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Delia27
Participant
February 3, 2018
Answered

Pen Tool Lag (2018 CC Update)

  • February 3, 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 9175 views

Hello forum,

The pen tool is unacceptable laggy since I updated Photoshop CC the the most recent version. I must wait 1-3 seconds for a point to appear, sometimes the point never appears. If I ignore the lag and continue to place new points with the pen tool, the points will appear all out of the order I placed them in and with strange curves in between them.

I do not believe it is an issue with the computer hardware, as I have had the problem on two different iMacs with the same configuration. (listed below)

I've updated Photoshop CC to the most recent version and it has not solved my problem.

Computer Stats:

4.2 GHz i7

40GB Ram 2400 DDR4

8GB VRam (Radeon 580)

1 TB SSD (500GB free)

Photoshop CC 19.1.0 Release

I am desperate for help. I have resorted to using the polygonal lasso tool which is painstakingly slow for tracing curved objects. I edit hundreds of photos every day and I am about to have a heart attack from the stress of this issue. Adobe has not been able to help me via phone support.

Discussion moved by moderator from Adobe Creative Cloud to Photoshop

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer dvermilion@gmail.com

Sorry for the necro bump, but I found this question while attempting to address the same problem. I tried many things, but what ended up resolving the issue for me was decreasing the "Smoothing" for the Brush tool (I had it set to 100% because why not?).

I have no idea what smoothing does (computationally-speaking) that would cause such horrific lag, but that's what worked for me. I'm sure YMMV.

5 replies

Participant
December 17, 2020

I had the same problem, but got it solved. In the Preferences go to 'Tools' and make sure to uncheck the 'Snap Vector Tools and   Transforms to Pixel Grid' – did the trick for me. Now it's working with no lag.

dvermilion@gmail.com
dvermilion@gmail.comCorrect answer
Participant
July 27, 2019

Sorry for the necro bump, but I found this question while attempting to address the same problem. I tried many things, but what ended up resolving the issue for me was decreasing the "Smoothing" for the Brush tool (I had it set to 100% because why not?).

I have no idea what smoothing does (computationally-speaking) that would cause such horrific lag, but that's what worked for me. I'm sure YMMV.

Screenatee
Participant
March 19, 2020

Thanks for the did bit. I reduced the smoothing down to 0 and pen works fine. I guess I should spend as much time learning what smoothing does as the time it took to find this answer

Thanks

Carson Jones
Known Participant
August 10, 2018

Seeing lag with the pen tool as well in the current version of PS.  Super annoying.

System specs...

i7 5960x

64 GB memory

3x GTX 1080

Windows 10 Pro 64bit (1709)

Chester145
Participant
February 10, 2018

Having the same issue. It comes and goes but slowing my work significantly. Adobe help!

Can I go back to 2017 until this is fixed?

Delia27
Delia27Author
Participant
February 12, 2018

I have been advised that you can download 2017. It's in the same place you update the app, in the Creative Cloud menu... I'm not sure if that is what it's called.

The only reason this doesn't solve my problem is that Photoshop CC 2017 isn't working with the version of Lightroom I have so I'm stuck. Very disappointed in Adobe for not being able to solve my problem for such a long period of time.


Glad I am not the only one having this problem though! Thought I might be going crazy.

Chester145
Participant
February 12, 2018

Thank you PsycheDelia. I will do that until there's a solution.

JoeLib
Participating Frequently
February 4, 2018

Try Reset Tool for the Pen Tool.

DO NOT click Reset All Tools.

Joe

Delia27
Delia27Author
Participant
February 4, 2018

I appreciate your suggestion, Joe. I've tried this and the problem is persisting.

Any more ideas?