How do I use MORE of my computer's resources with Photoshop CC?

[Bomazu]

I work with large dimension Photoshop files for artwork.Sometimes a few hundred MB, sometimes a few GB.

PS however lags with brush movements. Sometimes freezing. Also applying filters can be a slow. I bought a high-spec laptop, which I hoped would compensate for and fix this. However, even when attempting to overload Photoshop with brush or smudge marks on a 10000x10000px canvas for example, I've only manage to use 50% of my CPU and 50% of my available ram and still getting brush lag and occasionally freezing which requires restarting PS to resolve.

Quick laptop spec breakdown as follows:

Latest Gen i7 Quad core CPU @ 2.8GHz
32GB of DDR4 RamNvidia 1050 GT (2GB GDDR5) graphics

Windows 10 OS on an Samsung 960 Evo SSD.

I've tried various performance preference adjustments to resolve this. My current config is (which I assume is correctly optimised for the way I work):

Let photoshop use 26521GB of RAM (90%)
History States: 50
Catche: 8
Catch tile size: 1028K
Use graphic Processor->Advanced drawing mode

Scratch volume(s):

D:\, 1.82T, 346.5G free

C:\, 232.3G, 115.3G free

I know one way to resolve brush lag is to increase brush spacing on my hard brushes to 10%+, but I'd rather not resort to less than perfectly smooth lines. And I still want things like the filter gallery to take less time to load and to resolve random freezing.

Is there any way to avoid these problems and make the most of my hardware which seemingly isn't being utilised?

[Brad Lawryk]

Are you using a tablet? Maybe it's a tablet issue?

What happens if you just use the mouse to use the brush to test it. Any difference?

[Bomazu]

I do use a tablet, but unfortunately I get lag with using the mouse also.

[D Fosse]

I'd start with the video card. Single or dual? If the latter, disable one. Try unchecking GPU altogether, then try "Basic". If this makes a difference, see if there's an updated driver.

10K x 10K is a big file, granted, but with a sensible scratch disk setup it should be workable. I would, however, ease up a bit on the PS RAM allocation. Drop it to 80% or so, just on general principle. Other apps and processes need RAM too. Drop history states to 20.

Also disable any third party plugins.

[JJMack]

Some filters can be very compute intensive and some things you do in Photoshop are sequential in nature and can not take advantage of multiple processor, cores and threads so processor speed important.    My workstation clock speed  is only 2.0 GHz.  Because of this the mother board  runs my High speed  ECC RAM at a slower speed then it is capable of running at.   Though My workstation is only 2.0GHz and memory speed lowered my machine has two 6 core xeons processors, 40GB of ECC Ram and runs off of SSD. Photoshop runs quite well.  Still I have seen Smart Blur run all 24 threads 100% for over a minuet on a large image.  If I create a large canvas zoom way out so the canvas fit in screen select the wet mixer brush set a huge brush tip and set brush spacing to 1%  I can stroke the large canvas see the stroke start today and finish tomorrow.    How well Photoshop performs depends one many things.

[mglush]

How much disk space do you have on your laptop? Having a dedicated Scratch disk might give you the extra added power you need. If you have a 1-TB or 2-TB drive that you can allocate to just being scratch disk for photoshop you might see a performance boost.

Michelle

[JJMack]

I do not believe the way Photoshop brushes work that any computer will be able to to render all possible brush stroke in real time without any lag.  Photoshop work on the full size image.  If you have a large canvas and are zoomed out and brush across the canvas Photoshop has to retrieve pixels  mix in brush paint lay down paint re-pick  some on of the lay down paint and the next area and replete the process for the entire brush stroke path.  I do not know if or how much a gpu can help with the sequential process there can be huge number of bits involved a number so large my head can not comprehend the number.  It not real world physics where paint flows mixes and dries.  Even in the real world how long does it take for the mixing process to stops flowing and is completely dry.   I have never seen a Computer the I can not produce brush lag on.