Lightroom showing black images

[Overread]

So this randomly started happening today. I'd import photos into Lightroom Classic (subscription) and everything would look fine. However when I went to develop all I'd see is a black screen. No image.

I'd see the image in the window at the bottom, but nothing for the main image.

So I thought it was a corrupt save, so I wiped the card and took the shot again, only to get the same result. Clean black, not even typical corrupt data random colours or such.


So some googling and I'm not much wiser. I've found a fix which is to go to
Edit - Preferences - Performance - and then in the top option change the setting from auto to off - which is basically disabling my graphics card input into the process and boom the image appears once again as normal.



However I've not found a reason why this is going on and what is failing and why. If any here have an idea I'd welcome some input. For now I'm slowly updating my graphics card drivers and photoshop itself (appears there's a semi-recent update). After that I can see if its simply driver issues or if there's something else going on

 

[smoke665]

Last fall when Adobe rolled out their fall update I had all kinds of issues seven days later NVIDIA rolled out the graphics card update. Problem solved. Same thing happened this fall, only this year there's been two updates by Adobe followed by two driver updates by NVIDIA.

Adobe is moving toward leveraging the graphics card capability, which makes me wonder why there's not a more unified approach on updates by both. It's really frustrating trying to troubleshoot what may or may not even be a problem.

 

[Overread]

I wonder if its Adobe causing the issues or being a fly in the works because Nvidia already does a lot of join release of drivers alongside new major game company releases. Heck they've made it a specific theme of their cards and "GeForce Experience" system that they've got those close ties. So certainly Nvidia is used to working with a developer to have updated driver releases.

 

[smoke665]

I wonder if its Adobe causing the issues

Given the fact that the driver update is coming out just a few days post, I suspect that there has to be some communication between the two prior to release. With the symbiotic relationship between them it would be catastrophic if they didn't collaborate. My guess is that Nvidia has most of the information but Adobe is making changes (tweaking) right up to date of launch, putting them in the position of waiting for the final version. Rather than p*** off their customers it seems to me that Adobe would delay a release for a few days to give hardware a chance to catch up, but unfortunately most software companies don't place customer satisfaction as their number one priority.

As to the problem is it only occurring in the Develop module or does it happen in the Library Module also. Adobe published this on a similar issue in April of this year. Photos appear as black, gray, or blank rectangles in Lightroom Classic Another thought you might try is to re-profile your monitor in case there is a corrupted file.

 

[Overread]

It was happening in the developing and library modules, however a morning spent updating graphics card drivers and Photoshop and such and its all working as normal.

It surprises me that Photoshop didn't flag the graphics card drivers being out of date as an issue (or a potential issue); and a blank screen was making me think something was wrong with my camera/memorycard rather than "Oh I need to update" .

 

[smoke665]

@Overread I would not have known unless it had already happened to me last year after the fall update.

Don't feel bad spent well over an hour on chat with Adobe tech support last year, and it never came up as a suggestion. Instead their favorite answer is "turn off GPU acceleration". This from a company that brags how they're leveraging the processing power of the graphics card to the point that many features won't even work now without acceleration enabled.

I was to the point of ditching PS and LR when out of the blue I got a notice from Nvidia that their new Studio driver was available. This year I waited to install the Adobe updates until I knew the Nvidia update was ready, then did a back to back.