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For the past few weeks Photoshop CC - latest version has been acting strangely.  It will work OK for a while then all of a sudden the tools I am using will begin to affect random areas of the entire image.  The image itself may in fact almost double and have one of the two shift sideways. No other layers present.  So, if I use say, the clone tool, selection tool, or brush, etc., instead of the tool affecting the area under the circle, it will randomly affect that and also other areas throughout the image.   This behavior occurs using my tablet pen or mouse - no different. I have not been able to figure out anything in particular that triggers it.  I do have NIK, Topaz and Aurora plugins, but I haven't been able to associate the behavior with these. 

If I close out of PS and then restart it (PS not the computer) the issue goes away for a while but then decides to return again at a seemingly random time.  I updated the graphics card driver, but this did not help.  I was hoping for a PS update that would fix this but no luck so far.

I would hate to have to uninstall everything and reinstall it again, but if that is the solution so be it.

Thanks for any advice.

I have experienced similar (not exactly the same) behaviour after the last couple of up-dates - brush tool not responding as expected, clone stamp tool wierdness and Photoshop locking up and requiring to close. It seems to me that with every new up-date, something that that used to work OK gets broken, or they change something that didn't need changing - for instance, it used too be that if you toggled a layer on/off, it didn't get recorded as a history state change; now it does. Who asked for that and why? That was a couple of up-dates ago. Most recently Adobe have changed the appearance of the Photoshop layer icon, shrinking it within its tile to about 50 percent of the tile area - why for goodness sake's? My view of Photoshop now is that trivial changes in style have triumphed over substance - but that can only last so long. Sorry I can't offer you a solution - what I do is shout at the computer .

Have you tried resetting the Preference File, that is the standard fix for flakey behaviour with tools and other stuff in Photoshop?

Therre is lots of advice for how to do this on the internet for all systems and versions of PS.

Agree with Kim, reset the preferences file but make sure you save your workspace first so that you can quickly return to any customizations you have made to your PS interface.

Kim wrote:Have you tried resetting the Preference File, that is the standard fix for flakey behaviour with tools and other stuff in Photoshop?

Therre is lots of advice for how to do this on the internet for all systems and versions of PS.

Thanks Kim and E.J..  Yes, but it didn't help.  I did decide that the issue began after I updated the Topaz AI stuff I use.  While the update went smoothly, I decided to see if there might have been an issue behind the scenes, so I did the process E.J. suggested in the thread on problems with the Topaz plugins after updating.  I was able to process 4 images, doing a lot of work on them, without the problem manifesting itself. It's too early to tell, but this may have been the problem.  I'll update after more run time tomorrow.

Ed Cordes wrote:

Kim wrote:Have you tried resetting the Preference File, that is the standard fix for flakey behaviour with tools and other stuff in Photoshop?

Therre is lots of advice for how to do this on the internet for all systems and versions of PS.

Thanks Kim and E.J..  Yes, but it didn't help.  I did decide that the issue began after I updated the Topaz AI stuff I use.  While the update went smoothly, I decided to see if there might have been an issue behind the scenes, so I did the process E.J. suggested in the thread on problems with the Topaz plugins after updating.  I was able to process 4 images, doing a lot of work on them, without the problem manifesting itself. It's too early to tell, but this may have been the problem.  I'll update after more run time tomorrow.

That is good to know.  Also make sure your graphics driver is up to date.  Topaz can very sensitive to having the most current video drivers.

Yes, the first thing I did was update the graphics driver.  While it did need updating, it didn't solve the problem. I'm betting on the Topaz stuff being the issue.  I should know part way through tomorrow.

Well, following the steps E.J. provided for Topaz updating did not help this situation. Resetting PS preferences again did not help. Tomorrow I will uninstall and reinstall Aurora and see if that is the issue. Stay tuned.

I have waited a while to post in this thread again as so far none of the above has helped. PS will work for a while then start acting funny again. A quick restart will set things on track only to, some variable time later, get off track again. I have reset my preferences at least 3 times. I could uninstall PS and then reinstall it from scratch, but I am not sure if that is really the issue. Ideas??

How much memory is in your system? Photoshop suffers from memory leaks (always has) and when you are working and you close an image it doesn't release all of the memory the previous photo was using and this causes the memory to fill up eventually making PS unstable. Closing PS and then restarting it solves it but then it just happens again at a later time. The more memory you have, the longer you can work without having to restart PS. You are now the second person that has asked about this happening so I'm guessing the latest version of CC may have made this worse or possibly you are using a higher megapixel camera or some additional processing, or working on more images in a session, or something to make it happen more often.

Thanks for the response EJ. I have a 1 1/2 year old Puget Systems Win 10 Pro with
i7 8700 K 3.7 GHz 6 core 12 MB
64GB DDR4-2666 RAM
PNY Quadro p-2000 PCI-E 5 GB
Samsung 860 Pro 512 GB SSD
WD Red 4 TB
WD Black 1 TB
I think you are on the right track in that it seems that all is OK for a while then, without warning the issue happens. I would say it began about early March or so. Since it always surprises me I haven't really paid attention to what I was doing just prior to the onset of problems. I'll try to pay more attention to this.

Yeah, you are now the third person that I have had contact with where this problem that has always been with Photoshop suddenly got worse.  That tells me that a recent update from Adobe has a bigger memory leak than it had before.  Hopefully they will fix it but Adobe is extraordinarily bad at fixing stuff like this.  Since the very first version for Windows, this has been a problem and it never got fixed.  Similarly, 20 years later Photoshop still regularly corrupts it's preferences file, ever since introducing the scratch disk, Photoshop does not clear out the scratch disk properly when shutting down the program.  12 years since introducing the lens blur filter, it still uses the scratch disk to do it's work rather than system memory no matter how much memory you have, etc. etc. etc.

Thanks yet again EJ. At least I know it's not just me and my overall system is not the issue. I'll await a new update to see if it helps, but from what you said I shouldn't hold my breath. Stay safe and healthy.

Well I hate to jinx myself, but over the past two weeks this issue has disappeared. I did receive a PS update and a few updates to the Topaz AI plugins I use. One of them must have addressed the issue. Hopefully, I am not jumping gun posting this, but it has been a while with good behavior.

Ed Cordes wrote:Well I hate to jinx myself, but over the past two weeks this issue has disappeared. I did receive a PS update and a few updates to the Topaz AI plugins I use.  One of them must have addressed the issue.  Hopefully, I am not jumping gun posting this, but it has been a while with good behavior.

My number of inquiries about the problem has also gone to zero.  So it is likely that one or both of those addressed the issue.