Slow Photoshop Elements 2026

I have stopped using 2026 PS ELEMENTS and gone back to 2025 version  it was a total waste of money I think it’s the AI installed. I won’t be upgrading again. 

Having the exact same problem. When I try to resize something it can sometimes take up to 20 seconds. It’s almost unusable!

I am having performance issues as well. I was running the 2021 version of PSE on my MacBook Air M2 8g ram with few issues. (it would randomly crash all the time but work flow was pretty decent). I upgraded my MacBook to Tahoe and was forced to get the 2026 version of PSE since 2021 version was not supported. I noticed a significant change in how fast PSE ran. Almost every single time I tried to resize something its was a good 5-6 seconds or longer before I could perform any other action. The square paint brushes are no longer are square, they fade out to nothing on the bottom right corner. Resizing things, the constrain perportion button automatically unchecks it self every single time I make an adjustment. It's just a nightmare to use and its riddled with bugs. So I bought a brand new MacBook Air M4 with 24g of ram, thinking this would fix the issues. There was no improvement in the performance. I completely uninstalled PSE and reinstalled. Made sure everything is up to date. Tweaked settings. Nothing helps. Im stuck with this trash software that take 10x as long to do what I need to do. Im so frustrated. 

Yes. It also goes crazy when cropping an image. 

Got the same problem on a Window 11 Laptop, only started slowing down this week...so painfully slow on organiser, editor, loading photos and there is a lag on any edits

yes. Extremely slow (like 30 seconds) after doing a cut and past and moving and the same after trying to crop.  Big issue. Needs sorting ASAP Adobe / Apple

I hate this new elements 26. everytime I make a move it freezes up. Im ready to delete the whole program and reinstall. Would that help? This is really unacceptable. 

Not that I am aware of.   One thing you can do to "speed things up a bit"  go to your preference file and turn off all that facial recongnition stuff it you don't need it.   ALSO:  by default auto creations is turned on- I find that can be a bit of a resource hog.  let me know if you need help with that.   

I have a windows computer:  I find pse 2026 to be a bit more repsonsive.

One thing you might do:  turn your comptuer all the way off.  go get some coffee come back in a few minutes, and turn it back on.   I turn my computer all the way off every monday morning, and it stays off for  abotu 10 hours- it's always a bit "peppier" when I turn it back on. FOR EXAMPLE:  My download speed right noww is 276MB/sec- and typically is about 150MB /sec thats with t-mobile internet which uses both 5g and 4g to provide internet service.