Adobe CC is using too much memory

[alinaalvarez]

Hi,

I'm running the latest version of Adobe CC on a Mac Book Pro 2018 on Mojave and the amount of memory the CC is taking has blown my mind, I bought this computer with 8GB RAM and when running the suite it would push my memory to 95% (so it was pushing my memory to a 7.5GB and up) of its capacity causing it to constantly crash, overheat and more. I returned the computer and upgraded to a 16GB one because I do this for a living!!! Only a few hours after installing the backup on my computer (same exact number of apps, nothing had changed from the previous one), the suite was again using almost 70%  of my memory (that is (13GBs out of 16) not ONE thing changed from the 8GB to the 16 GB computer but as soon as I ran CC the memory use would hike up, I have confirmed this by shutting everything Adobe including the CC app manager and backend processes and then my memory goes back to normal. I read forums I need to uninstall and reinstall (and maybe downgrade to a different version that doesn't do this???) but I can't uninstall I've followed every single instruction on this and other forums about manually trashing and quitting processes and other backend things but I still get the message that it can't uninstall. This is causing serious issues on my workflow, like REAL issues with clients and not being able to deliver because it won't work. Please help. I have used Adobe for 10+ years now and I just don't know what else to do!!!

[Test Screen Name]

It’s normal for apps to use as much memory as they want. Why is it a problem? Better to use it than leave it idle!

please explain in detail the problems you face with workflow, clients, and delivery, they may have no connection to memory use.

[alinaalvarez]

Hi @Test Screen, as mentioned above, I am having severe issues with my productivity and the safety of my files since when it crashes it looses tons of data. I also didn't but a 16GB computer so that Adobe would use 100% of the memory, these are regular files, nothing crazy. I am unsure what you normally do with these files but I don't have the time to explain my clients nor the willingness to do so as I am a professional designer who makes a living of this. Not sure if there was some actual help you can provide for my issue?

[Fredeichel]

I am running windows 10 and just figured out my slow running problem appears to be CC. When looking at task manager it is using 40 to 60 % of my memory and I am not even using it. Things improve in my performance when I close CC.

FRED

[Thomas5FB3]

Can't believe this comment. Clearly trolling someone who is having an issue. 

I also have this problem of CC bloating to consume 70% of RAM while it is supposed to be idling.

I ended up getting a new laptop because of it but now I have CC turned off unless I need it to update an app etc.

[Liligadget229004983fht]

Can't believed this comment too, but i can't believe that i have installed it on my new macbook pro m1 pro and never even used it,  i have noticed it after a few of my blender 3d workflow was crashing on really small project, then went to activity monitor to be surprised by the enormous amount that creative cloud was using on my macbook when i wasn't even using it at all, after numerous trouble to get rid of it mac macbook was just like revived from the abyssal. That's really annoying that this CC running like this on the background. And im sure it's just about tracking the unlicenced software around. Honestly no more abode for me i had to change and learn to use other options because this one became too problematic.

[potomac-images]

What is Adobe CC doing that requires so much memory and so many cycles?

Jim Walker
Launched from my iPhone

[Test Screen Name]

You said memory went up to 95%. You also said it overheated and crashed. No connection that I can see between these things. It's normal for systems to work hard, get hot and use the fan. Crashing isn't normal, so please describe this in detail.

We may be able to help if you will stop insisting there is a memory problem and work with us on the real problem. If you've already made your mind up, we can't offer any help.

[alinaalvarez]

Yes, I wouldn't know what is causing the software to hike up the memory to those levels, it's not one thing, I have spent over 20 hours on the phone and chats with Apple and we have come to realize that the spike on the memory is when Adobe is running. This being said I have also confirmed that by shutting the software. It would be ok for Adobe to take as much memory as it needs if its a complex file but not for simple text files. I see tons of forums addressing these issues I was just hoping to be able to understand which of the versions are less hard on the memory.

Thanks

[RDiddy767]

Sorry to interject but test screen name is ridiculous. He made up his mind about what? Please explain your smoke and mirrors reponse to an activity monitor/RAM concern. Are you suggesting the real problem is the user? Heres a fact, creative cloud uses no less than 60% of my memory with no start ups or any other programs running.  Its been like this since day one....dont put it on the users. C'mon man. 

[William317959904o5n]

The real problem is that creative cloud doesn't have built in limits to memory use and probably has a few constant loops going in the code. One thing is to ping a server to check for updates, another is to constantly ramp up memory use; the latter is a sign of a loop that is out of control in the code. Then again, Test Screen Name is obviously a poor quality coder or someone with no idea what they are doing and is trying to get people to uninstall the programs adobe makes rather than help. Seriously impressed by how offensive this comment was by Test Screen Name. As a programmer, it is disgusting to read, ridiculously disgusting.

[Test Screen Name]

Don't you want to solve the crashes first?

[alinaalvarez]

No, actually I would like to know how to use Adobe correctly without it crashing my entire computer and utilizing all of my memory, I need to run other programs as I run the CC suite.

The crashes are a result of the insufficient memory in my system. When the crashes happen the memory is at it's most pressing moment. I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly what I happen to be doing right that second because it happens about 10-20 times a week which I obviously can't remember. All of my crashes are submitted EVERY time to Adobe, I have never heard anything from them.

Anyways, just some flaws of Adobe on a brand new computer are things like this: Illustrator permanently stuck and unable to react.

Other times I am moving an object, just a few minutes ago InDesign started acting up by reading my images on the file constantly and inserting them everywhere without me asking to do so., sorry I didn't document it, I was 'working'.

[Abambo]

Adobe programs cannot crash or overheat your computer. That is not possible for any application program. It is one of the tasks of the OS to supervise programs and the hardware and to make the necessary tweaks. This almost always points to a faulty system.

Just to say: crashing the system is different from an application that crashes. If an application crashes, that may be an indication of bad programing too.

Adobe programs are memory intensive. I found that with some of my Photoshop files, I need to tweak the programs memory usage to allow Ps to use more memory.

My machine is also a 16gb memory machine, but I‘m currently thinking of either upgrading the whole machine or to just upgrade the memory and the GPU.

FYI: my workstation is now about 4 years old and has only be modestly upgraded with disk space. For a new machine for today‘s needs I would configure 32gb of memory, not only because programs get more and more complex, but also because I create more and more complex data sets.

[alinaalvarez]

Hi @Abambo,

So I have a question here, you say no application is capable of making a system crash, however, after almost a year of analyzing my Activity Monitor, my Adobe applications are indeed crashing my system. Nothing similar happens when using my computer with no CC applications open (even when they may be running on the back end because CC is always running). This being said, I have spent 20+ on the phone with people from Apple looking directly into my system and doing everything in their hands to figure out the issue, it always comes back to one or several Adobe applications causing too much stress on the system. This diagnostic comes from over 10-12 different people at Apple, this is regarding their system, so not evaluating Adobe.

Now, I am trying to understand one thing, you say, "Just to say: crashing the system is different from an application that crashes. If an application crashes, that may be an indication of bad programing too." please help me understand the difference behavioral examples would really help me understand this better. So if I look at my activity Monitor, when I try to do extra simple things like placing a regular-sized image in a book I'm designing (broken into chapters so each file isn't huge), I get the spinning wheel, if I'm lucky the spinning wheel will go away a few minutes later and the image will make it to my file, most of the cases the Application shows as "(not responding)" on my Activity Monitor, which then needs to be forced quit or just wait longer (I've waited over 20 mins). This is an example with placing an image but I have many other examples of getting the spinning wheel while trying to do something super simple like moving a text box. So I'm trying to understand with this example, what's crashing? Is this the system crashing, or is this the application crashing? I also have clear examples of the application crashing, it literally just vanishes out of my screen and a few minutes later I'll get an Adobe Message saying the app crashed and needs to restart and recover files. This one I know it's the app, but on my previous example, what's crashing? And how do I deal with it?

Some perhaps relevant context: I don't do anything extremely crazy, I don't design large files such as billboards or heavy data images, most of the times I'm working on simple vectors for branding and presentations and publication on InDesign, some minimal photo editing on Photoshop. I have used the Mac+Adobe combo for 11 or 12 years now, I've ranged from Mac Book Pros to Mac Book Airs and now back at Pro, it's only in the last year or so that this has gotten extremely painful. More specifically in the last 3 updates from Adobe and the last 2-3 of Mac (sorry I forget the exact names) I am currently on Mojave.

[Abambo]

alinaalvarez  wrote

Hi @Abambo,

So I have a question here, you say no application is capable of making a system crash, however, after almost a year of analyzing my Activity Monitor, my Adobe applications are indeed crashing my system. Nothing similar happens when using my computer with no CC applications open (even when they may be running on the back end because CC is always running). This being said, I have spent 20+ on the phone with people from Apple looking directly into my system and doing everything in their hands to figure out the issue, it always comes back to one or several Adobe applications causing too much stress on the system. This diagnostic comes from over 10-12 different people at Apple, this is regarding their system, so not evaluating Adobe.

The OS is there to protect the machine and other programs from badly behaving programs. So yes: a user program cannot crash a system. If it crashes the system, it is an OS error and not a user program error. This said: 3rd party drivers running in a privileged mode may crash the system. As Adobe programs are user level programs they do not fall into that category. I even think that "creative cloud file sharing" is not a system program.

alinaalvarez  wrote

Now, I am trying to understand one thing, you say, "Just to say: crashing the system is different from an application that crashes. If an application crashes, that may be an indication of bad programing too." please help me understand the difference behavioral examples would really help me understand this better.

A program accesses a memory page that is not allocated, the OS terminates the program. No harm done. If the OS does not catch that error, it's the OS that is responsible for the harm done. Modern OSs can not be crashed by user computer programs because of the protective shell that surrounds the user program. Just for definition: a user program is a program started by the user performing user tasks - like Photoshop.

alinaalvarez  wrote

Some perhaps relevant context: I don't do anything extremely crazy, I don't design large files such as billboards or heavy data images, most of the times I'm working on simple vectors for branding and presentations and publication on InDesign, some minimal photo editing on Photoshop. I have used the Mac+Adobe combo for 11 or 12 years now, I've ranged from Mac Book Pros to Mac Book Airs and now back at Pro, it's only in the last year or so that this has gotten extremely painful. More specifically in the last 3 updates from Adobe and the last 2-3 of Mac (sorry I forget the exact names) I am currently on Mojave.

Most of us don't do heavy things. The most demanding jobs are video editing as they need high performance in real time (the more the better). Anything else is mostly peanuts. So a video machine needs fast and a lot of harddisks, fast and a lot of memory, a fast processor and a great video processor.

This said: Editing a multi-layer Photoshop file may be very demanding to the system, and simple maths will show huge memory need and huge memory need will ask for a lot of processing. But never ever you can pass over 100% of the available resources and the system should be designed to be able to operate near to that mark. If the system gets hot, the OS needs to add more cooling power and needs to throttle the processor and memory subsystem. Your computer gets slower. But it does not crash.

If your machine overheats, you can assume a hardware fault rarely a software fault nearly never a user software fault. 

[alinaalvarez]

@Abambo

Thanks for your detailed explanation, although it sounds great (and I know little about how computers behave in a more scientific level) this doesn't respond my original question. I am 100% sure that everytime I run a CC software the increase of the memory on my computers hikes up, I have done a number of tests for over a year now and I find a lot of other people on forums with similar issues. It's great to be able to write to off Adobe as the cause to my issues, however, I won't be able to do so until I am able to continue working flawlessly, so far neither Adobe or Apple have been able to take responsibility on what's going on and I assume as long as we keep paying for both services there's no real reason to improve them. Thanks again for your dedicated response.

[BnjmnDsgns]

I have the same problem with adobe too. adobe blames it on apple, apple blames it on adobe. currently trying to edit in after effects and can see that its using up all my computers memory and then crashing whole computer. thought about throwing the computer against the wall but not sure that would solve the problem although it might help a bit

[ssocki]

Using Mac OS 10.13.6 High Sierra, 16GB memory.  When I updated to Photoshop 2020, the program freezes. Hard to understand why my activity monitor says Bytes Written: 6.93GB Bytes Read: 9.16 GB. None of my animation software uses anything close to that. Please advise.

[defaultbqvzecwwgsd5]

I know this is a thread from 2019 but I'm having the same issue with CC being very greedy with my ram.  It seems like you're getting a lot of pseuds here trying to tell you what does and does not crash your computer and hats off to you for dealing with them so nicely.  They are polite but in that toxic way that never addresses your question and always reasserts their position despite it being nonsensical.  I opened my task manager and found quite a few useless background processes running from adobe.  Maybe you can end those tasks.  I recovered about 15% ram by ending a few.  This is just bad programming on adobes end resulting in app bloat.  Not sure why anyone would want to defend bloating.  I should not have to use 50% of my ram for simple image editing.  If you found any other methods of reclaiming your ram please update.  And adobe can totally crash a computer.  Happens frequently.  The excuse of OS management of applications is moot because Adobe programs the app to behave certain ways in the OS environment.  Good luck with your work and you aren't crazy for logically attributing the crashes to the software with which the OS deals.     

[johnm38898086]

Yeah I have no idea what is wrong with these Adobe simps, it's 2021 and Adobe CC has been crashing my computer several times a day for the last 3 days. It was fine last week - maybe a patch issue for me? Idk but Photoshop, Illustrator, Media Encoder, Premiere and After Effects are all using like 150+GB of application memory for practically no reason. From the second they launch it just climbs gig by gig until my computer crashes and burns. Super awesome. Have tried many tips to mitigate memory usage but nothing is working lol. Hate Adobe.

[vishu-creativepic]

I'm actually not having any real freeze ups or crashes since I'm using an 2019 i9 Macbook Pro with 32GB of ram but Photoshop CC is hogging up like 9gb's ? That is ridiculous! It interfering with my Wired wacom tablet interface and every bluetooth device I have connected.
I mean, it's a 32GB Ram machine. I often use photoshop on a 13' i7 8gb Macbook Pro 2012 and I understand why it's not performing optimal on that machine but it should run smoothly on the i9 one?

[ssocki]

I feel your pain. Here are some suggestions that may help a bit:


Under PREFERENCES


Open File Handling:

Recent File List Contains: 50 files


Open Performance:

Let Photoshop Use: 20% MB

History states: 58

Cache Levels: 2

Cache Tiles Size: 128


Open 3D:

Let Photoshop Use: 28% MB

Interactive Rendering: Allow Direct to Screen: √

: Shadow Quality: Medium

Ray Tracer: High Quality Threshold: 3

: Render Tile Size: Large



Good Luck!

[vishu-creativepic]

*which gives some breathing room for other apps.

[vishu-creativepic]

Thanks for the advice. I think that the changes have quite the impact. It went from 9gb to around 2gb which gives  I'll try this out for a while, thank you!

Kinda odd that the default prefs are configured in a way that even slows down a config like the i9 32gb. It literally affects the whole performance. you would think that Adobe would take in account that not everybody is using an 8-core to edit.