Launch/Startup times becoming unbearable.

[CeeBee2001]

Hello, Desktop Photoshop use here. It may just be down to a bug on my PC but the start times on recent version of PS have seemingly tripled since Photoshop 2019.

In 2019, if I wanted to edit a document from Lightroom Classic into PS, it would take about 5 seconds from a cold request (PS not open). With 2020 onwards, it now takes upwards of 15 seconds until I'm able to edit any given image in PS from a cold start. All of the this adds up.

I have 5GB/s bandwidth on my M2 drive, so technically could load up a 75GB program in the 15 seconds PS takes to fire up. Why have the startup times increased so much? Has the whole underlying infrastructure of Photoshop changed? Is anyone else experiencing the same?

Many thanks in advance!

[Derek Cross]

Welcome to this friendly forum.

Most people don't seem to be having the issues you describe.

Which version of Photoshop and OS?

How much RAM and spare hard disk capacity?

Have you tried resetting the Photoshop preferences, which you can do under the General tab in Photoshop preferences?

[CeeBee2001]

Hello Derek, thanks for having me 🙂 I'm on the latest version of PS 2022, 16GB of 3600Mhz DD4 with 11 assigned to PS. I have 898GB of free HDD space on a M.2 PCIe 4.0 drive.
Both Windows Pro and Photoshop are freshly installed.
I have reset preferences, no change observable.
Up to PS 2019, startup times were always about 5 seconds or below from SSD, even only 10 seconds with a mecahnical drive.

Thanks!

[CeeBee2001]

It's also the same on my other install of Win 10 Pro and PS 2022. About 15 seconds lauch time from LR>PS. Just tested it with 2019, and it's still sub 5 seconds to launch on that OS.

[Ged_Traynor]

Hi

Photoshop version 23.0 loads in about 4 seconds and version 22.5.2 takes about 5 seconds on my system

[CeeBee2001]

There must be something I have set incorrectly. I have updates set to very minimal, although I have the latest servicing stack updates installed. Is there a version of .NETFramework I may need or some other DirectX/Java app I may be needing, I wonder. Just ran CrystalDisk and my bandwidth is flying along, 4900MB/s Read and 1800MB/s write so not a disk pipeline issue (probably)

[Derek Cross]

About 7 sec on my MacBook Pro 2018 and around 10 secs on my iMac 2014.

[CeeBee2001]

From desktop and a direct launch, I'm getting 7.5 seconds. I can actually live with that. It's the PS launch from Lightroom that's the problem. Can you test that for me on your system if you get chance please? Start timing as soon as you've pressed the 'Edit in Photoshop 2022 option and stop the timer whe you have the selected image appear in Photoshop. Interested to see other's figures. Thanks!

[Ged_Traynor]

I was launching Photoshop from the taskbar icon and not through Lightroom, I don't use Lightroom but downloaded just to test and it took 7 seconds for Photoshop to load from Lightroom

[CeeBee2001]

Many thanks for going to the effort, Ged. Is that from a completely cold transfer I.E. Photoshop starting from up scratch and not already running in the background?

[CeeBee2001]

I can get to the Photoshop 'desktop' in about 7 seconds from Lightroom but the editable image takes a further 7 or 8 seconds to appear and I get a progress wheel during that time.  Frustrating with all of this bandwidth 😕

[Ged_Traynor]

Many thanks for going to the effort, Ged. Is that from a completely cold transfer I.E. Photoshop starting from up scratch and not already running in the background?

By @CeeBee2001

Yes that was Photoshop starting from scratch and not running in the background, it was about 5 seconds for Photoshop to load and another 2 seconds for the image to appear, so 7 in total

[CeeBee2001]

I'm at a loss, to be honest. Box fresh installs of both Windows and PS with a PCIe 4.0 M.2 drive and I'm only getting mechanical HDD performance 😕 I must be missing an option or a trick somewhere.

[CeeBee2001]

It must be stated that almost all of my other programs, even those much larger than PS, start almost instantaneously, very snappily indeed. It's only the Adobe stuff that is really dragging it's heels.

[Ged_Traynor]

You mentioned that Photoshop loads pretty quickly direct from the desktop, so maybe the issue is with Lightroom and not Photoshop, have you tried posting on the Lightroom forum

[RosaPerry]

@Ged_Traynor 
If you don't mind me asking, do you have many brushes, styles, patterns loaded?
My PS takes longer to load but I figured that is because I do have lots of the above loaded.

Thanks

[Ged_Traynor]

Just out of curiosity I installed all of the Kyle Webster brushes + 1000 other brushes I had and didn't notice any difference in the load time for Photoshop, I have the standard styles and patterns plus the legacy ones.

[RosaPerry]

@Ged_Traynor 

Thanks for responding. My PS takes around 20 seconds to load. I noticed that when Reading Brushes, it seems to take longer than anything else to load. I have a 1.8Gb brushes which is probably why reading brushes takes a bit longer for PS to load. 

[Trevor.Dennis]

Watch the splash screen as Photoshop loads, and see if you can spot it stalling at any point.  If you do, note what process is loading at that point.  If it is fonts, for instance, try checking them.  There will usually be a tool available for what you need.

For fonts, as an example (with Windows)

Troubleshoot font problems | Windows (adobe.com)

Try launching Photoshop while holding down the Shift key.  This prevents third party plugins and extensions from loading, so if the problem goes away I guess you'd need to uninstall all of them and reinstall one at a time.

What are your Scratch disk arrangements?  Dodgy drives can slow things down dramatically.  Try opening Preferences and clicking on the Scratch Disks tab.  It should respond instantly.  A dodgy drive might stall Photoshop for a full minute or more.

Do you have a zillion presets? Brushes, fonts etc.? They all need to load on start up.

But your best tool is the splash screen.  You can't stop and start it, but if you have a screenshot tool like Greenshot, you can freeze the screen and grab an image.  When Photoshop opens, use Ctrl n for new document the size of the clipboard, and paste your screen grab into it.