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Participating Frequently
August 18, 2021
Question

Rendering bugs - Layer panel previews not rendering and selection not appearing after mouse release.

  • August 18, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 2297 views

Hello,

 

I tried to use Photoshop elements yesterday and I noted that the behavior of the application  has changed.

 

01.

At various times the thumbnails in the layers panel do not render - they just appear as they default grey and white checkers even though the layer has objects that should be in the preview. Cutting some of the layers sometimes forces a render of the preview.

 

02.

I every time I attempt to make a selection with any tool the marching ants around the selection disappear. I can see my selection as I'm making it, but when I release the mouse, no selection is visible in the image (even though it *did* creation the selection). The selection appears if I flip back and forth to another image window. When I finally do see the selection, the ants are not moving, the ants are dead.

 

I'm really hoping that there is an easy fix for this because it's very hard to work when I cannot see my selections and my layer previews.

 

I have tried the 'reset my preferences' solution, but the bugs still persist. I've also turned off the setting that uses my graphics card in the settings.

 

I have a nvidia gtx 3070 graphics card if that might be relevant information.

 

Notice two things about my attached image:

A. My selection only shows 'outside' of my image (the ants are *not* moving).

B. The layer preview pane is *not* reflecting what I painted.

 

Thanks.

 

Sam Smyth

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

SamSmythAuthor
Participating Frequently
November 2, 2021

After a few months there has been no progress on this bug. The product is almost unusable. I bought it in March of this year, and it worked for a few months, but then I started to get the bugs I showed in my videos.

 

Unless someone has any insight to offer me, I'm going to have to phone the company and see if they can either find a fix for the bug, or give me a refund for an unusable product. I really love Photoshop/elements, but it's painful to use with the broken functionality.

SamSmythAuthor
Participating Frequently
December 6, 2021

I haven't contacted support yet, but the bugs are still present.

I noticed today that if I make my image size 106pixels by 106pixels at 72dpi, then my Layer thumbnails *do* functdion properly. However, when my image goes to  107pixels by 107pixels the Layer Thumbnails break when I start to paint on the layer.

 

Part of my workflow should *not* invove having to cut a piece of out of each layer, and then undoing it, so I can manually force a refresh of the layer thumnails. Nor should it inclue a flipping back and forth between two images if I want to see my selection.

SamSmythAuthor
Participating Frequently
December 11, 2022

So, I contacted support a few months ago. I provided them some debugging information.

I am constantly checking to see if my problem has been resolved, and after a year and a half, it has.

 

I suspect that it was an NVIDIA driver update for my gtx 3070 that fixed the problem, as my version of Adobe Photoshop Elements has not changed since last summer.

Glenn 8675309
Brainiac
August 18, 2021

Nice video card!

Try this, then restart the program.

IF THAT DOESN'T WORK:

You can also search your HDD for all instances of .DS_STORE, and delete them- it's a mac file that isn't used by windows and sometimes interfers with thumbnail display.  If you've never done deleted any it's easy peasy to have 200-300 of these .ds_store files.

 

SamSmythAuthor
Participating Frequently
August 19, 2021

@Glenn 8675309Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately, I've just tried both of your suggestions and my problems still exist.

 

I've also tried:

01. uninstalling and reinstalling PE 2021

02. switching my Nvidia drivers from Game Ready Driver to the Studio Driver.

 

If anyone has any tips, or is experiencing the same behavior, please let me know.

Glenn 8675309
Brainiac
August 19, 2021

Next idea: Search your photoshop elements directories for this file THUMBS.DB and delete them.  Windows recreates them automatically as needed.  They are used to help display thumbnails. 

Also do what the arrow is pointing to: 

SamSmythAuthor
Participating Frequently
August 18, 2021

Some additional relevant info to my case:

- Adobe Photoshop Elements Version: 19.0 (20210304.m.156367) x64
- Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit