AI denoise tool in Camera RAW causes memory leak

[Kuyan271789034fdi]

The AI denoise function in Camera RAW utilises a great deal of video and system memory, which is not freed up once the image has been processed, or even when the processed image is no longer open in Photoshop. This causes delays to all GUI inputs, stops further images from being denoised (without swapping to system memory which makes the task take minutes rather than seconds) and causes red blocky artefacts to appear on exported images.
   In the attached image, there are no .PSD projects open, or images open in photoshop, however as displayed in Task Manager, nearly 8GB of VRAM and 21 GB of system memory are being utilised. (drops to 0.8 and 6.4GB respectively after closing PS).
   Closing and reopening will temporarily solve the issue. The rate at which memory leaks is highly variable. I may be able to process 12 images and keep the resultant .DNG's open in photoshop all the while. Today Camera RAW has only been able to process 3 images without subsequently opening them in Photoshop, before having too little VRAM to continue working.
   I rely on the AI denoise tool, it provides much better quality than traditional methods, any guidance would be much appreciated.

[Kuyan271789034fdi]

Here is a crop of an image demonstrating the red blocks, sometimes the artefacts are the same shape as a layer. Rolling back from v 25.0 to 24.2 did not resolve the issue.

[D Fosse]

If you see lagging and responsiveness problems, you probably have another issue going on. That's not happening for others. If you post System Info that might give a clue. Is this by any chance a laptop with dual graphics? That could be the problem right there.

Denoising 6 x 60MP here, VRAM stays at about 10 GB throughout. I might get it a little higher with more files, but I haven't seen Denoise max it out fully.

That said, you misunderstand one thing. Photoshop will not, by design, release memory when a file is closed. Instead, that memory is reused.

This is often misunderstood as memory leak, but it's not. It's done for efficiency and performance reasons, to avoid requesting memory from the operating system over and over again. That might not matter so much for single files, but running batches is a different story.

Another thing is that both Lightroom and ACR will normally keep VRAM usage high (close to the top but not fully maxed). Again, this is probably for performance reasons. It's not causing any problems here - if other applications come in and need VRAM, it is reallocated as needed.

Remember - free memory is wasted memory. Ideally it should all be used all the time.

[Kuyan271789034fdi]

I'm using a desktop with a 5800x3d CPU and RTX 3070 GPU. No internal graphics. The problem is that this memory is not being reallocated after these images are closed. There is clearly file swapping being done, since the UI remains unresponsive even when opening new files, and denoising takes minutes instead of seconds. Is there a way to force-clear some cached data in order to continue working without restarting the program? Thank you for the detailed and informative response.

[Zelenenkyy]

"...Photoshop will not, by design, release memory when a file is closed. Instead, that memory is reused.

This is often misunderstood as memory leak, but it's not"
Sorry, it's not true. Used memory of GPU is not uses, as proper. In Latest Photoshop 25.1.0., when memory usage of my 4070 12 GB approach to 11 GB, many plugins, that intensively uses GPU, begin to work significantly (3-6 times) slower. And situations the same even all photos in Photoshop is closed. Only restart of Photoshop can solve such unpleasant situations with perfomance.

[Alejandro313514540fnp]

No hay solución para evitar la saturación de la vram eso sucede porq la implementación del uso de la gpu en herramientas más recientes pero en cambio si usas una versión de Photoshop 2024 no genuina este funciona mejor ya que no tiene dichas herramientas activadas.. no original ahora resultó mejor ?.... En 3 equipos sucede exactamente lo mismo con diferentes gpu, GTX 1080 8gb, rx 470 4gb, rx6600 8gb y rx 7700 8gb