PSE 2021 extremely slow upon launch

Hi Cary,

After you've chosed the Hand tool, quit Photoshop Elements, then restarted it, what is the shape of the cursor while your machine hangs for a minute or so?

Also, just in case it still has something to do with the Crop tool, you might want to turn off Auto Show Tool Options. It's in the little dropdown menu on the right-hand side of the Tool Options pane.

And try starting the Photoshop Elements Editor up on its own (i.e. not opening an image at the same time):

- from C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 2021\PhotoshopElementsEditor (just double-click the app name)

- from the Photoshop Elements Home Screen (click on the Photo Editor button)

- from the Photoshop Elements Organizer (Editor > Photo Editor in the Task Pane along the bottom of the screen)

If the Editor doesn't hang when started in any of the above ways, try opening an image by double-clicking on the blank workspace to get to the Open dialog, navigate to the image you want to open, then double-click on it.

ACR=Adobe Camera Raw.  This is the editor that pops up if you send a raw file to the main Photoshop Elements Editor. 

Are you talking about the ACR crop tool?  There is a known issue with slow performance in ACR using the crop tool since the recent update to Elements 2021.  Even if you are talking about the regular Editor crop tool, the added weight of the crop previews may be slowing things down.  So, definitely make sure that you have changed tools (say to the move tool) before opening your next photo and see whether it makes a difference.  If it does, and you are not talking about the ACR crop tool, I would suggest disabling Crop Pre-selection in the Edit>Preferences>General tab.

Please report back what you find.

Cary,

Going out of my comfort zone here... but like Michel has alluded to above, most users (especially Windows users) have unique hardware setups, both in terms of individual components and how they are combined together to form the whole system. As such, trying to identify which component may be the culprit in this situation might take some time.

First off, disconnect from your network and see if that stops the annoying delay before being able to work in Photoshop Elements. I seem to remember someone having a very similar problem when using a NAS device.

Also, you casually mentioned in a previous reply, that you have RAID set up on your machine. Is this RAID 0 or RAID 1?  I have very little experience of RAID, but is there a way of temporarily pausing the mirroring of one disk to the other in RAID 1? If so, I'd have a look at that as maybe being the source of your problem.

Sorry if these seem like shots in the dark, but like I explained above, without knowing your unique hardware set up or being in a position to replicate it, you're going to have go through a process of elimination to narrow down your field of potential suspects.

When I open a new file to edit, I cannot perform any functions for a fully minute.  After that, everything works fine however.  I never encountered this issue with previous versions of PS Elements before. 

It is possible that additional media analysis is taking place in the Organizer.  Although this is only supposed to take place in the background when nothing else is happening on your computer, I have found that the activity can have some effect on the Editor.  I would be interested if you see any change in behavior if you turn off all media analysis by unchecking all of the boxes in the Edit>Preferences>Media Analysis dialog.  Reboot your computer and then see what happens when you open the Editor.

PSE is not cloud based, it's about the only program from adobe that is not.

How old is your computer? 

When I start the editor from the fancy home screen, it takes 6 seconds to fully open and load.  Loading an image to edit?  virtually instant (I do has a ssd).