Participating Frequently

P: CR 18.3 is slow until you install the update (see Highlighted Post)

Forum|Forum|2 months ago
April 17, 2026
74 replies
3406 views

I have never had an issue with ACR before.18.3 freezing saying not responding saving files took twenty minutes instead of seconds everything was super laging, when I disabled the GPU acceleration it improved I see on the other pages I am not alone I'm using the most up to date windows, Nvidia drivers ETC: I have a 7950x, 5090, 64GB and NVME drives. Please fix as soon as possible or at least give a link to the previous version which I had no issues with.

Solution:

Update following the instructions in this link:

Show previous replies

D

DV23

Participating Frequently

Same for de macos version. Camera Raw 18.3 is incredibly slow. Just clicking in the Remove (B) tab takes ages. Removing dust and scratches is impossible now. I reverted to an older version (https://adobe-camera-raw.en.uptodown.com/mac/versions) instantly solved the problem. It is fast again.

Rikk Flohr_Photography

Did you follow the instructions in the highlighted post?

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

D

DV23

Participating Frequently

Nope, i couldn’t. If i click the link with the DMG a new tab opens and within half a second it closes. No download starting here. Copy and pasting the link in a new window does the same, instantly closes and no download is starting.

ImZeOne

Participating Frequently

You can download a .RAF file here and try : https://transfert.free.fr/C5Lbxih

I suspected there might be a limitation on the size of upscaled images, but that wouldn’t make sense. Why let the generative AI process run for a minute for nothing? It would be better to display a popup indicating that the original image exceeds that limit.

Thanx again.

Ged_Traynor

Community Expert

@ImZeOne I was able to reproduce the error with the file you supplied, but I got a different error message.

But I downloaded some sample files from here

https://filesamples.com/formats/raf

Also from here

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/193s1-XbxOh1Ce94thDk4SFIc71U4c88m

It works fine with the files downloaded from the above links

ImZeOne

Participating Frequently

The message I provided was slightly different because it was in French and I had to translate it.

Note that I also have .RAF files from a Fuji X-E5, and the issue is exactly the same. I suspect Adobe may have changed the AI upsampling process and introduced a size limit, but I haven’t seen anything about this.

If that’s the case, it’s unfortunate, as running AI upscaling followed by downsampling back to the original size (or to +10-20%) produced much better results than standard processing in ACR.

Alin Purcaroiu

Known Participant

Takes ages to apply new settings to a raw file. And disables my rtx gpu. Never again updating to new versions.

Rikk Flohr_Photography

Did you follow the instructions in the highlighted post?

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

Alin Purcaroiu

Known Participant

Yes (thank you) but why do i have to delay my workflow with every update. Should the client be the beta tester ?!

D Fosse

Community Expert

Just tested and it works correctly here (but on .arw and .dng). I’m surprised a preferences reset didn’t fix it - maybe you need to reset Photoshop preferences as well.

Can you try with ACR hosted by Bridge, not Photoshop? You do that by right-clicking the file in Bridge and choosing “Open in Camera Raw” (instead of just “Open”).

Also, try a DNG.

ImZeOne

Participating Frequently

I tried that as well — I completely removed Photoshop and ACR, keeping nothing, specifically to avoid reinstalling them with old preferences that might be causing the issue. I also tried launching ACR explicitly from Bridge instead of double-clicking, with the same result. I tried dng too.

Thanx

A

Adrian Rios Pro

Participant

Solución: copien el enlace de descarga de la versión 14 que está en la pagina oficial:

https://helpx.adobe.com/es/camera-raw/kb/camera-raw-plug-in-installer.html

El enlace es este:

https://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/cameraraw/win/14.x/AdobeCameraRaw_x64_14_5.exe

y remplacen el numero 14.x por 18.x y al final 14_5 por 18_2 o la version 18 que prefieran y les quedara algo asi y oficial:

https://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/cameraraw/win/18.x/AdobeCameraRaw_x64_18_2.exe

Saludos.

Rikk Flohr_Photography

The Camera Raw team has made an updated version of the Camera Raw plugin available to address this issue.
The version in the Creative Cloud Desktop app will be the version you already have.

To access the new version, please go to this link:

for Mac
http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/cameraraw/mac/18.x/CameraRaw_18_3.dmg
or for Win 64
http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/cameraraw/win/18.x/AdobeCameraRaw_x64_18_3.exe
or for Win ARM
http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/cameraraw/win/18.x/AdobeCameraRaw_arm64_18_3.exe

Verify the installed build changes to 18.3x2529

Thank you for your patience.

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

M

march411

Known Participant

Any clue as to what they did to resolve the issue and it was fully tested in a day?

W

waldemarker

Inspiring

replaced Bridge with 18.2, but still many issues (settings need seconds to be applied, no keyboard control, settings change only after mouse-click, no undo, preview not working). Would need to downgrade also camera Raw, not only Bridge. How to do that? There is no older version to download on adobe website.

M

march411

Known Participant

Well I can’t fix 18.3 but I can help with a link to prior version from an Adobe affiliate.

Adobe RAW downloadable versions

Once you have it locally on your computer just run the executable file and it will overwrite 18.3. Restart you computer once the installation is complete.

Ged_Traynor

Community Expert

@ImZeOne I just downloaded a sample .raf file, and it opened in ACR version 18.3 without issue, have you tried resetting the ACR preferences

ImZeOne

Participating Frequently

Thanks Ged,
I had already tried all of that before posting here — it’s often possible to find a solution without bothering the community. I reinstalled Photoshop and ACR and reset the preferences, but without success.

My .raf files open without any issue in Photoshop after going through ACR, but they no longer open if I’ve run Super Resolution beforehand, even though it appears to process the image correctly.