P: CS6 Slow compared to CS5.1 with large files

yes, the flick panning is annoying! it is always turned off on my side too.

the hand/pan tool is not unusable or super slow, i just see a slight difference because i use it so much.

i'll try to define the slowdown better with some tests.

I haven't seen any problems while panning (aka the hand tool), and that would be dependent mostly on document fitting in memory, followed by the video card/GPU.

Of course, I have the super-annoying "flick panning" turned off on every system (wish it could be turned off by default or eliminated, but a product manager actually likes it).

i'm still experiencing strange and slow PAN behavior.

it doesn't matter how big the file is or how many layers it has.

compared to CS5.1 the pan in CS6 is not quite responsive.
panning with zoom more than 100% while masking out an object is something i do very often. i just feel that when i move around it doesn't feel natural as in older versions. it feels like the pan tool doesn't hold the canvas strong enough and it "slips" from the hand.

turning thumbs off doesn't make any changes.

The only big slowdown I can see while moving the layer is caused by the snap to layer option. Do make sure you have layer thumbnails turned off, as requested before.

The delay when first clicking appears to be mostly caused by Layer 1 and the pattern fill set to 1% scaling. Scaling and filling that pattern ends up taking a lot of time (more than I think it should, but it's still an extreme case). That's why turning off that layer helps a bit.

There is some delay caused by compositing all the other layers and styles, but it's only about 5% of the total. That one layer and the pattern fill accounts for 90%+ of the time when first opening the file, and when first clicking to move a layer.

What OS version are you using? What GPU model? And did updating the drivers from the GPU maker's website help?

(summary for those just joining the discussion)

The known layer performance problems in CS6

1) Layer thumbnails are slow to draw, especially when moving many layers at once.
WORKAROUND: disable layer thumbnails in the layers palette options.
****FIXED in Photoshop 13.0.1

2) "Snap to Layers" is slow on documents with many layers.
WORKAROUND: turn off snap or just the snap to layer bounds option in View -> Snap To -> Layers

3) Nudging layers can be slow on documents with many layers
WORKAROUND: disable layer thumbnails in the layers palette options, or set the thumbnails to "Entire Document" instead of "Layer Bounds" (which was the default in previous versions).

If you are experiencing a problem, first download and install the updates, next try using these workarounds to eliminate the known problems. Then, if a slowdown remains, we'll need a lot more details.

CS5 also had a slowdown due to layer thumbnails, it just wasn't as pronounced as in CS6.

I asked for files and details months ago - the first customer file I got identified the thumbnail issue. But since I can't reproduce any other issues (until Ray's), I can't give you any files that show the issue.

And I've asked repeatedly that you first turn thumbnails off in CS6 to eliminate that known problem, so we can move on to any remaining problems (like the layer snap identified in Ray's file, and the as-of-yet unidentified). If you don't eliminate the known problems, you're just wasting time and throwing off the search for as-of-yet unknown problems.

We've been working on this for months, and trying to get feedback from customers who are actually seeing the problems that we have not been able to reproduce. We really want to see these problems fixed -- but if we can't reproduce the problem, then we can't do much about it. When we ask for more information - we need that information to help identify the cause of the problem.

P.S. I've also been working with you through my vacation and one killer cold (still in progress, which is why I answered posts at 2, 5, and 9 am today).

and when can we expect the update with the fix? are you really working on it?

i did some precise tests with the white dots and got some surprising results!

moving "white dots" group sum up :
CS6, thumbs on, very slow jagged movement and progress bar.
CS5, thumbs on, acceptable movement slow but not jagged.

CS6, thumbs off, very responsive and fluent movement at 100% zoom or fit to screen.
CS6, thumbs off, zoomed in but not 100%, slower and slightly jagged movement but responsive.
CS5, thumbs off, faster and responsive movement as with thumbs on. (same as cs6)

why the difference between thumbs ON and OFF on CS5? shouldn't be the same speed??

somehow i can narrow it down to the thumbnail problem at the moment.
i realize now that we maybe have different issues with our systems, and also that CS6 needs a lot of resources and it's notthat universal as CS5 was.

and why adobe didn't came up first with the idea of exchanging a file with us so we can examine the issues??