PS 26.3 consumes excessive RAM on 'Building Color Conversion Tables'

[210 JQ]

Photoshop 26.3 consumes 52% of system RAM or 30GB on launch while 'Building Color Conversion Tables' - I tried a reset of the program and I unstalled Photoshop using the Clean Uninstall tool and reinstall to no success.

The program still works and I have plenty of overhead. The program will consume other gig or two of memory if I open two or three, 20+ layer PSD files and then once closed, it will release that ram back to the 30GB it consumed. 

Let me know if you need more information from me.

[Sameer K]

Hey, @CombatControl. Welcome to the Photoshop Community. Thanks for adding the video; it helps. Please share the system information from Photoshop Help > System info > Copy and paste into a text document > Upload and attach here.

Please test and confirm if the issue exists with Photoshop (Beta). You can get Photoshop (beta) from the Creative Cloud > Apps tab > Beta Apps section. 

Follow these steps to reset preferences for Photoshop manually.

• Windows 10/11: Users/[user name]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop [version]/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings
• You can press Press the Windows key > Enter 'Run' > Enter %APPDATA%\Adobe
• Rename the Adobe Photoshop folder by adding a .old at the end. (Adobe Photoshop 2025 > Rename > Adobe Photoshop 2025. old), You can restore these preferences later if you need to.(https://adobe.ly/4860qM9)
• Restart the computer.

These changes will give a fresh start to Photoshop as a fresh install. Let me know how it goes.

Thanks!

Sameer K

(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

[210 JQ]

@Sameer K thank you for your reply. Following your instructions, I am unable to upload and attach a text file (only images and video), so here is a Google Drive link - Adobe Photoshop Version 26.3.0 2025 

Following your instructions on manually resetting the pereferences seem to do the trick - back to normal functioning Photoshop, only pulling 1.5GB of ram on launch.

I was surprised your suggestion worked to be honest, because I had use the Creative Cloud Cleaner tool to troubleshoot... but not having the option to pull system information before I did that eliminates the ability to know what was before.

Thanks for your help.

[D Fosse]

Corrupt preferences can cause all kinds of strange and unpredictable behavior. The preferences file contains a lot more than your own user settings - it's the whole application configuration including lots of hidden parameters. It's complex. It's everything that has been modified since the virgin first launch.

Preferences are prone to corruption because they are rewritten on every application exit. An irregular shutdown, or interrupted shutdown sequence, can corrupt them.

Preferences are stored in your user account, not in the installed program files. An uninstall will not touch them, you have to manually delete it.