Photoshop Memory Leak

I’ve run into similar memory issues on macOS, especially when juggling Lightroom and Photoshop with big RAWs and layered files. Restarting helps, but it’s frustrating when you’re in the middle of a workflow.

What worked for me was moving part of my editing workflow to a virtual machine with higher specs. That way I’m not limited by my laptop’s RAM, and I can scale resources depending on the project. If you’re curious, here’s an example of the kind of setup I used: [link removed]

It doesn’t solve Adobe’s memory handling directly, but it’s been a workaround to keep things smooth without constant restarts.

Hi there,

Sorry about this experience, and thanks so much for sharing all the details and what you've tested so far. Possible reasons could include cached files, background saves, cloud documents, or Adobe CC services running in the background. I’ll share this with the team for further investigation and clarification. In the meantime, since you’ve tried a lot already, one more thing you could try is adjusting some performance settings in Photoshop, like changing cache settings:
https://adobe.ly/4nkBjNl

Let me know how it goes. 

Regards,

Srishti

yep, a few seconds of speed painting and it jumps up a couple 100 mb
normally it's 2k or under
but i watched it climb to 8.2k in memory
swapped back to ver 22 (before AI upgrade)
ver 25 and ver 26 both do it too with the mem leak

I will keep an eye on things on mys ide. I have a tendency to work on certain projects over days and don't always close the apps unless necessary. This workflow is different than my video work where I have a "media bin" that allows me to quickly accociate images and assets with a specific project across many workstreams. In photoshop however I have to organize externally and then Drag and Drop or open "recent". SOmethimes I work with so many files this eats away at time so I just keep the assets in memory until not needed. I understand how that can creep over time but just didn't expect ot to blow past the defined limits.

I will reset also and see if that changes the behavior.

I believe on the Mac it is listed under the application as part of the unified memory model. 

We see this (memory usage exceeding the allocation set in preferences) pop up from time to time. It's not common, but it happens. I've never seen it myself.

It's hard to pin down. Some users have reported that a full and complete reset of preferences fixed it. Others that a new version didn't have the problem. So on the face of it, it might look like a bug.

However, I'd like to take this opportunity to throw out a question to anyone reading this. On systems with an integrated GPU - which is where this mainly appears to be happening -  the GPU uses shared system memory, and it can eat up a lot performing Photoshop tasks. Many of the new advanced Photoshop functions run directly and entirely in the GPU. What I have never been able to establish, is where this GPU memory consumption gets listed. Under the application calling it? Under system? I'd be very grateful if somebody could point me to it.

That would be fine, however I set a 14GB limit on photoshop and it blew past it to 22GB on this machine.

Technically speaking batch mode is not the same as everyday workflow tasks. The use case would be resizing, watermarking and file concersions which I can do on the command line. Batch can't place logos and other graphics varaibly which requires lines of site and manual placement on compositions. Don't understand why Photoshop would use batch as it's first principle. I can close the app after each composition in my workflow but that comes at a cost to time.  Not my product so I can live within the constraints of the design for the tools I choose to use.

This is normal and by design. 

Photoshop does not release memory when an image is closed. The memory is reused and recycled - but not released until you close the application.

This is what makes e.g. batch processing possible. Constantly requesting memory from the operating system would slow everything down.

Photoshop will use memory up to the limit you specify in preferences, so it's important to set the allocation at a level that leaves memory for other processes and applications. The default 70% usually works well.