P: Remove tool failure
Photoshop (Beta) — Remove Tool Performance Regression
I'm reporting a specific, reproducible regression in the Remove tool in the current Beta build (27.10.0) that I've diagnosed as thoroughly as I can from the user side.
Summary
The Remove tool, which previously worked quickly and well in this Beta build, has stopped functioning correctly. It now takes several minutes to remove even a tiny selected area, regardless of settings. The same operation completes instantly in the standard (non-Beta) release of Photoshop on the same machine, same file, same hardware.
Timeline
The tool was working correctly. At some point it stopped — without any update on my part (no Photoshop version change, no graphics driver update, no known Windows update). I cannot pin down exactly when it broke, only that no deliberate change preceded the failure.
System
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, correctly detected in Photoshop's Graphics Processor Settings, "Use Graphics Processor" enabled, GPU used normally elsewhere in the app (OpenCL, anti-alias guides/paths, GPU compositing all active)
Driver version 591.86 (confirmed via NVIDIA Control Panel and Device Manager independently — not auto-updated, driver auto-update is deliberately disabled)
64GB RAM
Scratch disk: C:, Samsung SSD (NVMe), ~700GB free
Standard Microsoft Defender antivirus, no third-party or exotic security software
Diagnostic steps taken, and results
Preferences → Image Processing confirmed "Select Subject and Remove Background" set to Device, and "Remove Tool Processing" set to Faster (i.e., local/device processing, not cloud).
Confirmed via Resource Monitor and Task Manager during a Remove operation: GPU utilization stayed at 0%; CPU utilization held around 35–50%; memory usage showed a repeating sawtooth pattern (steady climb, sharp drop, repeat, several times over 60 seconds) rather than a single clean allocation and release.
Switched "Remove Tool Processing" from Faster (Device) to More Stable (Cloud). No change in behavior — same CPU load, same memory pattern, same multi-minute completion time. This was the key finding: if Cloud and Device processing produce identical results, the bottleneck is not in GPU/local acceleration selection at all.
Fully uninstalled Photoshop (Beta), choosing "Remove" (not "Keep") for preferences/settings on uninstall, then reinstalled clean via Creative Cloud.
After reinstall, the local Remove model had to be re-downloaded (confirmed via the same prompt as originally). Re-downloaded successfully; confirmed via Resource Monitor that the model files wrote to `C:\adobeTemp\...\UltraCafModels\...\unet_128_128_dmd\` and that disk activity settled/completed normally.
After the clean reinstall and fresh model download, tested again: identical failure. Same CPU-bound behavior, same sawtooth memory pattern, same multi-minute completion time.
Tested on a brand-new, previously untouched document (a simple iPhone photo, never previously subjected to a Remove operation) rather than the original working file. Identical failure — ruling out corrupted document state as the cause.
Noted that reopening a file on which Remove had previously been attempted caused Photoshop to immediately try to resume "Removing" on launch — suggesting an incomplete or stuck operation state, though this did not turn out to be the root cause given a brand-new document fails identically.
For comparison: the standard (non-Beta) release of Photoshop, same machine, same file, performs the equivalent Remove operation instantly, with the caveat that its results are visually less refined (consistent with it likely still using the older Content-Aware Fill-type algorithm rather than the newer generative model).
Conclusion
The fault does not appear to be related to: GPU driver, GPU detection/settings, scratch disk, antivirus, document history, or local vs. cloud processing mode — all have been individually tested and ruled out. The problem appears specific to this Beta build's Remove tool implementation itself.
Happy to provide further diagnostics, screenshots, or test files if useful.
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