Photoshop 2021 slow and laggy [LOCKED]

After some weeks of intense frustration and complete dslike of everything Adobe, I think I have at least a beginning of grasp on what makes Photoshop so g*dd*mn slow.

I had a working Adobe Photoshop version on my Microsoft Surface Book Pro 3 (the vesion with an Nvidia Quadro RTX 300 inside), which wasn't super powerful, but useful. Everything configured optimally for performance. The desktop or laptop 'workstation' I desired, was not what the company delivered, to my surprise, this Microsoft top model was the result I got. Frankly, I was surprised to see the configuration of that machine. I received it brand new, first one in the company. 

I was a bit of a sceptic at first, having to work wit something of a glorified tablet as a workstation, but at first I wasn't really dissapointed. I worked with 2 external monitors (32" 4K + 24"). All was completely OK.

And then, after a about 3 months, after couple of cumulative Adobe Photoshop, MS Windows and Surface Book firmware updates, everythink went haywire.

Opening a tiny .jpg, .png file took more than a minute to even open. Any action I tried to do on a file - especially working to make cut-out pictures using the 'paths' tool - I couldn't use, every action - even basically drawing a path - required me to wait for several seconds to take effects.

Completely unusable. I removerd the latest Photoshop update, reinstalled earlier versions, but evry time the same problem arose.

Then our IT-section wemnt to work on it. And then I couldn't use the Surface Book Pro anymore for anything Adobe - or else.

Conclusion was: Quadro RTX 3000 wasn't active. All hardware accelleration was futule - it just didn't work anymore. The conclusion was that I had only been able to use the  Intel Iris graphics card (onboard the 'tablet') all the time before.

Any reinstall / update / etc. resulted in disaster - Surface Book didn't work any more at all. Graphics cards didn't recognise my external monitors (32" 4K + 24") anymore.

IT-techs were at a loss. Made an appointment to turn the machine over to have it overhauled.

I decided to do some more 'trial & error'. Any way I cvonnected the external monitors, they weren't recognised.

Then, completely frustrated, I decided to eject the 'tablet' from the 'base'.  Then I reconnected them, and evrything worked again. Only the Intel Iris graphics card (onboard the 'tablet') was active again, and I decided to turn of 'hardware acceleration'completely.

And then: Photoshop worked again. Not 'blazing fast', no graphic acceleration, but it works. And maybe, just maybe, the IT-department will be able to get the damn Quadro RTX 3000 to work.

I'm running Catalina on an IMac Pro and all Aobe programs i'm using PS, ID, Ai appear to be glitchy at the moment even on really simple tasks.

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

As an update, uninstalling creative cloud fixed a lot of my issues

I've been having similar issues with the past few versions and found what seems to be a possible cause for the stuttering issuers many people are having.

For users with G-Sync displays, it appear that having it enabled while using Photoshop causes an excessive amount of slowdown. This can be fixed by disabling G-Sync in individual program settings in the Nvidia Control Panel.

It hasn't completely eliminated all the lag, but it's a lot faster than it was.

At this point there is too little programm and too much bugs. I can't.

Hi All.

I've been having this same issue on a 2019 iMac, super buggy laggy and horrible with 2020 & 2021 versions of Photoshop. The last version that worked well for me was 2019. After trying every possible optimization technique available, testing various GPU settings, etc., I had all but given up. And then today I had an idea that worked!

I dawned on me that as a long-time user of P.S. (since v1.5), I've grown accustomed to migrating all my customizations to each new version of Photoshop. And I had a hunch that maybe older versions of things like keyboard shortcuts, tool settings, workspaces, actions, etc.. might not be compatible anymore. So I uninstalled the Photoshop app via the Uninstall button in CC, then poked around in the Application Support and Prefs folders on my Mac to delete any remaining related files. And then did a fresh install of the latest 2021 version. And now it runs super fast, just like it should.

So now I've spent an hour recreating all my shortcuts and settings natively in the laterst version of the app, and everything is still working smooth and fast. No more lags, no more SBOD, just regular functionality. Don't know if this will work for anyone else, but it's worth a try. I have felt your pain, and wish you luck.  

Cheers!

Photoshop "upgraded" to version 22.3.0 today... what fresh hell is this? Selecton tools like Lasso and Marquee are horribly slow and do not keep up with the cursor and/or cause photoshop to spin for minutes, Absolute junk of an upgrade. 

MacOS 11.2.3 32GB ram 8GB vram

I've been told Adobe doesn't care about this forum it's for the users not the devs, then gave me another forum with less people on it but still no answer. 

I think it's safe to say they are not going to address this issue becuase it's what happens when you have 20 year old code on new hardware. They are most likely playing the numbers game and are hoping that the number of users that don't have this issue are more than the ones that do. 

I've reverted to PS2020 and moving forward, I'll stay a year behind.

Absolutely frustrating. I had posted similar problems in the past but as usual no respond from Adobe guy. I came up here again just now since I got stuttering zooming bug that happen many times today already, that forced me to restart PS every time. This is really wasting my time.

I always have a good hope for recent updates that came quite frequent in the last few weeks, but only to find this PS getting worse.