Inspiring

Answered

Photoshop 2021 slow and laggy [LOCKED]

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
October 28, 2020
137 replies
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This thread is now locked by a moderator and you are welcome to continue a civil discussion in a new thread or add to the bug report that goes to the product developers. See the link in the answer marked "Correct".

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I'm going to start this new thread for the new version of photoshop.
There are hundreds of comments about 2020 being slow and laggy and not a single adobe rep has even acknowledged it. I was hoping the upgrade would solve everyone's issues but alas that isn't the case.

So this thread is for all you old and newcomers with new and old machines where photoshop runs like crap to complain about. Maybe their newest software might be seen for them to do something.

I'll go first:
Ryzen 9, 64 gigs of 3200 ram, 1080 ti gfx, 1nvme 3200mb.s ssd for programs, 1 tb sata sdd cache drive, 2 tb WD black for files.

Photoshop takes almost 3 seconds to do simple things like changing to a shape pen tool to make shapes.
Lags on anything pen tool, and type tool
Played with every setting in the performance and went through their pages on optimizing.
I even went through the Nvidia setting but only gained a slight boost in performance.

Windows

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer davescm

Well, let's go:
Photoshop version v22.5.1 but I'm testing version 21.2.12 and the problem remains.
CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor
GPU - RTX 2080 Super
GPU Driver - Nvidia Studio 472.12

Windows version 10, version 21H1 with all updates.
I have two 27" monitors, both Full HD (1920x1080) 144HZ.

Delays always occur when zooming in on the material I'm working on, slowness when opening boxes like Blending Options, applying styles and changing fonts.

Opening the Photoshop preferences box takes 2 seconds to open and it always happens.

I believe I was clear about my pc information.

@vitorsantosHerz

I've linked the bug thread you started below so that others can vote and add their own system info:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/slowness-and-lag-in-photoshop/idi-p/12403870

Dave

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digiguru

Participating Frequently

Professional full-time designer and retoucher here. Still an issue in March 2021. I've reverted to Photoshop 2020.

I'm on a 2014 i5 iMac with 32GB ram, 1TB SSD and an AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB.

The computer is nothing special but can run After Effects and Premiere no worries, whereas with Photoshop 2021 I see the spinning wheel for a few seconds at a rate of every 20 seconds or so.

MKSA

Known Participant

How did you revert? When I go older versions it does not show me 2019 only the current version I have Photoshop 2020 (21.2.6) and the newer one 22.3 which I cannot use as High Sierra does not support it. Just spent 2 hours with support to no avail getting 2019 installed.

A

Anonymous

Just like to add that its been almost 5 months since this thread started and not a single thing has been mentioned officially from Adobe. This is a MAJOR problem.

D

dimalique

Participating Frequently

Well, they probably figure we'll continue to send them money no matter how terrible the updates, because many of us have clients who desire their finished product to be in an Adobe format--it's the professional software, after all. Few can jump ship and only use something else. I'm extremely frustrated, because within the last five months I've had problems with Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and After Effects--all the programs that I use on a regular basis, and all with bugs that made them unusable (Premiere Pro wouldn't put video clips in the timeline. Illustrator automatically resizes the window 3x too big and the cursor jumps around, making it impossible to use). Nothing gets fixed, and problems get worse. Sometimes reverting to older versions doesn't even help, because the bugs seem to backtrack and versions that ran perfectly no longer do. Using programs in Adobe CC has become a useless and time-draining endeavor.

C

csscms

Legend

Sadly, I too have found the 2021 update criplingly slow.

I've tried PS2021 on a 2013 Mac Pro 64GB RAM on OSX 10.15 (turned off graphics accelration and the other pref fixes) and a clean erase and install of OSX 11 on a brand new 8-Core Macbook Pro running 64GB RAM and 5600M Graphics.

Even opening a 60MB (yes, just 60MB) jpeg from the internal 2700MBps internal drive was painfully slow. And if I switched to the brush tool, the curser flashes between the Move and Brush tools... every... 3... seconds - amongst many other lags, pauses and freezes. We usually work on 5-12GB files so I'm not looking forward to this.

Something is very wrong with this release, not good enough sorry. Please get it sorted.

And for the love of God, stop advertising products and features within your apps, we're not consumers browsing a website.

K

KiwiYankee

Participant

Photoshop 2021 is totally unusable. Running latest 16" MacBookPro, 64GB RAM and Big Sur. Tried going back to 2019 and it provided new problems I hadn't encountered prior. Photoshop 2020 seems the best bet at the moment. Considering what I'm paying Adobe monthly for the suite I would think they would have sorted out any issues with Big Sur before release and/or provided updates to 2021 to sort it out. It's absolutely unusable! Please don't tell me about how a monthly subscription is better than a "purchased" copy. I didn't ask for this new bloatware version of Photoshop 2021. Thank goodness I held on to older versions.

C

csscms

Legend

I've scanned through various threads but there's no real info on why this release is so bad - I always wait a few months but it now seems that each year's release only becomes stable when next year's version is released. Truly painful.

E

emcee99

Participant

I use a macbook pro and Photoshop 2021 is really slow when I try and Zoom in and out. This didn't happen in Photoshop 2020

nathanw41225989

Participant

Also a Macbook Pro 2015

2.8Ghz quad core I7

16Gb ram

Photoshop 2020 seemed ok.

Photoshop 2021 is REALLY laggy on zoom and when panning around the screen.

Presume I can un install and go back to the previous version?

R

rkarey@mybenefitexpress

Participant

I also find Photoshop 2021 (release 22.3) unusable. Luckily I kept an earlier version around. Anything I do, move a window, change a tool, go to a menu item, takes 6-10 seconds of the spinning beachball before the app responds. This has been going on ever since Adobe released PS 2021. Every update I installed I thought might fix the issue but it didn't. I can't believe we're paying for this garbage! FIX IT ALREADY Adobe!

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bysea

Known Participant

Good timing as I just received a Pshop survey from Adobe. I let them know that while it has some cool, new features, it doesn't matter because it's unusable for production work from all the issues listed in this thread. I hope they can resuscitate the beast and make it usable again. It's really the only Adobe app that doesn't work for me in my work-flow (ID, AI, Premiere, etc., all work as expected).

adamt18510785Author

Inspiring

Same, let them know exactly how I felt

B

bhop73

Participating Frequently

Laggy here too. Just using the lasso tool is frustrating.. going back to 2019 unless I need super resolution..

iana71313648

Participating Frequently

I have spent the last two weeks dealing with an assignment on Photoshop 2021, and I must say, in spite of the incredible functionality of Photoshop (far more than I will ever use), it is slow, buggy, and unfortunately doesn't like my GPU much. I am running a top-line Precision Workstation, with a mass of memory, SSD's, etc., plus Windows 10 / 20H2. In my frustration I downloaded Affinity Photo, and found a $40 app that is very fast, and highly functional but will need yet another learning curve, but I will be forced to make that, given the current state of PS2021. I will keep my subscription alive while I am undergoing the learning curve to a new app. And if I can accomplish what I usually do in Photoshop in Affinity, then its goodby Adobe. So sad!

mihail spil haufter

Participant

I was cautios updating so I did a test first and I can confirm . everithing that came after 2019 version is from bad to worse! I tried the 2020 version when it came up and I got an itinstant lag followed by a serious crash I still use the 2019 and I'll stick with it .Is working ,is responsive , doesn't have any lags even after havy usage of 9-10 hours daily.I get daily adobe notifications to update to the latest version but I am sure that if I'll do it , that might also be the end of my adobe subscription and collaboration sice for me a day without working is a day without earning any money.. So I can;t afford to have the workstation crashed .

F

fulkanelli

Participant

I agree, I'm still working on the 20.0.0 release. Newer versions work stably worse. This is a complete disappointment. Brushes, working with large images and many layers is awful.

(Win 10, Ryzen5 2600, 16GB RAM, Radeon RX 580)

If these problems are not fixed, I will be forced to look for an alternative to Photoshop. 😞

A

Anonymous

I'm doing majority of my basic retouching work in Affinity photo.. now because of this Adobe BS.

I was skeptical at first but it works amazingly, so quick, opens & saves PSDs / TIFFs, a few things are different but most of the keyboard shortcuts etc work the same.

Honestly give it a try, I'm working quicker and quicker every day. This is how software is meant to run on decent hardware. F.U. Adobe!

Denki_ChargeBolt

Participant

Jumping on the train as well.

Windows 10 pro 64 bit, 64gb ram, i9, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, all drivers updated from manufacturer site, no pending updates, turned off smoothing, turned off windows ink, tried everything.

Program was working fine when I was using 2019 version, now that I had to switch computers and install 2021, it has been a nightmare. The lag is unbearable and it is greatly affecting my work.

All the brushes lag so matter the stetting brush or file size, I do not have imported brushes installed as it is a fresh install, and I even notice using two screens that my cursor gets drastically slower entering the photoshop window. Look forward to any solution. Thank you!

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