Okay, so I use Photoshop, sometimes. I work with artists and they deliver PSD files, so I fire up Photoshop a couple of times a week for a few minutes at a time.
In exchange, I get to see a slew of garbage negatively affecting performance of my PC when Photoshop isn't even running.
What gives Adobe?
I should preface this by saying that I do not use any of your cloud services, at all. No fonts, no stock images, no cloud storage. I just want to open a PSD every now and then.
on my i9 9900K it takes up half a core at 5Ghz for minutes after I load into Windows. Minutes. It also hogs around 220Mb of RAM.
After a while it goes away. What the heck is it doing and how can I make it stop? Are you guys taking a chance to mine some crypto on my PC? - I sure hope so, because the alternative is gross incompetence.
Now, the "Adobe CEF Helper" garbage has gone away, what now? - Well, I'm a proud posessor of another nifty process in return "Creative Cloud Desktop" which by now runs whole of 9 processes and takes up 383Mb of RAM, it's also very helpful in having a constance disk activity. That sure is helpful. Why? Why is it running at all? Why does it take up so much RAM? Why in the name of Krishna is it actively using disk? I could understand if it was using disk at the start, but it's been minutes since I loaded into Windows, and I haven't done anything at all except for typing this message right here.
Beyond that. I have automatic updates turned off in my settings (not sure why I have to do that in the first place, but here we are). So, pray tell, why is "Adobe Update Service (32 bit)" running? What benefit does it provide to me as a customer?
You have 0 excuse, you may think you do - but you don't. I am not paying you to run garbage on my PC.
So what now?
- Please provide me with instructions on how to fix this situation
- Do better in the future
2
Replies
Hey John, I appreciate your asnwer. I do understand that this is a public forum, it's called "Adobe Support Community".
If I address this directly to Adobe support, it would not be public, which would be somewhat counter to my goals. My goals are:
- Not have Adobe polutte my PC with software that provides 0 benefit to me as a user
Sub-goal of that is to get a configuration for myself that would fix the problem in the immediate future. As a software engineer myself, I know that if I address this privately to Adobe support - I would go through a convoluted flow-chart nonsense to either:
- arrive at "Sorry, we are unable to resolve this issue" or
- after lengthy investigation get a convoluted solution that will work for now, and might stop working in the future or have unintended consequences of breaking functionality that I actually expect.
Your suggestion is kind of in the second category, I could disable various bits and pieces of the monstrosity that is Adobe software cancer which you get with Photoshop or any other tool, but I have no confidence that the software I pay for will continue working. As it is - Photoshop takes ages to load and freezes up occasionally, sometimes in a way that makes it impossible to shut down at all (without resorting to command-line options).
My belief is that if I do not make this issue public - I provide no incentive to Adobe to actually solve this issue. So... I do believe that this is the right place to address this issue.
Let me take this oportunity again to undescore that I have nothing against you personally, John. I appreciate your kind attempt at helping with this issue. And I value your time investment.
The link that you have povided goes into something which I have investigated somewhat, that is one @David__B stating:
Our developers helped create this support article providing info about some of the background processes and why they are required https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/adobe-background-processes.html If you don't use the file sync functionaltiy you can pause it in the Creative Cloud desktop app preferences Although many of the background processes can't be quit, they shouldn't have any significant impact on system performance.
By @David__B
Following the link you find an article that goes into frankly mind-blowing explanation on how all this ensamble of processes that bring no value to me are for my own good!
In software development speak this is "Your opinion is irrelevant". And the list of the reasons there is basically the exact mirror oposite to what I have listed. I don't use any of that stuff, yet Adobe is kind enough to tell me this is to provide me with "seamless" experience? It is very much seamful.
In the same thread Adobe employees bend over backwards trying to explain "because software" things that they themselves don't seem to understand. It looks like they asked devs, devs gave them some reasons that have nothing to do with user experience - then they posted those reasons as though that's gospel, it's just bunk.
Let's see
- Having Typekit fonts usable system wide at any time
By @David__B
Why? I'm using Photoshop, I don't want or need this feature. If anything, in my epxerience Photoshop's font support is far from what I'd consider good, and now you're telling me that's AFTER forcing some garbage to run in the background for me? No. Just no.
- Making file sync files accessible to the clipboard and being able to sync files at any time
By @David__B
Right. When I don't use sync. When no Adobe app is open to my knowledge. When I have 0 files in my "cloud storage". Can I even opt out? - no, of course I can't. I understand the whole idea of vendor lock-in, in how if I pay your for service X and you store some of my files - it's in my best interest to keep paying you so my files stay available to me, but even if you won't admit to this scummy business strategy - let me opt out of having this degrade performacne of my hardware when I'm not using your software. Please?
- Real time notifications for file sync and collaborations
By @David__B
Again, not using collaborations, not using sync.
- Creative Cloud desktop app being able to self update when required
By @David__B
Explicitly disabled in settings.
I don't mean to pick on this gentleman, I'm sure @David__B is Doing his Best, but whether you attempt to decieve me intentionally or unintentionally - I really don't care. I pay you money and you lie to me. I mean, some companies would say "tough luck, it's the way things are - deal with it". Adobe on the other hand is trying to convince us that this is for our own good. What's next? Is Adobe going to replace guys like @David__B with those who aren't even trying to be helpful and just outright wilfully lie to you?
Later on, one gentleman @Paul-M provides a solution:
Which boils down to treating "Creative Cloud" suite as somewhing of a necessary evil malware-type software that lets you install the tools you actually use and removing it from your PC as soon as you're done. Isn't that a laugh?
AdChoices