Help! Photoshop CS6 hangs when using brush, clone, healing brush tools etc on Mac

[BarneyHamilton]

I am having a big problem when using the new CS6 on my Mac (os x 10.7.4). When switching to a new tool, like a brush, or clone stamp, or healing brush etc, Photoshop hangs for about 20 seconds before resuming. It's not 3rd party plug-ins, because I get the same behaviour when I run using the shift key and third party plug-ins are disabled. It doesn't happen every time, but it happens frequently. I've heard that others have had similar problems... are there any solutions - is it a known bug?

[Was DYP]

Tried that and it worked. But the next time it froze it did not work. Nothing I have tried changes this buggy PSCS6. Between this and causing the icon corruption I pretty much had it with trying to use PSCS6 for anything productive. PSCS5 runs so much better on exactly the same machine with exactly same configuration of third party plugins. Too bad Adobe can't just fix PSCS6 to run like PSCS5. What are they going to do, try to sell us PSCS7 as the fix and screw something else up so we can buy the fix in PSCS8?

Even simple stuff like mouse clicking on the Marquee Tool requires two clicks on the image in order for it to work. In PSCS5 you click on the tool and then it works right way without having to click on the image a second time.

PSCS6 was originally loaded on a clean install of 10.8.

[Fried Egg Sandwich]

Do we have an update from Adobe about this please?

[Was DYP]

Have you risked installing the latest update. If so did it not fix this bug.

I have gotten in a habit of waiting a few seconds after I choose a tool. I don't seem to have very many hangs that way, as I only see this behaviour right after I choose a tool.

[CommandQ-QVTBVa]

I'm having the same problems – occasionally disappearing cursor (quick command-tabbing out of PS and back does the trick) and frequent hang-ups when using the brush tool. The latter usually occurs when I switch from Wacom mouse to pen and begin my stroke. PS starts to paint and then freezes for about 20–30 seconds – although I can reduce that time by switching to another app and klicking the PS dock icon a few times (command-tabbing doesn't switch back to PS). I tried disabling middle mouse button functionality for PS but hang-ups keep happening.

I'm running PS 13.1.1 x64 on MacOS 10.8.2, with a Wacom Intous3 (Driver 6.3.4-3), so I should be up-to-date with everything. I'm glad to provide more information if needed. Help would be much appreciated.

[Chris Cox]

Disappearing cursors are a known bug in MacOS 10.8 (seems to be mostly, if not all, ATI GPUs).  We filed the bug with Apple, and are waiting for a fix to be released.

[Brandman]

This is the first response from staff since October and they don't even address the main problem. Come on guys fix this already.

[Chris Cox]

This is the Adobe user forums, you'll have to ask Apple to speed up their fixes on Apple's forums.

[Fried Egg Sandwich]

Does that mean you're not investigating or attempting to fix this bug, Chris?

[Adam Jerugim]

I'm still working on this specific issue and the latest update is we may have found a way to reproduce a symptom of it, but not the frequent hangs people describe.  To that end I have done a series of connect sessions with users and have yet to see the problem occur on any remote system.  I will repeat my offer from before, if someone is seeing this issue and lives west of the rockies and wouldn't mind hosting me for a few hours to work on this, I'd be happy to get on a plane and visit.  I'm sure my email info is somewhere in the thread above.

Thanks,

Adam

[bcmorrison99]

I'm not west of the Rockies, but you're welcome at my studio near Chicago. Only a 15 minute drive from O'Hare!

[geigreg]

I'm still having this issue every day. Lasso, Paint Brush, Eraser, Dodge/Burn. It is sporadic but happens daily several times. I have to click out to the Desktop twice and then get back to doing whatever I was doing. Seems odd that it is an Apple bug when I never had this issue with CS5 in either 10.7 or 10.8

g

[Brandman]

Adam,

I dont live west of the rockies, i live in tennessee. I would love to do a remote session. Photoshop hangs everytime i use it.

[Chris Cox]

I'm not pursing the cursor disappearing - again, that's a widely reported bug in MacOS 10.8, not something specific to Photoshop.

Adam and others are continuing to investigate the tools issues.

[RipTawn]

Hiya,  just to add here, its not solely a CS6 problem, I am running CS5 at home and have the problem on Wacom Intuous and Cintiq.  No such problem exists in other competing packages, Sketchbook, ArtRage, Pixelmater, Pixlr all run without freezing up in paint mode and causing me to click on another window, switch back to the program and find an non-undoable line drawn across the canvas.

I have a colleague in my studio that also has this problem and he's runnig CS5 also, he has learnt to work with it, always saving iterations and using lots of layers (he's a VERY chilled artist...).

I am aghaust that Adobe cannot recreate this bug, I have spoken to loads of artists over the years (50+) and a good 10% have experienced this problem and many more have at least heard of it.

[Gus Pfaffendorf]

Try install the following plug-ins:

• DisableDragBoundingBox.plugin

• DisableScratchCompress.plugin

• DisableVMBuffering.plugin

You can download "Optional Extensions Plug-Ins Release" in:

http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/plug-ins-photoshop-cs61.html

[sean_b99]

Gus, can you maybe give us a bit more info before we try this?

[Gus Pfaffendorf]

These plugins solve the hangup and delay issues.

Try! Only need to copy these plugins in your Photoshop Plugins Folder.

If it not solve your problem, simply remove it.

[Norm Johnstone]

Hello Gus,

Thanks for the suggestion, however I installed the plugins and still have the freeze problem.

Did this work for anybody else?

Norm

[geigreg]

Did not solve my problem. However, the issue is not happening as frequently. I had 2 hangs with lasso and clone tool yesterday.

[Was DYP]

DId not solve my problem either.

I just need to slow down a little and don't try to use the tool immediately after selecting it, than I rarely see the hang/freeze.

[sean_b99]

If you seriously think I'm going to install three plugins on the say-so of someone I don't know who has a record of 2 posts and doesn't feel bothered to give any extra info you must be joking! It appears my reticence was rewarded as Norm, Geigreg and Was DYP seem to have got nowhere with your suggestion. Maybe now you can give us a bit more info and explain why you think this solution might work. My workaround when this happens (and it happens every day) is to click back and forth between other open apps and PS until it unfreezes... it always seems to coincide with changing from pen to mouse or back. I would love if adobe could find a solution to this!

[Chris Cox]

And we'd love to find a reproducable case.

But every time we do a remote session on someone's system to see it - the problem doesn't happen.

And we don't see it here.

Best guess is still interference with event handling from another application, utility, or OS bug.

[Was DYP]

Chris Cox wrote:

And we'd love to find a reproducable case.

But every time we do a remote session on someone's system to see it - the problem doesn't happen.

And we don't see it here.

Best guess is still interference with event handling from another application, utility, or OS bug.

"Remember that just because you don't see something happen does not mean that is does not happen - someone else might see it often. And what you see often, might not happen to most other users."

[Chris Cox]

We're still researching the problem, and trying to reproduce it, and trying to work with customers who can reproduce it.

But the best guess is still external interference.

[tsader_2012]

Until recently I was using Intuos3 A4 tablet and the only thing I noticed with using the brush tool is that it was lagging when I was doing short and quick stokes. When doing long strokes there never was lagging.

For 2 days now I am using an Intuos5 L tablet and I am experiencing the hanging of Photoshop CS6 too. Photoshop seems to hang and when checking Activity Monitor PS uses 100% CPU

I am on an iMac i5 Lion 10.7.5