Bizarre Photoshop Screen Issue

[Phrasikleia]

What is causing this bizarre behavior in Photoshop? It happens intermittently when I try to use one of the various "Transform" tools, such as the Warp tool.

In this case, it has completely obscured the image of a waterfall that I was working on and is instead showing a collage of pages that I had open in Safari **but had closed before returning to Photoshop**. I can see fragments of a webpage that was five pages back in my Safari surfing history!

I have this problem pretty frequently, but not always. It happens more often with really large, stitched files, but this one is a simple 22MP image with only a single layer in the file.

And ideas?

I'm using a 2011 Mac Mini Server with 16GB of RAM and Photoshop CS6.

 

[thekev]

Odd... normally I would say gpu issue with screen scrambling. That's not typical with integrated graphics. I would probably run a test on that ram. Third party ram often has long warranties, just in case that is the problem.

 

[TheReef]

Hey Picasosikleia!

I used to see the opposite - pictures from my aperture library would appear when I create a new Safari tab!

It no longer happens, it could have been fixed when I upgraded to Mavericks, or when I swapped out one of my RAM modules.

Mac minis share their RAM with the onboard graphics, as thekev said the stick could be bad.

You could try removing 1 module at a time and see if the issue persists?

 

[Laird Knox]

Looks like your video buffers are getting corrupted. Unfortunately it could be related to the GPU, RAM or software.

Try pick a file that this happens often in. Pull out one of the memory modules and see if you can reproduce the problem. Then swap the memory and try it again. If you see the problem with one module and not the other then that is probably your culprit. Put both modules back in the computer and try to reproduce it again. If you can't reproduce it then re-seating the memory may have resolved it.

You travel with your Mac, right? In that case re-seating the memory has more merit. SO-DIMMs are pretty reliable but it is still a mechanical connection.

Unfortunately I don't have any suggestions for the built in video. Not much you can do there. Perhaps try running some software that tests and benchmarks the CPU, GPU and RAM?

Finally on the software side you can try removing and re-installing Photoshop. Also make sure you have all the latest Adobe and Apple updates. Worst case would be to re-install the OS as well.

 

[thekev]

Looks like your video buffers are getting corrupted. Unfortunately it could be related to the GPU, RAM or software.

That doesn't happen often with integrated graphics, which is why I think ram. I'm also not aware of any current known software bugs that would cause that kind of corruption, although it's possible if it predominantly affects one application. As you mentioned reseating is a good idea due to the amount of travel it has seen. It's probably a good idea to download and run memtest for verification. The warranty on that ram is probably good, because at the time 16GB wasn't offered by Apple in a mini. I don't recall if they offer it now, but most 3rd party ram comes with a very long warranty. If it is in fact ram, that is when I would do a clean OS install just to catch anything that may have been affected. Updates don't take that long if a combo update is applied.

 

[Phrasikleia]

Thanks so much for the very helpful advice. I'm going to do as you suggest and will report back. It's an intermittent problem, as I said, so that could make it difficult to troubleshoot, alas. I'll give it a shot, though.

Laird, yeah, I travel with it a lot. It does a lot of long haul flights, train trips, etc. I always carry it in my carry-on, but they take that from me on the little rubber-band-powered planes that hop over the Alps. So who knows what kind of abuse that poor little Mac has endured!