Why are the Select Color Range options not showing?

[Allen Birnbach]

Usually when I use Select Color Range, a dialog box opens with a preview of the image, and eyedroppers to select, and add to selection.  That is not happening.  When I use the tool from the toolbar, the image displayed is mostly black, and there are not options to use the eydropper.  I've tried several images, and the same thing happens with all of them.  This was worklng normally yesterday, buI did upgrade Photoshop to the lastest version yesterday afternoon.

I'm working in v26.3.0 on a Mac Studio M2 Max, OS 14.2.1

[D Fosse]

There is no Select > Color Range in the toolbar. You need to go to the Select menu. Which one do you mean?

[Allen Birnbach]

Sorry if that wasn't clear.   I failed to enter the > between Select and Color Range in my post but yes, I'm choosing Select from the Toolbar, and then selecting Color Range from the dropdown menu. 

[D Fosse]

You keep saying toolbar, but apparently you mean the menu. Sorry to be pedantic, but we need to know what we're talking about.

Can you show a screenshot? Is the whole dialog blank?

[Allen Birnbach]

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

What that looks like to me is that Color Range has opened, and is displaying the image as Selection Preview: Grayscale. The only thing missing is the Color Range dialog box, so my guess is that the Color Range dialog box is open, but off screen.

As to whether that’s true…what happens after you see what is shown in your screen shot? Can you still use the rest of Photoshop, or other tools/menus blocked until you do something else?

Also, have there been any changes to your Mac’s display setup lately, such as attaching/detaching external displays, changing the display resolution, or changing Spaces settings?

If the Color Range dialog box is open but off screen, one thing that might help that is to reset Photoshop preferences. 

[Allen Birnbach]

Thank you Conrad.  It appears that the problem was my Wacom monitor that I use as my second display and use for retouching.  It must be coming to the end of its life, and it has been intermittently stopped working.  When I reported the problem I had turned the monitor off, thinking that would eliminate that as a source of the problem.  But based on your comment,  I also pulled the cable connecting it to my Mac Studio, and now the Color Range dialog is showing.  Thank you!

[Conrad_C]

OK, that makes sense. Thanks for letting us know!

Yes, on macOS I have often found that macOS still thinks an external display is connected even though the display is powered off, if the cable is still connected.

[LAMY2017]

Usually when I use Select Color Range, a dialog box opens with a preview of the image, and eyedroppers to select, and add to selection.  That is not happening.  

...

This was working normally yesterday, buI did upgrade Photoshop to the lastest version yesterday afternoon.

I'm working in v26.3.0 on a Mac Studio M2 Max, OS 14.2.1

By Allen Birnbach

See my attachment for what the Select Color Range is supposed to look like.

For the third time, Creative Cloud has offered an update for Ps 26.3.

This time:

What's new in Photoshop
• This update introduces an enhanced Frame tool and provides additional bug fixes and performance updates.

(as with the previous two times)
• Bug fixes and improvements for the Substance 3D Viewer (Beta) integration.

(this is different from the previous updates to v26.3)

I'm just pointing out the sloppy versioning. It's circumstantial evidence that someone at Adobe is rushing out these updates without incrementing the version number. I've been advised as recently as this week to just blow off updating if the version number is the same as the previous release. But these version 26.3s are not the same; not mistakenly rereleased; and contain new functionality. In Allen's case, the third update to v26.3 broke at least one tool.