happening on every picture that I load into Photoshop. I haven't found a solution and need a fix for it fast. Can you please help me out?

[danielm35938621]

Some more info: When I export the picture, everything is fine again. the resolution of this displayed picture is 1280x1080...so not that big. But it happens on bigger and smaller pictures as well.

[melissapiccone]

I can't tell the difference in your screenshots. Maybe the noise is showing up a little better in the PS view than the raw view, but really they look the same to me.

[danielm35938621]

But they are not the same, not even close. This might not be the best selected picture for showing the problem, so I will try again.

Here is the original picture:

And this is how it looks in photoshop:

When you look at the skin and the amount of grain in the picture I think that it is very visible, and it does not only bother me but affects my work in ps.

[Per Berntsen]

Check the Cache levels setting in Preferences > Performance.

When set to less than 4, it can make images appear grainy.

[danielm35938621]

I have checked that already. It is set to 4.

[D Fosse]

I agree - that doesn't look good at all. Something's definitely wrong here. You're even viewing at 100%, which is normally the way to avoid any artifacts and give the best possible display.

The only thing I can think of is the video driver. Can you update it? In the meantime, try to uncheck "use graphics processor" in preferences. Just as a test; not as a fix.

Also, just as a shot in the dark, check "legacy compositing" in preferences. I doubt that will do anything, but does no harm.

Does this happen with all file formats, or just PNG? What about PSD, TIFF?

[danielm35938621]

Yes, you're right. Weird. PSD and even JPG files are not affected. Only Png seems to be. Checking/Unchecking use graphics processor does not fix the issue for now. I will try to update my graphics driver, will do anything at this point. But can the driver be the issue? I mean, until today it just worked fine.

[danielm35938621]

Have updated the driver, it still does not work. It is so weird, because in the Camera Raw Filter tab, the picture gets displayed normal.

[danielm35938621 · Accepted solution]

I finally found the solution for this error and I will post it here in case someone googles it and has the same problem.

You have to go to the nvidia settings and find the 3D-Preferences tab (don't know how it is called exactly because my windows is in german). There you will find this:

Set it to "Sharpening off", and your pictures will be normal in Photoshop again. I do not know how this affects other applications, but at least Photoshop works fine for now.