P: CS6 Slow compared to CS5.1 with large files

Report · May 09, 2012

PS CS6 has a lot of enhancements and great features. it launches very fast, and the control is very responsive and smooth.

although i am experiencing some speed issues with very large files. compared to CS5.1, where i don't have any of these issues.

the files are PSBs, 9000x8000px, 80+layers, RGB, 8bit

i have the same performance settings for both, cs6 and cs5
i am working on MAC PRO, 16GB ram, SSD scratch, 2TB raid, Radeon HD 5770, Snow Leopard.

the main issues i have are:

- no refresh when i move the curve on adjustment layer. the refresh comes after i let go.
- jagged pan
- extremely slow moving of layers and layer groups, even if they are with smaller dimensions (800x400pix)

again, working with files with less layers or smaller dimensions is very fast.

thanks for your help and support!
m.

Report · Jul 03, 2012

Just showing transparency is usually caused by a bug in your video card driver. Updating the driver generally fixes it.

Report · Jul 04, 2012

I experienced the exact same problem which is why I went searching for known issues and ended up here.

Files in the 60MP range with several layers is no problem but with files larger than this (90000x6000 and larger) with many layers CS6 becomes irritatingly slow. Moving layers and groups of layers works like a turd.

My system is a MacPro2011 (Octo 2.93 with 48Gb main memory, ATI5770 running the files from a RAID5 SSD system). Can post exact config when I am behind the 'big machine'.

Certainly would be appreciated when this gets fixed, I need to be able to work fluidly with files of this size.

Report · Jul 05, 2012

I am experiencing extreme slowness as well. I had CS5 on the same exact machine and it ran MUCH faster than CS6.

It is virtually impossible to work quickly/efficiently on CS6 now. Is Adobe still looking into this?

Report · Jul 06, 2012

I have been experiencing extreme lag when moving groups of layers as well. Instead of turning off layer thumbnails, pressing tab to hide all panels before moving groups allows me to avoid most of the lag, although even this is slower than cs5 at the same task. Having the transformation values enabled seems to negatively impact the speed of moving groups and individual layers as well.

Report · Jul 06, 2012

Turning off layer thumbnails should get you back to the CS5 performance or better.

Report · Jul 06, 2012

I have tried this and it doesn't do much for me. Hiding the panels works much better on my machine. Can't wait for a fix for this issue.

Report · Jul 06, 2012

If you turn off thumbnails, they take no time. So you're looking at some other performance problem that is helped by hiding panels. Are you using any Flash Panels (including MiniBridge)? Are you running a browser at the same time as Photoshop (and can you try exiting it to see if that helps)?

Report · Jul 07, 2012

btw I just posted @ "http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh..." but wanted to chime in and reveal a great find, cs6 performance feels overall very sluggish, like it can't keep up to my panning and zoom workflow speed. I did some optimization adjustments but what really did it was as someone noted hide the (whole) interface and everything was just as always, smooth and fast, so for me the problem of CS6 has to be the GUI, it slows down everything, and my laptop is not a beast or anything but it should be no challenge with not heavy psd projects. Hope it helps Chris.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

I can confirm on my machine that pressing Tab to hide all the panels is about the same as hiding the layers by selecting Channels. Thanks for the tip.

My CS6 install is standard....no Flash panels or Mini Bridge open.

At this time of testing I also rebooted the machine and had NO apps open except CS6.

Please Adobe...this isn't a machine issue....it's a CS6 issue. On the day of release I worked on my main document in CS5....no problems. I upgrade to CS6 and it has issues with moving layers. Same machine, same specs, same day.

Hiding the layers helps solve the problem.

Turning off the thumbnails isn't an option....I need them. Please Adobe stop saying this is a user machine issue and start realizing that this is a CS6 issue.

-Kevin

Report · Jul 07, 2012

Pedro - try JUST turning off the layer thumbnails (and not hiding the UI). We need to know if you're seeing the known problem with the thumbnails or something else.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

We know about the layer thumbnail slowdown, and recommend turning of layer thumbnails as a temporary workaround. Beyond that, we haven't reproduced any other slowdowns.

If you see a slowdown AFTER turning off the layer thumbnails, then we need to know why your machine experiences a problem that millions of other users don't see.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

Hey Chris Cox,

Your not really helping anyone in this thread - do you think we're making this slowdown up? As several people have said, there's a major regression in Photoshop that makes this upgrade, that we've all paid a lot money for, essentially worthless for the kind of work we do. Most of us still have CS5 installed which shows none of these issues.

Turning off layer thumbnails doesn't fix the issue, as several people have mentioned above - at least give us the courtesy of acknowledging this fact and letting us know what we can do to help you fix it, if indeed Adobe intend to. Otherwise we can all just ask for a refund of our CS6 upgrade and stick to using the fully functional CS5.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

I am trying to help you. But you seem to assume that everyone sees the same problem you do, and they don't. And you seem to assume that I can solve whatever problem you are seeing without ever seeing it myself.

We know about the layer thumbnail slowdown - so first, you need to eliminate that as a possible cause by disabling layer thumbnails. AFTER that, then see if a slowdown remains, and if so, you need to help figure out why your system is seeing a slowdown that other people don't. What is different about your configuration, your usage, your other apps, your utilities, your preferences, etc.
We can't solve this for you because we're not seeing it.

We can't acknowledge something that we've never seen ourselves. We still don't know whether this is a Photoshop problem, and external problem, or what might be going on.

You are going to have to do some troubleshooting to help narrow down the problem on your system.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

Chris,

I tried your suggestions again and can confirm the following:

1. Just turning off layer thumbnails does in fact work to speed up moving large groups of layers for me to a degree.

2. Hiding all panels by pressing tab does a better job of speeding up the same task (groups move a little better). Plus I use the thumbnails, and turning them on and off is a pain compared to hitting the tab key.

3. Hiding or closing just the layers panel works the same for me as number 2 above.

4. I don't have minibridge open or any other 'flash' panels as far as I know.

5. No browsers are running when I performed this test.

From what I can tell, this problem is within ps cs6 itself, perhaps directly linked to the layers panel or the overall GUI itself.

An update as to when we can expect a fix for this issue would be much appreciated.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

Again, we know about the problem with the layer thumbnails. And it sounds like the problem you're seeing is just the layer thumbnails.

What this topic is about, and what we're still trying to get information on, is an overall slowdown OTHER than the layer thumbnails.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

Well there is a performance difference for me between no layer thumbnails and no layer panel shown ( no panel shown is faster ). Also, any idea when we can expect a fix for this issue?

Report · Jul 07, 2012

We're working on a fix for the layer thumbnail problem.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

Hello Chris, not really, in my case hiding layer thumbnail (or hiding the layers panel for that matter) doesn't make much difference (if any...) What does it is hiding the whole UI, it's like another world. Maybe you could run some UI performance tests. I use a Core 2 Duo 2.53 and 9600M GT card with updated drivers, it's not that bad of a machine.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

Me doing tests won't help - I'm not seeing any slowdowns at all.

But since you are, you can try hiding one panel at a time to narrow down which is causing the slowdown on your system, then let us know. After that, we might be able to guess about causes and further narrow down the differences on your system.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

lol calm down Chris, I'm trying to help you. You don't need a slowdown to know that the current UI is much hungrier (or nitpicking if you prefer) than before.
Except for the bright UI I'm very happy with my CS3 (it's starting to feel like good old XP).
If I disable "Use Graphics Processor" panning goes smooth, but zoom in/out is still slow, until I hide the whole UI. And I'm using drivers 301.42 for the 9600M GT. As I see it is just a problem about Card, Drivers and CS6 UI, just that.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

On my systems, I can't test to find the slowdown, because there is no slowdown -- which I already verified with a profiling tool before we shipped (but failed to test lots of layers, darnit), and reverified as soon as the UI became a suspect.

So, there is something about your system or prefs that makes the UI slower. Once you figure out which panel it is, we can work out more details, and hopefully help other people who see CS6 running slow.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

Don't you guys have benchmarking tools? No need to spot slowdowns
Anyway, to sum it up.

"Graphics Processor" checkbox ON
-panning is sluggish in whatever combination of panel visibility (even just menu bar), smooth on all UI hidden.
-Zoom gets better as less panels are visible, but not good enough until all UI is off.

"Graphics Processor" checkbox OFF
-Panning is smooth and responsive, with all UI off it even gets subtly better (not very noticeable)
-Zoom is slow, if I turn off layer thumbnail preview, gets slightly better, if I switch to channel tab gets considerably better (no yet good though), from that point on hiding panels gets better at a point where having only the menu bar feels acceptable.

Report · Jul 07, 2012

Yes, I have plenty of benchmarking tools - but they only work if the slowdown exists on the machine I'm profiling. And this slowdown does not exist on any of our machines.

It's like you're asking me to count the fish in my swimming pool that has no fish. But in your lake, there are fish.

Anyway, what you're describing there is a slowdown due to your video card or drivers. The more UI you turn off, the less UI gets drawn and the less time your system spends waiting for the video card.

OK, you said you're using:
Core 2 Duo 2.53 and NVidia 9600M GT
drivers 301.42 for the 9600M GT

But you didn't tell us which OS version you were using.

We need to reproduce the setup and see if the drivers or card really are too slow in general, or if there might be some other factor involved.

Report · Jul 08, 2012

Maybe I didn't explain well, something can run as fluent at 80% load as it does on 10%, but no need to say the first one is suboptimal. It becomes easier to reach 100% and show slowdowns for a broader number of hardware. Only an example. And yes I know that the opposite is also possible, sluggish at either 80% or 10%, but then we would have been talking about incompatibilities and not simply power as I do.

I use XP SP3. So this is not going to help much because there doesn't exist any official driver for this card beyond version 266. It's just marketing politics that 9600GT is supported but the Mobile version "isn't", upon a guide I just reenabled support editing some flags. I don't know you can try with v.266, or the desktop card, or mobile with vista or seven, or simply another individual setup with similar issues. I'm not urged in my personal case.

Report · Jul 08, 2012

I have tried turning off items, indeed turning off layers does help however when you have 100+ layeres and you need to move something you often need to move things compared to other layers so turning off layers is not an option!!!!

I use almost the latest MacPro and one of the fastest;

MacPro 2.93 dual processor six core (12 cores) with 48gb of main memory. my work files are on a 6 drive OCZ 256GB SSD RAID5 system and the video card is an ATI5770.

If my machine is underspecced I happily buy new things to solve this however, please tell me what that might be???? somehow I don't think swapping the 5770 for a 5870 or upping memory from 48gb to 96gb or even swapping processors for marginally faster XEONs will make a big difference....

IMO this is something that needs to be fixed, I can hardly imagine Adobe not being able to reproduce this.

BTW CS5.1 does not have this issue.

P: CS6 Slow compared to CS5.1 with large files

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