Develop has black screen with GPU acceleration - AMD Radeon HD 7700

[Selby Shanly]

After the latest (Dec 2018) updates to both Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom CC on Windows 10, I get a black screen in Develop on both products.

The first use of Develop works, but when I switch to another image I get a black screen and on all subsequent images I continue to get the black screen. 

Disabling the GPU in preferences fixes the problem.

Graphics card is AMD Radeon HD 7700.  Has been working without problems for some time (since AMD fixed the driver).

Photoshop CC 20.0.1 use of the GPU is working.

I also had a driver upgrade for the HD 7700, so it's not clear whether this is an issue in both versions of Lightroom (I assume they share a lot of Develop code) or in the driver.

I have tried a driver upgrade for the HD 7700 but it did not fix or change the problem.

Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Thanks,

Selby

[GoldingD]

In lightroom, click on help, click on System information, look at the second line, it should be

License: Creative Cloud. (If I remember correctly)

it should not be

License: Unknown

if it is the later, bring up your Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop application, sign in (if you were already signed in, then sign out, and sign back in) mind you, while you have internet access.

might be slightly wrong on my syntax, nit on a pc to check.

mind you, your issue is slightly different, in that you apparently get one develop module loup view to work.

[Selby Shanly]

Mine shows "License: Creative Cloud".

This smells like either a Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom CC issue with using the GPU or a graphics driver bug.

[F. McLion]

Did you try deactivating the GPU?

Adobe Lightroom GPU Troubleshooting and FAQ

[Selby Shanly]

Yes.  As I wrote in my post:

”Disabling the GPU in preferences fixes the problem.”

However since it was working for a long time, I want to know why suddenly it does not work and get it working again.

[F. McLion]

The HD 7700 is an older card and its limited performance will probably not accelerate LR. Depending on the screen resolution and the type of the CPU, there actually may be no gain in using the GPU acceleration.

What resolution does your screen have and what type of CPU do you have?

[Selby Shanly]

I have found the fix for the problem.  According to a post from Simon Chen, a Principal Computer Scientist from Adobe, a Windows system is supposed to be using DirectX, not OpenGL.

I deleted the following file and relaunched Lightroom Classic CC, enabled GPU acceleration and now everything works.  Lightroom CC also works now as well.

My system had be automatically configured to use OpenGL for years and had worked just fine, so I suspect Adobe changed something recently, but of course that's mere speculation.

The bottom line is that DirectX works.

[F. McLion]

Which file

[Selby Shanly]

Sorry!  Here it is:

\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\GPU\Camera Raw GPU Config.txt

[F. McLion]

Great - Thanks.

I just checked this on my system. It was set to use OpenGL and once I renamed the file it recreated it and now is set to use DirectX.

The content in the file shows the same as the system information in LR.

What I don't know so far if there is any real difference in speed while using LR.

You're more than welcome to share your experience.

[David Z.]

This helped me as well. My detailed fix:

1. Open File Explorer

2. Enter %appdata% path

3. Navigate to Adobe\CameraRaw\GPU

3b. Full path on my system: \Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\GPU

4. Rename Camera Raw GPU Config.txt

5. Relaunch Lightroom Classic CC

6. Go to Preferences and re-enable GPU acceleration

[curtisj3939218]

I just installed a Radeon RX 6600 about 2 weeks ago, and was struggling with this. My Lightroom was already using DirectX, but I saw the issue anyway. I had tried disabling hardware acceleration in Chrome, disabled GPU in Lightoom and still saw. I did this, and am hopeful that it worked.

[GoldingD]

Sounds like "Buggy Behavior". Have you done a reset of preferences file?

Resolving Buggy Behavior in Lightroom: How to Reset Preferences - YouTube

Replacing the Lightroom Preference File – Lightroomers

Preference file and other file locations | Lightroom Classic CC and Lightroom 6

[Selby Shanly]

Yes, I reset the preferences file.  Unfortunately no difference.

The fact that it affects both Classic CC and CC after upgrades suggests that either Adobe made a similar change to develop in both, or that it's a problem with the graphics driver. 

Disabling use of the GPU works in both cases but that's hardly satisfactory since it was working.  Also since Photoshop is still happy using the GPU suggests (to me, at any rate) that it might be a problem in the GPU support for the Develop module.

[Rob_Cullen]

It is possible that a Windows-10 update has installed a 'Windows' version of the driver for your graphics card.

It is sometimes reported that any Windows version causes problems with Lightroom.

Try updating the Graphics card driver from the AMD Radeon HD 7700 manufacturer site.

[Selby Shanly]

I'm updating the driver using the AMD Radeon utility.

[GoldingD]

Go and read all of this

Adobe Lightroom GPU Troubleshooting and FAQ

Note issues on old drivers left behind (clean install)

Note issues on getting Gapau driver updates from Microsoft

Note point on reading everything at manufacturers download page, watch fir additional updates

Note warining on third part accelerators (probably for games)

Watch out (might not be in the article) for settings and/or utilities to improve game performance, they might F up lightroom

Note advise on improving settings specifically for Lightroom.

Note section on forcing Lightroom to use DirectX instead of Open GL

[GoldingD]

By the way, and this should not be possible, but 64bit, not 32 bit driver, correct?

[Selby Shanly]

Since I'm using the AMD utility, I assume it is picking the correct driver.