Is Photoshop for Mac a Web app now? Very slow app for basic things.

[scotw74004221]

I am loading PSD files off of my local drive and I've noticed a little while ago that Photoshop gives me spinning color wheels and delays for very basic things, like opening up a 10 meg file that used to open up almost instantly.

What has changed? Is Photoshop accessing the Internet all the time, now? Is there a way to turn off all of its Internet features? I just want it to open up my local files quickly, I don't want to have an online library or any of that. I want a fast image editing program, please.

Thank you!

[kevin stohlmeyer]

@scotw74004221 When you say local drive do you mean local HD or external HD? (just confirming) Network connections should have no bearing on opening a local file on Photoshop desktop.

[scotw74004221]

Thanks for the reply.

My internal SSD drive. There is a delay now that didn't used to be there, which makes me believe Photoshop is accessing the Internet for basic things now. I use to see this delay when the Library feature was added in save dialogues, giving you the option to save your file in the cloud, so there is a slight delay as it accesses the Internet. That's the question I'm having, is there a way to tell Photoshop not to access the Internet at all. Shut that off completely so it's solely accessing my SSD. I'm guessing the AI features, the photos and fonts libraries online, etc., all get brought into the mix now and I just want to open this small PSD file, but I'm seeing a spinning wheel.

I have 32 gigs of RAM, 8 core Intel Mac Pro, 260 gigs free on the SSD.

THank you!

[kevin stohlmeyer]

Easy answer is turn off your internet connection once you've started up but that has detremental consequences. 

For now, go to the PS Help Menu/System Info and copy/paste the details here.

[Conrad C]

That's the question I'm having, is there a way to tell Photoshop not to access the Internet at all. Shut that off completely so it's solely accessing my SSD. 

By @scotw74004221

There's no Adobe option to shut off all of the Creative Cloud internet integrations. But is there hard proof that it is specifically network requests that are slowing things down? You can test it by temporarily disabling wired and wireless network access on the Mac, in the macOS Network settings. If it's still slow to open when the Mac has no Internet access, then it's something else. Have you done the Activity Monitor tests mentioned earlier, to rule out other potential causes?

One reason it should not be the network is that it is possible to use the apps with no network connection, at least for a while. People do it all the time, opening files and working while on long flights and on train commutes that don't have Internet.

Since we both use Macs, on my Mac I have software called Little Snitch that can monitor network connections. Its main purpose is to be a gatekeeper watching out for unwanted network connections. Part of that job is being able to block any network connection you like. So in addition to experimenting with disabling internet access at the macOS level, you could use software like that to specifically block Creative Cloud services. But be aware that there are a lot of those services, and it’s possible that blocking some services may cause other complications.

[Lumigraphics]

I am not seeing this on either M1 or Intel machines.

Please post your System Info (Help->System Info menu)

[Conrad C]

Photoshop on macOS and Windows is not a web app. You can see where the code is locally; in your Applications folder the Photoshop app folder is over 5GB. That’s 5GB of app code it loads straight off your Mac’s fast internal SSD, not from the web.

Open macOS Activity Monitor and watch the CPU tab during these slowdowns. Sort the list by "% CPU" from high to low, and see which process is using the most CPU when Photoshop is slow. What you want to look for is if Photoshop is using an unusually high % of CPU during the slowdowns, or if it is actually another process that is taking CPU away from Photoshop.

Also look at the Memory tab and see what the Memory Pressure graph says. In terms of memory, Photoshop should run at full performance unless the Memory Pressure graph is filling up into the orange or red zone. If the Memory Pressure graph looks that bad, again look at the list and see which app is actually using the most memory at that time, in case one app is starving the others.