Why is Photoshop distorting my RAW pictures?

[finv1995]

I have had this issue a few times now where my pictures show a huge distortion (the pink line) when opening the RAW / ARW file. Does anybody have any idea why this is happening and if it can be fixed? Some additional information:

- The JPG file is fine and does not show the distortion 

- I tested three versions of Photoshop including the latest (23.0.1)

- The distortion does not show in Lightroom or when converting the file to JPG

- The distortion is different between different attempts at opening it, but always around the same spot

- Seems to happen more often when shooting at low lighting so there's a possibility it's a problem with my camera (Sony A7iii)

[finv1995]

Some more information, I have my video card (RTX 2060) drivers updated to the latest version. In a thread that kind of resembled my problem the solution that worked was to disable the 'use graphics processor' option in the Camera Raw Preferences, but that did not work for me. 

[TheDigitalDog]

Looks like the raw is corrupted. The other thing to try is disabling GPU in preferences but when that goes 'bad', the preview looks far worse over the entire image. 

In Lightroom Classic, in specifically Develop at 1:1, you don't see it? 

[finv1995]

Thanks for the reply!

The problem does not occur in both Lightroom, Lightroom classic and when converting the ARW file to a JPG trough online tools. So since it only happens in Photoshop and nowhere else, I suspect it's a Photoshop problem and not because the file is corrupted? 

I also tried disabling GPU in both the RAW editor settings and the general Photoshop settings but that did not fix the problem. 

[TheDigitalDog]

In PS, go to Preferences > Technology Previews... and check "Disable Native Canvas" - then restart Photoshop. Better?

If not, recalibrate and build a new ICC display profile, the old one might be corrupted.

If you are using software/hardware for this task, be sure the software is set to build a matrix not LUT profile, Version 2 not Version 4 profile.

[finv1995]

I just tried opening the picture on an older laptop and it worked fine, so apparently it's an issue with my (only several months old) current laptop. 

Disable Native Canvas did not help. If I'm correct, the ICC display profile is related to the monitor, right? I tested out the laptop screen and 2 different external monitors and they all had the issue. 

[TheDigitalDog]

Yes, the display profile is related to that one laptop. I don't really think that's the case because usually the entire preview is affected. But you could try setting the display profile to something else (just temporary, select say sRGB) just to verify this. 

Do you see this if you zoom into that area at 1:1 (100%) in ACR? Do you see this if you turn OFF all the panels, especially those affecting lens profiles (optics). 

Can you save this raw, with all edits etc, as a DNG and upload to say Dropbox so others can examine it? 

[D Fosse]

You can see that lens correction has been applied, so this is apparently in the data (not the GPU).

The question is why it happens in ACR but not Lightroom. That's very odd, because the processing engines are identical. Are they corresponding versions? If ACR is version 14.0.1, Lightroom Classic should be version 11.0.1.

I suppose it could be a corrupt ACR cache. Clear it and try again.

[finv1995]

Thanks for replying! ACR is version 14.0.1 and Lightroom Classic, purging the cache did not fix the issue.