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NathanStrum
Participant
August 8, 2020
Answered

Photoshop GPU usage maxed out, even with no documents open

  • August 8, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 624 views

I'm running the latest version of Photoshop (21.2.1), on a late 2018 Mac Mini, MacOS Mojave 10.14.6, 32 GB RAM, with a BlackMagic eGPU (Radeon Pro 580, 8GB).

Photoshop completely slams the GPU usage - all by itself - even if no documents are open. Photoshop hogs the eGPU entirely, making everything else grind to a halt.

The attached GPU History picture shows Photoshop running, with no documents open. Just the Create/Open screen. Near the very end (at the right), I quit Photoshop, and the usage dropped to nothing. InDesign, Illustrator, Premire Pro and Media Encoder all behave themselves, and don't do this.

 


I realize the first thing Adobe is going to tell me to do is "update to MacOS Catalina". Unfortunately, I still require Mojave to run some 32-bit apps. As it is now, I have to quit Photoshop every time I'm not actively using it, or it makes the system effectively unusable. The computer is fast. The eGPU is fast. The problem lies solely with Photoshop.

 

Thanks for your time. Looking forward to the update that adresses this problem.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Conrad_C

I use a different eGPU with a Radeon RX 580 and an integrated graphics MacBook Pro, and have never seen this problem in Photoshop and many months of use in Mojave, so if it’s a Photoshop problem it might be Mac mini-specific. Does it still happen after you reset Photoshop preferences?

 

I don’t know the answer myself, but for anyone else who might know more, it could help to copy and paste what you get when you choose Help > System Info in Photoshop. Also, when you select Photoshop in the Finder and choose File > Get Info, is Prefer External GPU selected or not? I honestly don’t know if that would have anything to do with it, but again, another possible clue for someone who sees your post and has a better answer.

2 replies

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 11, 2020

Wow...I wasn’t expecting resetting preferences to fix it, but that’s great that it did.

 

Regarding your idea about a more granular preferences reset, you could suggest that on the Photoshop Feedback site where feature requests and bugs are logged, voted on, and sometimes responded to by Adobe staff, especially when an issue is being worked on for an update.

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
August 8, 2020

I use a different eGPU with a Radeon RX 580 and an integrated graphics MacBook Pro, and have never seen this problem in Photoshop and many months of use in Mojave, so if it’s a Photoshop problem it might be Mac mini-specific. Does it still happen after you reset Photoshop preferences?

 

I don’t know the answer myself, but for anyone else who might know more, it could help to copy and paste what you get when you choose Help > System Info in Photoshop. Also, when you select Photoshop in the Finder and choose File > Get Info, is Prefer External GPU selected or not? I honestly don’t know if that would have anything to do with it, but again, another possible clue for someone who sees your post and has a better answer.

N
NathanStrumAuthor
Participant
August 11, 2020

Resetting the Preferences worked. Thanks for the suggestion. Of course, that's the first thing I tell students to do when they're having issues, but I'm reluctant to do it since I hate having to set things up all over again (do as I say, not as I do, etc.). But Photoshop is letting go of the eGPU now when not using it. (It is specifically set to prefer the external GPU, incidentally.)

 

Not sure when the prefs got corrupted, since Photoshop had been behaving itself until a recent Adobe update, but I couldn't say which one.

 

After resetting, I ended up going back through a backup of the Photoshop Settings folder, and restoring most of my previous settings manually, so I'm back up and running without too much fuss.

 

As a product suggestion, it would be nice if Adobe added the option to retain user-specific preferences during a reset. A checklist, so you could go through and reset specific prefs, until the problem was fixed, without blowing away everything else.

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