Sever performance degradation in Photoshop and Camera raw after upgrading to Tahoe 26.5
I have severe performance degradation after upgrading to Tahoe 26.5
Anyone else experience this? Any knwon fix?
This is what AI says:
The lag you are seeing in Adobe Camera Raw on macOS Tahoe 26.5 ties directly to major, structural under-the-hood rewrites Apple executed in the OS's graphics architecture.
Rather than a minor bug fix patch, 26.5 introduced critical backend adjustments to support Metal 4 and completely overhauled the system's core GPU kernel extensions (the AGX driver series that handles Apple Silicon graphics processing).
These updates changed how the operating system handles heavy graphical workloads:
- GPU Driver Architecture Restructuring (AGX series): Apple pushed massive updates to the AGX kernel extensions in 26.5, modifying how the OS manages local GPU hardware execution, stepping away from the compiler logic used in 26.4.
- Metal 4 Framework Enforcement: The update aggressively shifts resources toward Metal 4 pipeline optimization, modifying how apps invoke command encoders, compute pipelines, and image caching via the graphics processor.
Why this breaks Camera Raw
Adobe Camera Raw relies heavily on Apple’s graphics drivers to instantly render raw image adjustments, complex AI masks, and real-time zoom states. Because 26.5 completely altered how the GPU compiles these instructions, Camera Raw is effectively trying to communicate using an outdated map.
Instead of processing image data seamlessly through your Mac's graphics hardware, the mismatch forces the software to stall, bottlenecking your CPU and causing the extreme interface lag, brush stuttering, and canvas rendering delays you are experiencing.
Because this is an optimization disconnect between the new OS drivers and Adobe’s current code, a full Time Machine restore back to your month-old backup is the only way to immediately return your hardware to a stable environment.
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