Dark colors are pixilated in my photoshop 3D viewer. HALP!

[Cracked Mirror]

So I've been struggling with this issue for the last few months and have googled it to death. I'm turning to you the experts and hopefully I can come up with a solution.

Every since I switched from Photoshop CS4 to CS5 when using the 3d avatar model all dark colors are pixillated. This makes it impossible for me to blend any seams because it seems as if the resolution is low on the really dark parts of the texture. It's Driving me nuts and have had to refrain from making dark clothing or start out light and then color it dark when I'm done. Its okay in the flat 2D view but when I alter or blend directly onto the 3D model it will make the 2D texture pixilated as well when I switch back to it.

Here are some screen shots to show you what I mean...

http://gyazo.com/7164423db1f04fa807f2376b43748842.png

http://gyazo.com/3b90ded4870bf882d87a02e39d10e2ac.png

Really hope you guys can help me with this one! Thanks!

Cracked

[Chosen Few]

It looks like a contrast problem, not a pixelization problem.  Your system isn't showing you enough shades of gray.  This could be due to bad settings, or it could be a driver or hardware problem.

What 3D display settings are you using in Photoshop?

How new are your graphics drivers?

Is your graphics card fully compatible with CS5?

[Cracked Mirror]

Hi Chosen!

The computer I'm using is a 2 year old HP Pavillian entertainment PC with windows 7 (64 bit). I'm not sure how much info is to much but just incase here's all of it i think:

Graphics drive: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 

Processor: Intel® Core2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40 GHz

Installed Memory (RAM): 6.00 GB

Here is a snap shot of the 3D menu in the preferences in photoshop:

 http://gyazo.com/b7dd1d09fe0a73ca7873a7bb3175df5e.png

if there is anything else I'm not including please let me know. I'm desperate to fix this!

Thanks again!

[Ishtara Rothschild]

Make sure that the color depth or color quality is set to 32 bit in your graphics driver. It looks as if you were only using a 16 bit color depth, which reduces the number of colors to a mere 65,000 instead of 4 billion.

[Cracked Mirror]

Hmm I dunno if I'm doing it right but i went to the screen resolution and under the monitor settings it says the colors I'm using are true color (32) bit. Am I looking in the wrong place? Sorry if I sound a bit like a newb, and thanks for your help

[Cerise1488303085]

So, here is something to try to maybe isolate the trouble. The 3D tab on the Photoshop settings has "Allow Direct To Screen" in the OpenGL section. Turn off that box and see if the trouble stops. This wil make the 3D feature much slower but it gives Photoshop more control of the displayed colors. If that change works, it is time to look at the advanced settings in your graphics driver. There could be some OpenGL acceleration switched on that is more appropriate for gaming. With "direct to screen" on again, you can try to turn off driver acceleration features until you find one that stops the posterize effect.

[Chosen Few]

Your computer is up to snuff, hardware-wise.  I'd still recommend updating your graphics drivers, if you haven't done so recently (or even if you have).

When I asked about your 3D settings, I was referring to the in-document render settings.  Sorry if I was unclear.  To access what I'm talking about, click 3D -> Render settings, in the main menu bar.

[Cracked Mirror]

Hi Cerise! I did what you suggested but I'm still having the same problem. I also messed around with the driver settings and made every change I could think of but still same problem. I'm not much of a computer person so I don't know a lot about the technical detiails but I also messed around with the settings in performance for Photoshop, (for enable openGL drawing). Is there anything specific that I should be doing?

 

Thanks!

[Cracked Mirror]

ohhh! Here's the screenshot for the render settings:

http://gyazo.com/1fd9064e635f51f52891f75bfff66154.png

sorry about that! I've updated my graphics drivers as per your recommendation. Still not working. I've also uninstalled and reinstalled CS5. I also want to clarify that I only ever have this problem with CS5 3D. I don't have it in the 2D view or in any other photoshop versions. I could use CS4 but was hoping not to have to resort to that becaues the 3D Avatar model does not blend well in between the upper and lower halves.

Maybe I have no choice?

If you think of ANYTHING else, please let me know. In the mean time I'll keep googling!

[Chosen Few]

You render settings look right. I might suggest turning on backface culling, as that will improve performance a bit, but that's obviously a separate issue.

If the problem is not happening in older versions of PS, then you can be reasonably sure it has nothing to do with your computer.  It's almost certainly an issue within PS CS5 itself.

Do you have all the latest updates from Adobe?  I know there were (and maybe still are) quite a few bugs in CS5, which prompted many a user to go back to CS4 for certain things.  That's one of the reasons (along with lack of money) that I haven't upgraded myself, yet.  I'm still using CS4.

Have you tried asking about this on the Adobe forums?

[Josh Susanto]

I'm not sure if it's the same issue, but Lunapic also has some problems processing colors approaching black,. That is; it tends to erase large blocks of the stuff when I am using the magic wand or color-specific transparent function on nonblack colors.

My solution has been that, provided the image does not have any hard whites in it, I do the otherwise problematic edits while I have the image in negative.

Worth a try with PS, also?

[Cracked Mirror]

Hmm interesting. What I've been doing is adjusting the color to be lighter through levels and then when I'm done blending I switch it back. As long as i stay in the 2d view there after I'm okay.

Its such a hassle though, I think i'm going to just go back to CS4.

Thanks everyone for helping me in this matter. I'm going to try to upload the patches that Chosen suggested (which I had no idea about) and see if that helps. If not then I'm just gonna chalk it up to a CS5 bug and go back to CS4.

 

At least now I know it wasn't something I did! lol. That we know of anyways!

[Josh Susanto]

What's the rest of your apparatus?

Certain companies interestting seem to produce things that stop working so well when products by certain other companies are installed.

[leliel Mirihi]

I don't know how helpful this will be, but the pixelation in the pictures you posted look exactly like banding artifacts from rounding errors in the color buffer. It's a common problem when using heavy texture filtering on 8bit integer per channel color buffers which is why most games have switched to doing HDR rendering with 16bit or even 32bit floating point per channel. My only guess would be that CS5 updated the lighting in the 3d mode while still using LDR rendering. I don't think there's much you can do about it aside from complain to Adobe, tho.

[Josh Susanto]

you can always at least  blur it for free in Lunapic :-/