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?

[Fried_Egg_Sandwich]

Have any of the recent CC updates fixed this bug? Still driving me mad on a daily basis.

[MarkusP]

Hi guys!

I had the issue with Photoshop lagging/hanging like a couple of years ago, with CS6, and the White Window Workaround solved the issue for me then. I now use CC 2014.2.2 and the problems are there once again.

I have an iMac, bought it in april/may 2014. Specs:

3,5 GHz Intel Core i7

32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

1 TB Fusiondrive

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB

I use a Wacom Intuos 4 and I shoot with a Canon EOS 5D mk III, pixel dimensions 5760x3840. I use the clone stamp and healing brush a lot for skin retouch etc. I experience the lag/hang issue with these tools, and the brush tool, when I work on large PSD images.

Just now, I set the RAM memory usage in PS preferences to 90% and started working with the clone stamp and healing brush. Non-stop for about 15 minutes (with about one Alt-click and one stroke per second) the hang/lag did not occur. The file I worked on was a PSD file with one background layer and one empty layer above. File size 120 MB.

And then, to REALLY put it to the test, I opened a PSD-file, 5760x3840 pixels, 775 MB, with about 180 layers and adjustment layers (ran a lot of Better Than Gatsby-actions) and created an empty layer on the top and started working with the healing brush and clone stamp. It started lagging right away. Every stroke takes 1-2 seconds after pen-up to take effect.

Next step, I flattened the image and created an empty layer and started working with clone stamp and healing brush once again. No problem.

So for me it seems to work ok when I have just booted my computer, opened Photoshop with maybe one or two other applications running, and do my clone/heal work on the image when it does not contain that many layers yet. But the longer I use PS and the larger the file size and layers amount gets, the more lagging/hanging I get. Sometimes PS just "freezes" and then I try what everyone else here have tried, switching programs, clicking the bar at the top of PS etc. It goes away temporarily but comes back pretty soon.

And like I said, the White Window Workaround worked for me in CS6, but the issue is more noticable in CC 2014. I have also updated to the latest Wacom drivers but that did not make any difference.

It's really unbelievable how long this issue has been around...

[Chris Cox]

It's not the same issue -- Photoshop CC 2014 already contains the workarounds from the plugin (to avoid known MacOS issues).

What OS version are you using?  MacOS 10.10 has added some new slowdowns (most notably the rulers drawing - which Apple is aware of and investigating).

Wacom has also put out some updates to solve some lag and data loss issues.

[orlandoholwerda]

SOLVED: Menus, shortcuts, Lasso tool, or Photoshop stop working when using a Wacom tablet | Mac OS

[Tyler_Steele]

I had the same problem with the clone stamp freezing the computer . I am using a mac.I figured out it was the 'mouse keys' option (disables the keyboard and trackpad -i think to get a better reading from a bluetooth keyboard?)  I believe in Accessibilities preferences. this setting has an option if checked to toggle"mouse keys" on or off by pressing the option key 5x in a row. paired with a barely hesitant key repeat speed, I was basically disabling my trackpad and keyboard by holding down the option key for not even a whole second. Don't know if this will help anyone but ya

[Joel Seligmann]

This does not completely eliminate the problem, but it's a pretty good fix anyway: If any of the  Photoshop tools hang (especially clone and paint) press the command and period key (stop process combo),  then click in there history box under the last completed function and the tool will work. Very few hangs, if any, continue with this solution.