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1992guitars
Inspiring
August 19, 2022
Answered

Photoshop 2022 Unusable (Literally) Big Sur 11.6.8

  • August 19, 2022
  • 14 replies
  • 1637 views

After 16 months of bliss, stability, and productivity with a (then) new MacBook Pro running Catalina 10.15.7, I was finally forced to update to Big Sur (after losing 7 days to researching, discussing, reading, calling AppleCare to ask questions, backing up, etc.) for some non-Adobe video editing software. In the end, I did a "dirty install" right over the previous OS the computer shipped with. Specs:

 

MacBook Pro 16-inch, 2019

2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

32GB 2667 MHz DDR4

AMD Radeon Pro 5600M 8GB

 

Literally since the Operating System "upgrade" this afternoon, Photoshop is unusable. It loads to the home screen and creates a blank document but upon importing any photo (.dng, .heic, .jpeg, .png) the program crashes with a "Quit Unexpectedly" error. I have uninstalled and reinstalled mutliple versions of Photoshop but the issue persists. I have granted Full Disk Access and allowed Photoshop to control the computer under Accessibility. I have disabled/unchecked "Use Graphics Processor" in preferences. 

 

When I go to Preferences/Camera Raw, the preferences for Camera Raw won't open at all and the program quits unexpectedly/crashes again. When I go to "About Plugins/Camera Raw," the program also quits/crashes, just as it does upon attempting to import an image.

 

I have trashed/deleted Preferences under General/Reset Preferences On Quit. I have tried uninstalling from Creative Cloud and then deleting any left over files from the following directories:

 

~/Library/Application Support

~/Library/Preferences

/Library/LaunchAgents

/Library/LaunchDaemons

/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools

 

I'm a little frazzled since I've already forfeitted 7-days of productivity prior to this and now have a new issue to sort out. Leaning towards taking the plunge for a clean macOS install to see if that fixes it but am concerned because that too holds no guarantee and then I'm setting myself up for more work downloading all of my apps, manually bringing over all important files from backups without importing the the clutter, and the inevitable stress of performing a clean install/hard drive erase, when I've never really gone that far before. 

 

Photoshop versions I have installed and uninstalled include v 23.5 (latest), v. 23.something (maybe 1), v 22.0, and whatever was originally in-place at the time of moving from Catalina to BigSur (I'd have to load the bootable backup in order to see which version I was on prior to all of this. One of the versions of Photoshop 2021 for sure).

 

Any help would be a great relief! Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer 1992guitars

2 hours on virtual assistant support this evening....Sundar is a hero. It wasn't the graphics card (Photoshop itself was telling me that too under GPU Compatability) so I have no idea what the phone agent was talking about. I couldn't begin to describe the solution because he had to trash so many preferences folders and back-end stuff but he solved everything Photoshop. Now dealing with a much more minor, essentially inconsequential InDesign icon issue which I'll be tackling this evening. Camera Raw 14.5 loads and everything chronicled earlier in my wall of text is no longer an issue. 

 

Evidently clean installing Big Sur would have saved a ton of time after all but I'm just so grateful that the issue got sorted out at all. It was starting to feel hopeless. Support articles didn't fix it nor did even the CC Cleaner....I figured out we might finally be getting somewhere when he started digging deeper into the system. He said in the chat window: "The issue seemed to be with some application or its process running in the system. Hence we did the manual cleanup process." 

 

AppleCare told me that the fact it worked on a new user account indicated that a clean install would probably work, but then  didn't seem to point me in the direction of an actual clean install and was casting a vote to re-install the OS from System Recovery without formatting the disk drive. At this stage, I'm sure I could have done the clean install after 9 days of research and preparation (it was ridiculous) but now after all of this, my list of compelling reasons to do so just shrunk many-fold. At least now I'll be able to get back to work. I wish there was more of a takeaway from all of this but the fact that it got sorted out at all is enough for now 

14 replies

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L
Lumigraphics
Legend
August 19, 2022

At this point, you may want to use the CC Cleaner Tool to completely remove CC and reinstall from scratch.

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

    1
    1992guitarsAuthor
    Inspiring
    August 19, 2022

    Yeah, beyond any shadow of a doubt. Just got the nerve up to install Camera Raw 14.5 to test this hypothesis. As soon as 14.5 was installed, Photoshop was completely unusable again. And as soon as I downgraded (now the second time) back to 13.1, Photoshop works. Still wish system requirements were provided for 13.1 --- please let me know when you are able. 

     

    Thanks,

     

    Sean 

    1
    1992guitarsAuthor
    Inspiring
    August 19, 2022

    So I never give up to the detriment of other things (such as, currently, dinner) and have a third update. I'm going to leave this issue as potentially but not certainly resolved by my own ridiculous stubborness in the face of adversity....

     

    Refusing to be defeated, I went to check what version of PS was on my other Mac (which is not a used with video, and hence, I can't work productively from that machine). It loaded without a hitch, of course, and is still on Catalina. It was Photoshop version 22.4.2

     

    Came back to the this current machine that this issue just appeared on and I promptly installed 22.4.2. Still....literally unusable. 

     

    But in the other computer, I also clicked on "About Plugins/Camera Raw." Remember that on this updated machine, when I clicked there, PS would quit unexpectedly. On the other computer though, it said "Camera Raw Version 13.3.0.807." Meanwhile on this other Mac, my Creative Cloud was saying my Camera Raw was up to date, and I could see that Camera Raw 14.5 was released a few days ago.

     

    I searched for ways of resetting or trashing camera raw prefs and landed on a video suggesting to do so in Adobe Bridge, but when I loaded Bridge, it wouldn't even load past the startup screen without crashing/"This program has quit unexpectedly." 

     

    Meanwhile fishing around to fully uninstall PS, I noticed I had Camera Raw 13 and 14 files in library folders. I didn't want to delete anything and do something bad so I left everything alone, but searched....

     

    When I located the official Adobe page, it gave NO system requirements for Camera Raw 13, only 14.5 and then older version began with 12 and went back from there. 

     

    I figured it couldn't hurt because PS was unusable as-is, and if I really torpedoed it, I had already threatened a fresh/clean BigSur install....and so I downloaded and installed Camera Raw 13.1 (because 13.3 was not availaible). 

     

    It works. Every single thing I mentioned in the first post doesn't happen now. 

     

    When I go to Photoshop/About Plugins/Camera Raw, a beautful title comes up with "Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw" proudly displayed, Version 13.1.0.658. When I go to Photoshop/Preferences/Camera Raw, an actual Preferences window opens and the program does not crash. Furthermore, in my Preferences/Performance window, Use Graphics Processor is checked and all is well (unchecking solved nothing previously). When I load .psd files now, they load. When I create a new project and drag in a picture file, it loads and I can work with it and the program has not crashed so far.

     

    I have not yet re-installed Adobe Bridge nor tried reverting back to Camera Raw 14.5....I'm almost afraid to now that it's working tonight. Having said that, what in the world? The only thing I can even think of is that at some point while working on InDesign over a break with my laptop, I seem to have installed Adobe Bridge and done nothing with it. Whatever the case may be, clearly this was related to the Camera Raw version....

     

    I fully expected Camera Raw to be updated to 14.5 when I updated Photoshop to the latest version 23.5, but in the About section, it still says I'm on Camera Raw 13.1. All I know is right now it is working. 

     

    Whether or not a clean install would have solved this I have no idea. If it's truly Camera Raw 14.5 or if it was a conflict on my computer that got sorted out with a downgrade.

     

    Any ideas/advice/words/suggestions about what to do now? Any downside in not installing the latest Camera Raw? Like I said, the page didn't list the system requirements. Can I use Camera Raw 13 on BigSur? What about when I go to Mojave in another 6 months or so?

     

    I know this was a solid wall of text. I just can't stand defeat and had to keep going until I found at least something out

      1
      1992guitarsAuthor
      Inspiring
      August 19, 2022

      Not sure how to edit the above so just another bit of pertinent information. I did just now load my bootable backup specifically to check, which was good because at least now we have two new bits of information. I was on Photoshop version 22.5.2 at the time of the OS migration. So I've definitely tried 4 different versions at this stage. But also.....

       

      Evidently I let perception get the better of me and made a mistake....

       

      It wasn't the OS upgrade. The reason I know is that when I load version 22.5.2 on the bootable backup (via NVMe SSD over Thunderbolt 3 in an OWC M.2/U.2 adapter/enclosure...point is the bootable backup is ridiculously fast).....that too crashes under all of the identical conditions detailed above in my first post. 

       

      It was working perfectly prior to three weeks away in July. The only thing I can think of that would have changed since then would have been a Catalina security update, which I think I did a week or so after I returned, quite some time before going to Big Sur today. 

       

      So if it's not the OS change, clearly something else is causing this, but I have no idea what. For at least 15 months, things were entirely stable and I haven't changed anything about the setup (same computer, same monitor, same drives, same Creative Cloud account, same everything....except the Catalina security update followed by migrating to BigSur today).

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