Photoshop unable to open EXR files using “Open As” dialogue – SOLVED
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I solved this issue but am posting here in the event anyone else comes across this problem.
I have several EXR plugins I use with Photoshop (Pro EXR, Otoy’s Octane Render EXR plugin, and EXR-IO). Photoshop uses by default the Otoy plugin, which works fine when double clicking a file to open it. But when I want to use one of the other plugins, I need to specify which one using the “Open As” dialogue box. This suddenly stopped working for me and I was getting the below error messages when trying to open EXR files through the “Open As” method:
OTOY EXR : "Could not complete your request because the file-format module cannot parse the file."
Open EXR (same message).
Pro EXR: Error 1 - "The Photoshop 3D file format could not parse this file." Error2 - "Could not complete your request because of a problem with the file format interface."
EXR-IO: "Could not complete your request because of a problem parsing the EPS file."
Apparently, this issue seems to be related to Photoshop’s use of the graphics processor. I noticed Open GL Drawing was disabled and Photoshop wasn’t using my GPU. Once I clicked “Use Graphics Processor” in the Performance settings and re-started Photoshop, I was once again able to open the EXR files with the plugin of my choice through the “Open As” dialogue.
Why the GPU is necessary to use “Open As” is a mystery to me. This is either by design for some technical reason, or it is possibly some kind of bug.
This problem was occurring on my Windows 10 PC using two GTX 1080ti’s. Out of curiosity, I also checked to see if it happens on my Hackintosh running Mojave and a GTX 1070. It does not. Photoshop on Mac can use the “Open As” method to access EXR files using different plugins regardless of whether “Use Graphics Processor” is enabled or not.
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Hi Peter,
Thanks for sharing the useful info with everyone on the forums. We need more helping hands like you.
Regards,
Sahil

