P: Photoshop consuming INSANE amounts of RAM when using Perspective Warp as Smart Filter

[Minus Front]

i have 16GB RAM on my PC + 8GB of GPU. Adobe is set to use 70% of that ~8.5GB. 

I have gone through their support page Optimize performance Photoshop (adobe.com) but nothing helps!

Photoshop used to work great until recently but I came back to it this week and using simple tools such as the Perspective Warp and others makes it use 12GB of RAM (see below) and freeze. My documents arent really all that big.

I have tried re-installing photoshop but it is not helping! I have the latest version 23.3.2

Help please I cannot use this programme as it is!

Thank you

[J453]

Go to Preferences > Performance... and uncheck both Multithreaded Compositing  and GPU Compositing - then restart Photoshop. Does the problem still occur?

[Minus Front]

Hi Jeffrey thank you for the reply. 

so i reverted back to the previous version 23.3.1 and it seems to be working well again!!

how can i disable automatic updates? 

i am sure the new version is to blame because i never messed with the default settings in the past and it always worked fine. came back to it this week and it's been a nightmare. 

i have opencl, antialias and gpu composting enabled right now. i cannot find the multithreded compositing setting though

thank you

[Minus Front]

found the multithreaded setting. its enabled. 

[Minus Front]

ok found how to disable automatic updates. will report if i still encounter issues. 

[Minus Front]

ok turns out that reverting the the previous version didnt work after all. 

it did alleviate the issues somewhat but it's unusable.

i have followed your advise and disabled those gpu settings but the problem persists. 

[Minus Front]

the question really is WHY photoshop needs 12GB of RAM to apply a simple perspective warp?? specially when it is supposed to be capped at 8.5GB

my system can run high end GAMES at a fraction of that RAM. 

there is something seriously wrong with this software. i am not trying to simulate nuclear explosions...

[J453]

I'm not really sure why you're seeing such high RAM usage.

Could you share a PSD file, along with steps for which layer you are perspective warping? Take a snap shot of Task Manager right after you open the PSD and then after you do the perspective warp. I'll try the same steps here and we can compare results.

[Minus Front]

hi jeffrey. 

its not just the perspective warp. random tools or actions will trigger this high RAM spike.

i am attaching the before and after, as well as a link to the file in question.

to replicate, just try and copy + paste in place the top layer. or create a new object and try to warp it into the box:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Asxa4Bnb9TIJhsV9vjrZo2WXgY7F3A?e=hc8OYh

 

[J453]

I can reproduce the issue using Perspective Warp as a SmartFilter using your file. Will ask engineering to take a look. 

[Minus Front]

we can only hope the engineer is up to the challenge.

[D Fosse]

makes it use 12GB of RAM (see below) and freeze.

By @Minus Front

I'm not saying there isn't a problem in this case, it does seem a lot - but Photoshop should never freeze because it runs out of RAM. Photoshop doesn't "run out of RAM" - it uses the scratch disk. There is no such thing as enough RAM, and that's why you have the scratch disk.

Point being - if this brings your whole system to a halt, you need to increase your free disk space.

[Minus Front]

Photoshop doesn't "run out of RAM"

Correct. My computer does.

Point being - if this brings your whole system to a halt, you need to increase your free disk space.

Ya. Except I don't. 

[tomir]

Did this ever got sorted out? I have exactly the same issue now with 25.6.0 version.

[taraj26291221]

I just bought a new Mac book pro M3 16gb ram, after owning my last MacBook Pro for 9 years. Was so exited to finally work at a fast pace - and straight away my photoshop starts using 13gb RAM for me to edit one poster with a few layers. It's so bad I cant do anything, takes about 5 mins just to save a file. I was almost about to return the computer when I realised it's photoshop that is the issue. Does anyone have any solotions?

I have so much work to do but I can't use this program. 

[D Fosse]

@taraj26291221 

Not what you want to hear, but 16 GB RAM is simply insufficient. The reason is shared system memory (or as Apple calls it, "unified" memory). The GPU will quickly eat up half of that or more, leaving only 6-10 GB for Photoshop. And that's not enough. Most of that will be used simply by opening the application.

With a GPU having dedicated onboard VRAM, 16 GB should work, although 32 is a bit more comfortable. With shared system memory (like Apple silicon), you should double the amount you would normally need.

[RoastedHead]

any fix updates on this yet?

trying to use perspective warp on a blank solid colour smart object to create a mockup template for my design.
and the software started to freeze. cant even cancel the process.

[RoastedHead]

definitely not an issue of the scratch disk.
perspective warps just eats up a lot of RAM.
i had to end all background process to let the warps process.
roughly 20gb of RAM used.....

[RoastedHead]

it's either problem with the warp or smart object issue.

[D Fosse]

@RoastedHead 

There is no such thing as "enough RAM". It is normal and expected for Photoshop to saturate RAM right up to the limit you have set in Preferences.

The heavy load is carried by the scratch disk, with RAM acting as a fast access cache. So all of the available amount is used, and this happens very quickly.

That RAM is not released as you work, it is reused and recycled. Batch processing would be much slower if it was released with every image.

In short - this all sounds normal, but that's impossible to determine until you tell us how much RAM you have, what Photoshop reports as available and what the allocation is set to.