PhotoShop CC will not play Layer Adjustment Actions Correctly

Question

My computer has PhotoShop CC installed on a brand new Dell Windows 7 computer. Previously I used CS4 and it worked great, but now I'm having issues with CC playing back any Action that has layer adjusments. I'll record an action consisting of an edited layer adjustment such as curves, levels, brightness/conrast, etc., and then when I play it back the layer adjustment applied is the default 0. For instance, here I clicked "Create New Action" and labeled it "Curves Layer TEST":
add a new curves layer adjustment and label it "Brighten":
Then I add a few points to the curve (overly brightened to demonstrate my issue):
then I hit the Stop Recording button. But when I look at the curve values in the Actions box of the very curve layer I just recorded, it says the Preset Kind is Default. Why doesn't it say Custom??? The Properties box read "Custom" as I was editing the curve!
So anyway, I open up my nexy photo and play the Brighten action I just created...
and nothing happens to the image. Oh, it now has a curves layer on top, but it's the Default straight line. What happened to the curve I edited and recorded!!??
What's the deal? This is the same process I used in CS4, CS2 and every other PhotoShop incarnation and it worked fine, until CC. Is this a bug? Or is there a new process to creating layer adjustment actions???

Answer 1

Adobe added the adjustment panel in CS4. Adobe also changed how the action recorded records adding adjustment layers in CS4.  Before the Adjustment panel when you clicked on one of the add adjustment layer icons Photoshop would open the adjustment type options dialog window which you would set and commit. When you committed the settings the action recorder would record a single step that added the adjustment layer with the setting you set. After Adobe added the adjustment panel the action recorder records a step Make adjustment layer Adjustment type preset default as soon as you click on the adjustmet type icon. If you then make changes to the settings when you move onto the next Photoshop operation the action recorder records a second step Set current adjustment layer to type preset kind custom and settings.  Adobe also introduced many problems with the adjustment panel. The two step recoding can be a problem because it possible to add steps between the two steps and the step set current adjustment layer will fail if the targeted layer was changed by the addition.  The adjustment panel also has two options in its fly-out menu the change Photoshop operation. They can break new and old actions that add adjustment layers. For how adjustment layers will get added may not be the way they were  added when the action was recorded. These options work more like global Photoshop Preferences actions have no control over.  However the options do not alway work like set. So if you try real hard you can record actions that add adjustment layers that will alway work the way you designed your action to work.  Adobe does not want to fix these problems. I tried to get Adobe to fix these bugs for years. I have now given up.