Participating Frequently

Question

Adobe slow and laggy on M1 Mac

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
March 29, 2022
16 replies
12045 views

Adobe photoshop is buggy and slow on my M1 Macbook Air. In fact, all of the adobe apps are slow and laggy, but specially Photoshop, Premiere and InDesign. I am using the most up to date versions of the programs.

MacOS Monterey 12.3

M1, 2020

16GB

1Terabyte

macOS

smashkirk

Inspiring

I'm a little late with this, but I'm experiencing slow, lagging Adobe software on my M1 Macbook Pro as well. For me the problem only started when I purchased a new high resolution monitor (4K). The lagging also appears in the mac system UI animations as well (launchpad, mission control). The issues goes away with a restart, but returns over time while using demanding apps such as Adobe CC and Chrome. I'm starting to think it's a RAM issue. I too have 16GB of ram and I've been reading that 16GB might not be enough.

(all my system and adobe software is up to date)

It's surprising and disappointing that this "powerful" M1 mac pro can't handle the software.

O

octavum

Participating Frequently

I don't think it is an issue of not enough ram, I have 96GB and an M2, and the same problem. Often files will not preview in column view or when you press the space bar. It is very annoying, never happened with my older machines on older iOS.

smashkirk

Inspiring

Oh, wow. Does the lag only occur during/after using Adobe applications? Also, are you using a 4K monitor? Have you contacted Apple support? I wonder what their response would be.

EllgeH

Participating Frequently

When i first got my Macbook Air M1 it started Photoshop in 3 (three!) seconds and this was the intel version so it started with Rosetta in 3 seconds! Amazing. The M1 has 8GB ram. MyWindows PC has 32GB ram and starts Photoshop in 9 seconds. BUT now with the new version mad for M1 it takes 35!!! seconds just to start Photoshop. What is wrong??

EllgeH

Participating Frequently

...a strange thing is that LightRoomClassic starts in 3 seconds even now. So just Photoshop sucks!

T

taylorbenniefaull

Participant

Would love some adobe person to SCREAM at. Such a shame there isn't some adobe shop nearby so I could SCREAM at someone 😞

My anger has been penting up for the past couple of months.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

D

default50t60xzl9b49

Participating Frequently

Solution: use Windows.

I haven't had a single program work on Mac with a decent level of stability other than the programs that come with MacOs Monterey. It doesn't matter if they are Adobe, Autodesk, Graphisoft, or another professional program developer, they all crash on Monterey around 100x more than a Windows system.

Photoshop crashes all the time, Illustrator crashes all the time, Archicad crashes all the time, autocad crashes all the time, Revit crashes all the time, 3ds Max crashes all the time.

I don't think you can blame Adobe for Apples terrible buggy slow unstable OS.

If you want to make things absolutely ghastly and get absolutely nothing done get a M1 or M1 ultra, they run slower than pentium 4 from 2004 even in programs set up for ARM.

Point is, the problems are not limited to Adobe, most programs just don't work well on Monterey or any MacOS and the situation is exacerbated if you use Mac silicon.

L

Lumigraphics

Legend

That's lucky, I have to use photoshop a lot for architecture and professional rendering. Photoshop crashed 3 times in the space of 40 minutes with the screen going to black and not turning on again for 10 minutes. My average time for photoshop working today was approximately 1 minute before sending me to a Mac black screen of death. We have 6 macs desktops and a few macbooks, all bought within the last year at our office and none of them are stable. The only things that are stable are the macbooks and thats because they are used only for emails, opening pdfs and browsing internet and even then pdfs crash them. We had to exchange an mac studio M1 ultra last week because it was just so buggy and slow there was no point using it. I use Windows at home and it's crazy how much better it runs all programs especially ones for professionals - I get more done in a couple hours overtime at home than I do in a full work day at the office and it's entirely down to how shoddy MacOs and Mac silicon is.

So my experience; if you are a graphic designer, 3d artist or something else where you are working with files larger and more complex than a jpg of a cat, windows is the way to go.

Nonsense. I've been using the Mac since 1995, I use both Mac and Windows with Photoshop daily, and I've been a system administrator in several mixed-platform environments as well as working for a computer dealer, being a designer and a programmer, and working at both Apple and Microsoft. The Mac is more stable, generally faster, and less prone to odd problems than Windows.

Gaslighting doesn't work when you are ranting at people with decades of experience.

Murrzeak

Participant

Gosh, I'm baffled (albeit absolutely unsurprised) how pooryl Adobe has handled the transition to M1 silicon. No other app is as slow, laggy, freezing, crashing like AE/PS/AI. Like...it's hard to do it on purpose, well done Adobe, you've outdone yourselves. Why am I paying for this..

G

Graziano25577671wv9p

Participant

Because you pretty much have to murder the entire board of Adobe's families to be able to leave your contract/subscription. I'm using Lightroom & Photoshop and together they make my M1 run the exact same as my 2012 macbook pro. THE EXACT SAME. Slow as all *profanity*. Do they care? Why the hell would they? They are making serious coin from every user all over the world. Why would they care about their products anymore. Man I STILL get the "adobe camera raw needs to be updated" error when I open an image in PS from LR. STILL!! And I downloaded these programs fresh only a month ago! That error has been coming up for at least 8 years now. Lol they don't give two hoots about their programs anymore.

C

C22260931jjw2

Participant

Did we get a resolution on this problem? I'm experiencing the same issues and the steps suggested haven't solved the problem.

friedemannh64056916

Participant

I'm also very disappointed with the response of the app while doing my edits. Can somebody please troubleshoot this issue?

N

Ninja SefoAuthor

Participating Frequently

Also, is this the same process for Adobe Premiere?

N

Ninja SefoAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you Jeffrey, I did a clean install of Adobe. I will try your suggestion today and get back to you on performance.

J

J453

Legend

When you purchased your M1, did you do a clean install of your Adobe apps or did you use User Migration Assistent to move all the user data and apps over from a prior computer?

The first thing I'd do is make sure we're in a default state and there are no stale setting somewhere:
Restore your preferences using this manual method:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html#Manually
Does it work correctly?
If that doesn't solve it, you can quit Photoshop and put the Settings folder back.
If it does solve the problem, I would like to get the folder of settings to try and figure out what is bad with them.

mglush

Community Expert

Have you tried running in Rosetta before? If not, then it's worth a try to see if the issue clears up. Let us know if you try it and how it works.

Michelle

N

Ninja SefoAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi both, yes I have looked at the articles you both shared. However, Photoshop, Premiere and InDesign (the three programs I use most) are ridiculously slow.

Like I mentioned before, Davinci Resolve and Afinity run fine. Is there something I am missing, a random setting, or do I just need to run the intel/rosetta version of these programs on my M1 mac?

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