Camera Raw 14.0 on MacOS Big Sur slow

[diegoa66445523]

Everytime Adobe does a major update, it takes about 2 months for them to unravel these very familiar problems. First, let me get this out of the way, I work on:

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020)

3.8 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i7

80 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT 8 GB (supports full acceleration)

Camera raw, Canon R5

CR preferences: ProPhoto RGB, 8 bit, 300 dpi, cache 50 GB

AdobeCC 2022

80% of my business is product photography. I just got the update to Photoshop CC 2022 yesterday 10/28. Today I am trying to edit photos I took for Rolex, and using the adjustment brush (as it's own mask or an add-on to "select subject" mask1 ) is like watching paint dry. A fast adjustment brush is critical for true sRGB white backgrounds in my product photog workflow considering I average 200 deliverables per week. Another problem is that cropping went back to a slow glide motion where the photo is moved around, rather than the much quicker crop lines being what moves. These 2 issues alone easily double the amount of time I have to spend editing each week. 

*The adjustment brush works just fine in Lightroom, but I have my reasons for using Camera Raw instead.

What's the deal Adobe?

[TheDigitalDog]

Might try resetting you ACR preferences, can't hurt. 

Reset ACR preferences:
Hold down the Command key and select Photoshop > Preferences > Camera Raw (macOS) or hold down the Ctrl key and select Edit > Preferences > Camera Raw (Windows).

[diegoa66445523]

Thanks for the suggestion, but after updating the MacOS to Monterrey last week, I thought I'd try it again. Making sure all Adobe settings were set at default, I tried to edit one photo in Camera Raw, and it's still a mess. By mess I mean, I applied one stroke of the adjustment brush, and I timed a full 15 seconds before the action applied and appeared on screen. Just scrolling through the filmstrip, if I happen to have several photos open, takes a long time for the photos to actually move. I don't know what happened to camera raw but right now it's worthless for me. 

[David Franzen at Work]

Thank you for providing a specific example how long an operation takes. A 15-second lag to add the first brush with default settings sounds very out of the ordinary.

I'm curious about another detail you provided. You listed "80" GB RAM. Did you mean 8 GB? I did not realize 80 GB was a configuration that is available on the iMac.

Just for testing, please try a couple experiments to see if they affect the performance of the operation you described: adding the first brush stroke to a photo with default settings. First, please try the test again after resizing the Camera Raw dialog to the smallest possible size. Second, please quit Photoshop and open a photo in Camera Raw directly in Bridge by selecting the thumbnail for a photo in Bridge and using the cmd+R keyboard shortcut. Because you reported that you saw the slow performance in Photoshop, but not in Lightroom, I'm curious to know if the issue also affects a Bridge-hosted Camera Raw dialog.

Thanks,

David

[diegoa66445523]

You are correct, iMac's aren't sold that way. However, the 2020 iMac 27" has 4 upgrabale RAM slots. I have 2 x 32 GB, and 2 x 8 GB installed.

I ran your tests for lag-time with brushes in Camera Raw. The smallest possible dialog box showed no change. Opening a CR2 file in Camera Raw via Bridge, also resulted in no change. The extremely long lag-time was present in both scenarios.

I should also note that I tried all the workarounds and tests with CR3 files from a Canon R5, and the result is the same - the Camera Raw editor lags terribly when brushing, cropping, and scrolling. This same bug has happened twice before in the last couple years, and eventually, Adobe released a Camera Raw update that fixed the issues. As I mentioned in my initial post above, this isn't a new problem. By my observations, Adobe takes a few months to fix these same bugs each time they pop up - which leads to its own set of questions!

Thanks, Diego

[Doozie2]

Hi Diego,

If you go into photoshop > preferences > performance > graphic processor settings >

Turn OFF "Use Graphic Processor" This doesn't seem to support all mac graphics processors.

Does that work? I was having the same issue with Adobe Raw Editor, and that worked for me. Note that it also speeds up performance in tools like liquify.

Jeff

[richards23293963]

Same issue, same solution. The graphics processor acceleration is always the cause of lags for me with raw and photoshop when a new release comes out. 

[TheDigitalDog]

---

@richards23293963 wrote:

Same issue, same solution. The graphics processor acceleration is always the cause of lags for me with raw and photoshop when a new release comes out. 

---

If turning OFF GPU works, it's a GPU bug and you need to contact the manufacturer or find out if there's an updated driver for it. For Apple, that takes place with an OS update, if they support the older hardware.

More and more functionality is moving to the GPU. With GPUs running as they should, you should see the opposite, much faster speeds. Unfortunately, GPUs have a lot of issues (far worse on Windows). If you ever update your Mac, don't skimp on the most powerful GPU you can afford. 
Also see: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/acr-gpu-faq.html

[diegoa66445523]

According to Adobe's Camera Raw minimum requirements, a MacOS GPU should have Metal (iMac's made after 2012 do) and 2GB memory. In my initial question, I noted that my 2020 iMac runs AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT 8 GB - which is more than adequate to run CR. Also, Photoshop's new Help tab includes a GPU compatibility checker, which mine passes. To be thorough, I tested CR with my GPU turned off and it made no difference. I can render heavily GPU-accelerated effects in Premiere Pro with no issues, therefore I believe my iMac is powerful enough to run any application of the Adobe CC suite. My half-baked scientific method suggests the bug lies within Adobe's CR software, and just like times before, they will fix it once a programmer realizes they've tripped the bug again by the annual CC update. It's an exhausting exercise, but seemingly one that can't be avoided!

[Doozie2]

Well said, it's a good argument to hold off on major version updates. The masking brush in Adobe Raw is taking several seconds to update for me as well. It's reminiscent of using Photoshop in the 1990's. The masking brush seems to be updating the entire image with every "frame" and I am also finding times of 6-12 seconds for the masking brush to update the area I just masked. It used to be realtime speed in its updates. I did see some improvement with Graphic Processor options, but the masking brush is basically unusable.

[Doozie2]

Quick note: lightroom's masking brush is working just fine, as it is for you.

[Manuel Blickwerk]

I work on a Mac Mini M1 2020 with 16 Gb Ram (as well as a 2017 imac) and have the same problem on both machines. Camera Raw is terribly slow in every aspect. Camera Raw adjustment brush has a lag of 10 seconds or more (up to 20 seconds, sometimes completely freezing). It's basically impossible to work this way.

It seems after almost 2 years the only way to use Adobe Raw in a professional environment is still to downgrade...  😞

[Manuel Blickwerk]

By the way: turing of GPU Usage doesn't help at all. (Never did with previous iteration of that bug, which happens with pretty much every update in recent years.)

[nickm7301167]

Having the exact same problem. Lightroom is fine, Camera Raw brushes in Photoshop is unusable. 

[AndrejVasilenko]

Same here, I am on iMac 2017, 4.2ghz i7, 32gb ram and Amd pro 580 8gb graphics, which is more than enough for photoshop. When using masking tool, it is lagging while I draw the mask. Reset the setting but its still there. Never happened before the update.

[mavenlore]

Hello everyone, I had the same problem until 2 minutes ago. Turns out you need to turn off graphics processor off in the CAMERA RAW references, not the standard photoshop preferences - Photoshop / Preferences / Camera Raw (at bottom) / Performance / Use Graphic Processor (Off)

Back to real time adjustment and healing brush!  Hope this helps everyone!

[adamh46430981]

I tried this just now as well, and it worked for me. Full spec 2019 macbook pro. Thanks Mavenlore.

[mavenlore]

Wow, we have the same macbook!  All steroided out full specs as well!  Yeah...our machines very much should be able to handle a small brush with the greatest of ease.

Follow up, I fugred a more time efficent way to do the GPU switch, tuens out you can just switch it on and off WITHIN camera raw, look for the preferences gear icon in the top right corner.  Makes the workflow better than closing the RAW image, messing with preferences and then re-opening.

[Doozie2]

Just updated to the latest photoshop, and the performance of the brush in Adobe raw is markedly worse. I did turn off the graphics processor in Raw Preferences and saw that the brush worked much better (still slow though). However this turns off zoom scrubbing and adversly affects interactions with other features. Anyone else having this same experience. I should note that the brush does paint normally for a second or two and then gets exponentially slower.

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018)

2.6 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7

32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

Radeon Pro Vega 20 4 GB

[Doozie2]

Additionally, Lightroom is performant with the exact same processor settings. OS is Big Sur

[eddie michela9900799]

I have the exact same problems you describe, Doozie2. I thougt it was a Big Sur thing and installed Monterey on my Mac Pro (2019)

3,3 GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon W

48 GB 2933 MHz DDR4

AMD Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB

[mavenlore]

I don't know about everyone else, but I updated to photoshop 23.1.1 and the problem seems to be resolved.

[Doozie2]

Thanks for the follow up, but unfortanetly…

The Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw Brush is still terribly slow when painting masks. It is still the same issue, the brush buffers and lag for upto 15 seconds. The same mask brush works fine in Lightroom and there are no standard brush performance issues in normal Photoshop contexts. Time to ask IT for a M1 Mac I assume.

[Manuel Blickwerk]

The M1 won't help though - I have the same problems on an M1 mac mini.

[samfoto]

The Camera Raw 14.2 new masking brush is painfully slow in 2022!!! My friend is dual booting Windows 11 Pro and MacOS Big Sur 11.6.5 with i9-9900k and a Radeon VII and on the same machine it runs fine in Windows, runs like extrement in MacOS Big Sur! My friend said Camera Raw 13.2 runs just fine. C'mon Adobe!