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Participant
January 17, 2025
Question

Photoshop makes my computer unusable

  • January 17, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 129 views

I've been learning Photoshop the last couple months and I keep running into this issue where my cursor exclusively becomes the select tool. No matter what tool I pick, it will only drag and select pieces of my project. This has happened multiple times over the time I've used PS, it happens nearly every couple hours that I use the application now. If I shut down photoshop, anything I type or click on my desktop acts like a hotkey, like scaling a website up or down when I use the scroll wheel, or typing keys in a browser opens up caches or shows me my history.

2 replies

creative explorer
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 18, 2025

@chonkyc4t Photoshop is a very powerful application and needs more RAM. If your PC is running only with 8 gigs of RAM, that could be one of the issues that you are suffering. I have had many students who have 8 gigs of RAM on the laptops, may it be a PC or even a MAC, and it's frustrating for them. I have 16 gigs of RAM, and so far so good (knock on wood).

With the addition of AI technology with it's Generative Fills with Photoshop, Photoshop will need more RAM to handle all this AI technology. 

https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/photoshop/system-requirements.html

In the meantime, if your Photoshop desktop is giving you so much issues, have you tried the online version of Photoshop. With my students crashing all the time, they have had success using the online version! 

 

m
Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 17, 2025

Could you perhaps tell us which system you are using?

Do you reboot the computer regularly?

 

If you are using a Mac, do you perhaps have a Window manager installed such as Magnet?