Alright so I am at a complete loss for words with this issue. I have tried every possible fix I could think of, and nothing has worked.
The problem: Title. Upon the first launch up of Photoshop, the performance gradually gets worse and worse before it becomes unusable. I mainly use photoshop to draw. What ends up happening is that once I start applying multiple consecutive brush strokes, the program just simply can't keep up. This is not a brush/canvas size issue. This problem persists on even the smallest resolutions (100x100) with the most basic photoshop round brush. However, what's strange is that this only occures once the brush stroke is layed down, but after, if I hold that stroke down, the performance/rest of the stroke follows through flawlessly.
What I've done to try to fix it:
- Disabled/Enabled every performance setting within the program itself. (Setting Drawing Mode to Basic, Normal, Advanced, changing cache size option, etc.)
- Cleared all of my scratch disks + changed main scratch disk to my m.2 SSD
- Thought it was a specific Photoshop 2019 issue so I downgraded and upgraded to both 2018 and 2020 versions to see if that fixes it. It doesn't. (I use 2019 as the current versions of photoshop are simply too buggy for my system. This is the same version of photoshop I've used for years and this issue was never a problem.)
- Tested Paint Tool Sai and Microsoft Paint to isolate whether it was a Photoshop issue. It is. Both programs I tested ran perfectly.
- Upgraded my ram from 16 to 32gb. This is not a hardware issue as I previously thought.
I also managed to figure out that my huion tablet may also be part of the problem somehow? If I lay down consecutive brush strokes with my tablet, it lags horrendously, but if I use my mouse, at the exact same pace, if not clicking even faster, then it draws the brush flawlessly. I've updated/downgraded my tablet drivers to multiple different versions. That does not fix it so I just have to assume it's a photoshop-only issue.
Things that have worked for me:
Thus far, I have found 2 temporary fixes, although at a great compromise.
- Unplugging all of my monitors except for my tablet display. It isn't one particular screen that is causing the lag, it's more like they all contribute fairly equally. I run a quad screen setup including my tablet. As I unplug one monitor after the other, the performance gradually comes back.
- Enabling CAPS lock... for some reason fixes it...? I guess photoshop really doesn't like seeing the brush size or something. I honestly don't know. But this isn't ideal as I need to see how big my brush is to make accurate strokes.
I would really like to stress here that this problem only occures after around 30 minutes of use on the FIRST startup of photoshop. No amount of history clearing or window/process closing fixes this issue once it starts. The only way to get photoshop to perform well is by compeletely restarting my PC.
It's also just as important to reitterate that this is a recent problem. I have always ran 4 monitors, I have always used this version of photoshop. This is most assuredly a software issue, not a hardware one.
Relevant system specs if that's important:
CPU: R7 1700
GPU: GTX 1080
RAM: 32gb 3200 Mhz
I'm sure I'm missing some key information here so let me know if there's anything else I can add. Thanks in advanced.
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