Adobe slow and laggy on M1 Mac

[cuatemoc]

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

[Lumigraphics]

Monterey has been rock solid. I have both Intel and M1 Macs. Are you working off a network share? If so, don't.

60GB of RAM cannot be correct. Try running memtest (make a bootable USB thumbdrive) or at least run hardware test.

User-level software cannot cause a kernel panic or full system crash. This is a symptom of disk corruption, bad third-party drivers, kernel extensions such as security software, or something else outside of userland.

[default50t60xzl9b49]

Can you confirm what you mean by "network share", we are on a network connected to a nas drive / server. I generally copy files my computer locally to work off them so I can recover files when the system crashes. The computers need to be networked otherwise we won't be able to work adequately.

I will try and run mem test and hardware tests. As said these issues happen on 6 different imacs some 27inch 5k i9 and a couple of the m1 4.5k 24inch imacs. I have crashes in most programs but a lot of these are well documented bugs - although these also crash to black screen very very often. Photoshop is the most common to cause the system to meltdown. As said today it was running for only a minute before my system would shut down and wait 10 minutes to turn on, and this repeated multiple times until I gave up for today. Illustrator and indesign also crash just as often but I barely use them.

[Lumigraphics]

You have something else going on that is common to your setup. Are you using security software?

[default50t60xzl9b49]

We are using "Webroot secureanywhere" I haven't used it before. We have an IT company to set up and manage networking / and virus / emails and so forth. I spoke with one of the technicians and the photoshop crash on the 4.5k retina happened on a new machine prior to connecting to server and prior to install of Web root.

[Lumigraphics]

Turn off the security software and see what happens. Also, you might have this IT company look at the crash logs. If they can't help you with that then you have more problems beyond crashing. Photoshop should rarely crash and never take down the whole machine, so somebody screwed things up badly.

[EllgeH]

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]

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

[TheDigitalDog]

Try resetting your Photoshop preferences. Press and hold Alt+Control+Shift (Windows) or Option+Command+Shift (macOS) immediately after launching Photoshop. You will be prompted to delete the current settings. You can also reset preferences on quit if Photoshop is running by going into General Preferences>General>Reset on Quit.

(macOS only) Open the Preferences folder in the Library folder*, and drag the Adobe Photoshop CS Settings folder to the Trash.

This action only affects the items found in the preferences dialog box. Numerous program settings are stored in the Adobe Photoshop Preferences file, including general display options, file-saving options, performance options, cursor options, transparency options, type options, and options for plug‑ins and scratch disks. Brushes (and lots of other setting) are not affected by the above instructions for deleting preferences. You may wish to make a screen capture of the settings in the Preferences dialog to reset them prior to deleting of this file. 

Also: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html

*To manually delete Photoshop preferences:

Quit Photoshop.

Navigate to Photoshop's Preferences folder:

MacOS: Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings

Windows 10: Users/[user name]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop [version]/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings

Note:

The user Library folder is hidden by default on macOS. To access files in the hidden user Library folder, see How to access hidden user library files.

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/access-hidden-user-library-files.html

Drag the entire Adobe Photoshop [Version] Settings folder to the desktop or somewhere safe for a back-up of your settings

[EllgeH]

Have done that, did not help.

[TheDigitalDog]

Try logging into another user account (you may need to make one), still slow? 
Try starting up in Safe mode (hold down Shift Key when booting), still slow? 
You might want to try running a free utility like Onyx: still slow? 
https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html
Also view:
https://www.macworld.com/article/352902/onyx-review-macos.html
https://www.macworld.com/article/224955/how-to-reset-a-macs-nvram-pram-and-smc.html
From Adobe:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/basic-troubleshooting.html

[EllgeH]

I give up, I will cancel the plan and go to Affinity intstead.

Thanx for all help.

[NB, colourmanagement net]

Did you try as a new user? or resetting preferences?

Photoshop is the imaging industry standard, it would be a shame to move away unless you've tried the fixes we offered.

BTW: Good luck on printer colour management with Affinity, if you use non OEM papers in your printer you're stuffed [at least last I looked Affinity was only able to use "Printer Colour Management", removing the option for a user to set the profile, so no equivalent to "Photoshop Manages Color"]

- the fact Affinity cannot use custom print profiles is a deal breaker for me. 

And in my tests, that wasn’t the only colour management issue 

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net - adobe forum volunteer - co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management

[EllgeH]

Mac Affinity Photo Print Settings

Please remember when reading this that I’m printing with an Epson 3880 printer. The settings you see here are for my printer driver on the Mac. Unless you have the same printer driver and setup, your settings may be different. Having said this, if you understand why I have chosen my settings you should be able to configure your own.

Color Matching

The Color Matching section allows me to select one of two methods for controlling the printer’s colour. The Epson Color Controls provide quite a lot of control over how intense the printer reproduces different colours. What they don’t do is produces an image that matches the soft proof. For that, I need to use the ColorSync option and select the same ICC profile used for Soft Proofing.

Printer Settings

[NB, colourmanagement net]

Yeah. No "Photoshop manages Color" equivalent. So, driver colour management only. Not ideal 

NeilB

colourmanagement

[NB, colourmanagement net]

"Let Photoshop determine printed colors

If you have a custom color profile for a specific printer, ink, and paper combination, letting Photoshop manage colors often produces better results than letting the printer manage colors."

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/photoshop/using/printing-color-management-photoshop1.html

 NeilB

[EllgeH]

I have used Affinity before, had no problems with printing, the only reason I changed to Photoshop was I wanted Swedish software, but now when PS has become almost usless on my mac I´ll go back.

[TheDigitalDog]

IF you set up Affinity and Photoshop the same (if you can), the output is identical. Not that this has anything to do with your specific issue of the slowness of which many of us with similar hardware do not find. One (slowness on your specific computer) and printing (with the same path) have nothing to do with each other. 

[TheDigitalDog]

Mac Affinity Photo Print Settings

Please remember when reading this that I’m printing with an Epson 3880 printer. The settings you see here are for my printer driver on the Mac.

By @EllgeH

I am also printing from an Epson 3880 (among others), on a Mac (Ventura) and I don't see any of your print settings in the post; I'm not sure what that has to do with the topic "Adobe slow and laggy on M1 Mac". 

These print paths are software agnostic. There is no difference in Affinity Photo or Photoshop; IF you have those two options. One can be Application Manages Color (ideal) and Printer Manges Color (not ideal). The print drivers, in this case, a 3880 is identical in usage with either and all software products that access the drivers and provide a full color managed path like Photoshop, Lightroom Classic etc. One software product may or may not fully support color management which Neil speaks of. I had a version of Affinity when I moved to my new 16" MacBook Pro (, I did a clean install and didn't reinstall it). Maybe that clean install is a reason Adobe software isn't laggy on my M1 Mac (just the opposite, it's super fast). 

[EllgeH]

I made a "clean" install of PS on my new MacBook M1. The first install worked just fine (it was the Intel-version that used Rosetta), after PS updated to the M1 version it went superslow. I will wait until february and see if Adobe fixes the lag with a new version, if not, i will cancel the subscription (and yes I have done the reset etc etc).

Let´s hope the next version becomes faster and snappier.

[TheDigitalDog]

I made a "clean" install of PS on my new MacBook M1. The first install worked just fine (it was the Intel-version that used Rosetta), after PS updated to the M1 version it went superslow. I will wait until february and see if Adobe fixes the lag with a new version, if not, i will cancel the subscription (and yes I have done the reset etc etc).

Let´s hope the next version becomes faster and snappier.

By @EllgeH

Based on what you've tried and written, very unlikely. 

You didn't make a clean install of the OS as suggested. Nor is it clear if you tried running in Safe mode or under a new user, as also suggested. 

This is a user-to-user forum where we volunteers can only offer advice based on our combined knowledge of the products. You can take the advice and report back the results. You can wait and hope something changes in the future. You can accept that many of us do not suffer any of the issues you report with the same OS and hardware. There isn't much more we can do to help otherwise. 

[EllgeH]

You are right, I probabely did not manage to make a clean install, so I have now totally removed PS from the mac and installed it what I tink is clean. And.... it works again!

Thank you all!

[TheDigitalDog]

"You are right, I probabely did not manage to make a clean install, so I have now totally removed PS from the mac and installed it what I tink is clean".

Not exactly what I recommended, but if it works, great. If it doesn't, then you'll have to try the suggestions already posted. 

[EllgeH]

Starts in 3 seconds again.

[Lumigraphics]

Have you posted your system info? Its in the Help menu.

[TheDigitalDog]

https://helpx.adobe.com/manage-account/using/cancel-subscription.html