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

[SamSmyth]

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

[SamSmyth]

Some additional relevant info to my case:

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

[Glenn 8675309]

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.

[SamSmyth]

@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]

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: 

[SamSmyth]

I understand about the Thumbs.db, and I suspect that they are not related to my issue. My rendering problems exist even when I have files that I have not saved.

My High Density Display was set to Automatic but I tried both 100% and 200% and both had the same bugs.

I'll attach two movies to show some of the problems I'm having (see attached). I'm leaning towards a problem with rendering, even though my graphic drivers are all up-to-date.

[Russell5E7B]

Did you solve this?  I have exactly the same problem.

[SamSmyth]

@Russell5E7B: I am sorry to say I'm still in the same boat.

I suspect it's a problem with my RTX 3070 video card because it's so new.

I'm at the point now where I'm trying to figure out how to create a support ticket because the product is almost unusable. It's very difficult to work with a multi-layer image when the layer previews are not showing)

What video card do you have?

There was an update in August, and I was hopeful, but instead, the update seems to cause a crash every time I close my "Photoshop Elements 2021 launcher" (ie. The window that shows up with tips and tricks before I click the Photoshop Elements 2021 or Adobe Premier Elements 2021).

[Russell5E7B]

My video card is nothing fancy, just the Intel 620 that came with my laptop (Dell XPS 13 9360).

The bug is still there, and it's really very frustrating.

[SamSmyth]

I have a Dell machine as well. A G5 that I bough in January. I wonder if there migh be a correlation with Dell and this Photoshop Elements Bug.

[SamSmyth]

I found this page to phone the company:

https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/phone.html

When I have a minute, I will do so.

[SamSmyth]

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.

[SamSmyth]

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.

[SamSmyth]

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.