Photoshop 2017 "Select and Mask Issue"

[TonyHallsworth]

Hi, since upgrading to 2017, I have noticed that the "Select & Mask" tool keeps freezing. This occurs, if I use the menu to select the tool and start to mask an object.

If I do the same but first of all use the select tool roughly and the click on the Select and mask bar at the top of the screen, it works fine.

I am using 32Gig ram with a very fast 8 core processor and a 4 Gig ram graphic card, so I do not expect crashes and usually do not get them.

I have tried to use the select and mask through the menu 11 times so far and every time it has crashed.

Any ideas?

I have used Photoshop for 22 years............

TonyH

[JJMack]

When it freezes do you need to terminate cc 2017?  I see some lag at times. My machine is only 2GHz. What OS do you have.

[Terri_Stevens]

Sounds like a graphics card issue, Tony. Is it an AMD? You could try disabling the GPU in the performance section of 'Preferences', but this will impact the whole of Photoshop and compromise performance. If you have a selection tool active then the Select and Mask button on the toolbar is active even without a selection. Does this also cause a crash?

As a little test go to the 'select' menu and hold down shift while clicking the Select and Mask option. This will bring up the old 'Refine Edge' module which unless Adobe have re-engineered it, does not use GPU acceleration like Select and Mask does. If that dialog works without causing a freeze or a crash then that strongly indicates a problem with your graphics cards driver and GPU Acceleration.

[smurphy2342]

I just posted a similar question because a search on this topic didn't come up when searching Adobe Forum directly but did when I did a google search.

Anyways, it totally appears to be the graphics processor causing the issue.  I did as you mentioned above and Shift-clicked on "Select and Mask..." in the Select menu and it brought up the old version without issue.  So I then went into Preferences > Performance and turned off the Use Graphics Processor option.  The new Select and Mask worked fine after that change. 

So, it appears that Photoshop doesn't like this processor configuration?  Would prefer to have it work with GPU acceleration.

This is what I'm using:

MacBook Pro (mid-2015)

2.8 GHz Intel Core i7

AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2048MB

16GB RAM

1 - 27" Apple Thunderbolt Display

1 - 23" Apple Cinema HD Display

[smurphy2342]

After a little more research it appears to specifically be the "Use OpenCL" option within the GPU Advanced options.  Turning this off seems tow fix the issue but leaves the other GPU acceleration functional.

[Terri_Stevens]

Thanks for the tip, Smurphy. The Open CL issue is a known one with some graphics cards. Disabling the GPU can cure a lot of problems with Photoshop, but at the expense of wrecking the performance. Unfortunately the issues tend to effect Apple machines more than Windows, presumably because of the very limited choice of graphics cards available on the Mac. I love the Mac, but fear Apple have now decided the home user market is where the money is and in recent years they have really let down their professional design customers horribly. The PC has always been the poor relation in the design world but I think opinions are now changing as they are not only far cheaper, but the design architecture allows for thousands of different hardware configurations. You can actually run the Apple OSX on Windows these days.

You may already know but the old 'Refine Edge' still exists in Photoshop. It doesn't use GPU acceleration and so tends to be better with some graphics cards

Refine Edge has Returned

[tfosseli]

Same issue. Turned of all GPU acceleration. Did not help. Still freezes and have to force quit.

I'm calling this function broke.

(Wish Adobe would bring back the extract tool)

[Apl]

Same issue. It doesn't matter if the GPU acceleration is turned on or off, Photoshop hangs. I'm working on
Windows 8.1, Intel and nVidia.