Resolved Quick Selection Tool - Creating weird video artifacts - SW or HW?

I am using the Quick Selection Tool to select the green screen background behind a head & shoulders shot. After a few minutes it starts to chew up the photo, and to select in blocks across the photo. Examples below. I am swiping it across only the green to choose, and then using the option key to 'subtract' the hair. After a few additions and subtractions I get what you see below.

Deselecting and reselecting don't fix the issue.

Is this a hardware (video card?) or software issue? Has anyone seen it before?

I am currently on PS 13.0.3. and OS X 10.8.2, though I am upgrading to 13.0.4 incase that fixes. If it does I will post back. I have shut down the system entirely to clear the RAM.

I am sending the photo over from LR... that is, I am editing the photo in LR and then use the "Edit In" command. I will try opening the photo directly from the Finder to see if this is a problem.

The photo was taken by a PhaseOne camera back, and initially processed through Capture One v7. I will try to bypass Capture One as well.

I am on a bit of deadline so I am throwing out this call for help while I continue to narrow down the possibilities.

Any ideas?

If it is a PS bug, how do I get hold of a technician? All I can find are tutorials, and no way to send them a bug report.

Thanks in advance.

(For privacy reasons I have obscured the subjects face before uploading)

UPDATE: I am getting weird blocky selections with both Quick Selection Tool and Magic Wand. When it gets blocky, clicking outside selection (in the block) doesn't add that bit to the selection. When I go to the Marquee Tool, the cursor doesn't change tool shape to reflect that.

Also, I have opened up a file directly with PS, bypassing Lightroom, and that didn't fix the issue. Nor did bringing PS up to 13.0.4.

Sigh.

Prodo123 said:

I don't believe this to be a graphics card issue, since the blocky artifacts are reflected on the preview windows.
I think the settings on your selection tools might be off; try selecting the green area using lasso and see if that has any effect.

Click to expand...

Thanks for weighing in! Since I posted, I have tried a few other things.

The Lasso tool is not working correctly either now. What is weird is that I was able to work on these files yesterday with no problems. So something changed between yesterday and today.

I am also getting the problem with other (older) image files. But... only from this one camera. I can't recreate the problem with scans from a scanner, or from other cameras. So... that would make me think it was camera specific. But there were no problems yesterday.

Maybe Photoshop has corrupted itself? I am going to uninstall and reinstall it. Maybe it's a vid card setting in Photoshop?

Sigh....

Prodo123 said:

It's not a graphics card issue for sure, since then the entire OS should display the same artifacts.
I also think it has corrupted itself; try restoring PS from a TM backup.

Click to expand...

It could still be a graphics card issue - Photoshop sometimes uses the GPU in ways that the rest of the OS doesn't. But I'm inclined to agree with you ... I'm going to remove Photoshop and reinstall.

I've also been having to re-input my Ps license code lately on occasion.

I suppose I should also check my HDDs.... just in case I have a disk going bad.

UPDATE: So I uninstalled Photoshop using the Adobe Design Standard uninstaller, and then reinstalled from the Design Standard CS6 CD. Photoshop reinstalled fine, it said.... but it wouldn't launch. The error message was that PowerPC applications were no longer supported... I'm on a Mac Pro with Xeons, btw.

So... I contacted Adobe... and got put through to 2nd tier support. I uninstalled again - this time with the Design Standard uninstaller then the Photoshop specific uninstaller - both with "Remove Preferences" checked.

Then copied the contents of the CD to the desktop, after downloading and installing an updated version of the Adobe Application Manager.

Then launched the Design Standard Installer from the Desktop and installed Photoshop. Photoshop now launches... I am currently updating it to 13.0.4.

The support tech said this was a known issue, and that we are following steps that have fixed other installations. I will update again if this fixes the Selection Issue.

Hope this helps someone else who may be having similar issues.


UPDATE 2: Photoshop is running fine, and there are no issues with Wands or Lasso... don't know what caused the issue in the 1st place.... just glad it it working now....