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treytallent
treytallent
Participant
January 7, 2020
Question

Photoshop 2020 won't use all allocated RAM

  • January 7, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 1499 views

Hi, when I'm using multiple layers with layer effects such as outer glow + drop shadow photoshop begins to lag and have several second delays between my actions. I think this is because it's bottlenecking on RAM as the amount Photoshop is using under performance manager will not exceed 3.5gb even though I have 16gb of RAM and have 12gb allocated to photoshop under the general settings. I'm not having any sort of error prompts, it's purely a performance issue. I have a ryzen 5 2600 CPU and  rx580 gpu if that matters, thank you.

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2 replies

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 7, 2020

RAM use is not the reason. In fact, Photoshop isn't particularly troubled by low RAM because the main action is in the scratch disk. That's Photoshop's main memory. RAM is more like a fast access cache, and the contents in RAM will shift according to immediate needs.

 

In other words - with little RAM things may slow down a tiny bit, but Photoshop will happily keep working. It won't even slow down very much if your scratch disk is fast enough, like the new PCIe M.2 drives. Then you'll be hard pressed to notice it.

 

So there's another reason. The prime suspect is always the video driver. Video drivers are a mess, because they are mostly released to keep the gamers happy and let them run the latest games. This often introduces bugs elsewhere. So first of all update the driver.

 

Next in line of suspects are third-party plugins and extensions, or any other utility that you may have installed. Just as an example, font managers can do strange things to Photoshop.  

 

Finally, reset preferences. It may not help, but a corrupt preferences file can give very unexpected symptoms, including specific slowdowns.

paweld29918657
paweld29918657
Participant
November 12, 2021

@treytallent And how was the problem solved? It is the same for me. I bought RAM and now I have a total of 32 GB, but Photoshop does not see the full 32 GB, only 25 GB. In addition, it only uses 10GB (screenshot).
Photoshop from update to update is working worse and worse.
You can't use it that way. See the video how it looks for me.
Reinstalling the system did not help. updating the graphics card drivers did not help (I even installed nvidia drivers called "for creators")
The processor is an intel i7-6700K @ 4.6GHZ
Graphics: GTX1060
RAM: 32GB
https://youtu.be/SS7FYkemUuU

Ged_Traynor
Community Expert
Ged_TraynorCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 12, 2021

What your seeing is normal, the operating system will also use RAM so you have to take that into account.

Don't set Photoshop use 100%, of RAM, 70% will be fine

 

nikunj.m
nikunj.m
Legend
January 7, 2020

Hi there,

 

We are sorry about the experience with the performance of Photoshop.

 

Would you mind going to the Preferences of Photoshop, then Performance and uncheck the option to Use Graphics Processor. Also, check the option for Legacy Compositing and relaunch photoshop to check if that helps.

 

Regards,

Nikunj

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