Photoshop CC 2015 is so slow it is unusable on my system

[DG. David Escalante]

I have no idea what is wrong here but this version of PS its horribly slow.

Here is a video i just captured about this issue:

http://cl.ly/2W0P381A1G1y/60fps-PSCC2015-slow.mp4

There is not difference with GPU enabled, there is no difference if I have or not rules enabled. I never experienced something like with with CC 2014.

MacPro with 12 cores and 64GB RAM

Its there something I could do to fix this?

[ChristopherButler]

Hi Anil,

We definitely appreciate your offer.

Adobe is shut down until after the new year, but if you can reach out in a private message to Adam, we can make arrangements to examine Photoshop's behavior on your machine.

Just to clarify, are you also seeing the slow menus and slow responsiveness for basic editing operations? Or is it just the render task?

[anilk79651720]

Hi Christopher,

I am novice enough not to notice those things.

But rendering is painfully slow,  48 frames and the rendering is only 32% done.  It is going on since 9:00AM in the morning and now it is 10:14PM.  I will PM Adam also.

Anil

[tomaszbrzoz]

Christopher, if this might help you: PS CC 2015 becomes 100% responsive after some time after launching the program. More precisely: I start PS CC 2015, I try to open file or do something else with the file already opened - the program stops for a while, then becomes responsive again, and the situation repeats several times and finally PS 2015 is ready to use without any lags. The lags are happening while performing standard random operations - f.ex. cropping, layer manipulation, masking, adjusting, browsing folders when opening files, etc. It has nothing to do with anything that could require more processing power. You have to wait a second or two during each such an operation to have PS responding again. In my opinion it looks like PS is checking something in the Internet or loading some extra libraries to RAM (kind of "delayed start" mechanism). But after this lag period PS starts behaving fine and I stick to it rather than using CC 2014 version.

HP EliteBook 8770w / 32 GB RAM / 256GB SSD / 1TB HDD / Win 10

[ChristopherButler]

T‌hanks. We're out of guesses, e.g. Disable network access temporarily to see if the problem resolves (See earlier suggestions in the thread - some of which seem to help some folks but not others)

We're just not seeing it on our machines. Which is why we are trying to find someone in the vicinity of our San Jose office who can reproduce and where we can get hands directly on the problem (or problems).

[Guest]

Hmmm I think if You asked anyone of us, many users wuold agree to share their desktop (f.ex. via screen sharing utility) to help You out.
Ofcourse, if this helps.

[misszhivago]

ChistopherButler, I have run your experiment and it made no difference.

My set-up:

• Upgraded to CC 2015 last week - version 2015.0.1
• CC 2014 ran without any problems at all - so same PC, no changes to hardware
• CC 2015 is unusable - everything is unbearably slow - I can't pinpoint one type of action or another that is slow - everything is slow
• In a corporate environment - the Adobe activation server is blocked. So I disconnect from the network and use our "public" wifi to do updates - works well.
• Windows 7 Enterprise, Service Pack 1, 16GB memory - not the fastest machine ever made, but it handled CC 2014 just fine

Would appreciate if you, or anyone else can point to instructions to downgrade to CC 2014 until this issue is resolved.

[misszhivago]

Update: oddly, when I initially closed and re-started PS after making the changes ChristopherButler suggested, there was no change. 

Today however, PS is noticeably faster. Still slower than CC 2014, but a vast improvement. So the changes have worked for me to some extent.

Still have slowness issues with Opening files - takes at least 30 secs for the file explorer box to come up after clicking "Open" and another 30 secs to actually open the selected file - and this for a very small screenshot. I'm not talking about huge layered files here.

Also, switching between active files/tabs is really slow. But, there is no longer any lag between tasks.  For example, prior I would switch to another file/tab, wait 30 secs. Then chose a tool. Wait 30 secs. Make a selection, wait 30 secs. Crop, wait 30 secs, etc....

Now there is only lag (~15 secs), when waiting for a crop to be done or trimming transparent pixels. But selection tools are back to normal and there is no longer lag when switching between tools.

Hope this helps narrow down the issue.

[ti6]

I guess its a global problem. I have the same issues too since CC 2015. Im using an highend computer with windows 10, but i cant work with photoshop and illustrator anymore. Laggs are horrible. Functions dont work, for example: I am even not able to c/p any vectorobject from illustrator to photoshop! Photoshop wont import it, if i switch back to illustrator its stuck loading something, crashes or just does nothing. I use Adobe Products since 2001 but those last CC 2015 versions are directly from hell.

Already tryed to deactivate everything mentioned within this thread with no positive effect.

System Set-Up:

- I7 4770K, 3.5 GHz

- 16 GB RAM

- GeForce GTX 770

- Windows 10 Home (64 Bit)

- Photoshop CC 2015 / Illustrator CC 2015 latest Updates

Please fix this soon. People cant work with broken tools.

[Adam Jerugim]

Here's something I'd like people to try:

1.  Quit Photoshop

2.  Quit Adobe Creative Cloud app (click on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of the ACC dialog and select Quit from the menu)

3.  Go to Activity Monitor on OS X or Task Manager on Windows and look for CEPHTMLEngine or other CEP tasks/processes.  If any of those CEP processes are using more than .2 % of the CPU when PS isn't running, quit them via Activity Monitor (the 'x' icon, top left) and Task Manager (select process/End Task).

4.  Re-launch Photoshop

How's PS performance now?

[Shadowspark]

Hi Adam,

I followed your instructions as I've recently updated to PS CC 2015 and have been experiencing serious lag. Photoshop freezes for approx. 90 seconds while doing simple things like selecting layers & tools, using menus, etc. 

I ran through your instructions but unfortunately it made no difference.  There were no processes using more than .2% of CPU when Photoshop wasn't running so to me that implicates PS itself as the source of the issue.  Also, I'm not experiencing issues with my machine or any other applications.

These new issues started when I installed the PS CC 2015 update about 2 days ago.  As others have said previously, it's causing huge issues in meeting deadlines so looks like I'll be rolling back to 2014 version until this is fixed.

[Tonguc Bodur]

Same as Sarah Wall here.

[katherinereece]

Same here.  How can I rollback to before the update came out?  Help

[ChristopherButler]

Install a previous version of any Creative Cloud application

[katherinereece]

Hi Christopher, thanks for the info.  I did have to revert back to PS CC 2014.  It only uses 1GB of memory.  Is there an official ticket open to Adobe about this, since many are having this issue?

I did all of these steps as I was told to do for 2015 version

• Deselected the Graphics in Preferences
• Updated my AMD Radeon driver
• From task manager, set the priority of PS to low.
• Restart PS and then check if that helps.
• In case this does not help, uninstall PS
• Restart the computer
• Reinstall PS CC 2015

[ChristopherButler]

There's no specific ticket I know of, but we are definitely tracking this issue. Someone else might have a case open; I'll let them speak to that.

[katherinereece]

Apparently there is something quirky going on with PS.  I tried all of the settings, that didn't work.  I uninstalled it, updated my AMD Radeon driver, shutdown, reinstalled.  Still same issue.  Uninstalled it again, shutdown reinstalled made sure all of the those settings were correct.  No luck.  Uninstalled, then installed PS 2014, that was fine.  A few hours later I reinstalled 2015 again.  It started right up, no error on the Graphics Processor, which by the way is checked.  So now it's working fine, have no idea why.

[ChristopherButler]

And are you still seeing performance issues?

[katherinereece]

Not since late yesterday after the last reinstall.

[Guest]

I updated yesterday to the latest available version (2015.1 I believe) and the am getting a spinning ball on nearly every action even on a new .ps file. I thought the last version was poor but this is simply unusable. I've been dabbling in Sketch, seems Adobe just gave me the final push to switch.

[whatyouare]

I'm on a Windows 7 machine, just updated to the latest release this morning, same lag exists. For example, I click on a layer, it takes 2-5 seconds for the layer to actually be selected. That explains my overall experience with Photoshop at the moment.  Very frustrating.

[whatyouare]

Any news/updates on this issue? Latest version is still practically unusable.

[ChristopherButler]

No updates. Evidenced by this thread, this problem has been persisting for some users for at least 6 months. We still have not reproduced the problem on our machines, and our guesses for fixes only seem to help in some circumstances.

Adam has asked for help a few posts above; we are looking for affected users in the San Fransisco Bay Area who are willing to host a visit so that we can observe the problem first hand and possibly get a better understanding of the problem. If you or anyone is willing to help, please contact him directly.

I wish I had a better answer for you.

[Shadowspark]

Hi Christopher,

I'm sure Adobe are looking at this on some level but I can't understand how it's taking such a large company 6 months to find a solution.

Surely it should be relatively easy to replicate these problems with Adobe's level of budget / funding? 

Looking back through the related threads, you have data on the range of machines and software & OS configurations affected by this widespread issue.

Could you not purchase a selection of representative machines and replicate configurations that are currently experiencing issues?

Then, install PS CC 2014 (or previous) & then upgrade to PS CC 2015. I'm sure you'll be able to replicate the issues. 

For example, I'm running a HP Envy, 12GB Ram, 2GB Nvidia Geforce, Windows 8.  Shouldn't be too difficult to pick one of these up secondhand!

It also seems odd in this day & age you want to go out on-site when you could access affected systems remotely (with permission, of course).   You'd be able to investigate the issues remotely without the delay of waiting for people to invite you over to their office!

I'm so frustrated about all of this as I love Adobe products but I am beginning to dread updating any Adobe apps! 

It's also a struggle to justify the monthly subscription fee when there are so many issues across a range of products. And support is so slow it's almost non-existant.

[ChristopherButler]

No, I'm sorry, but sometimes it's not easy.

We have hundreds of internal users and literally thousands of machines. But that's still a small fraction of the number of users and machines when Photoshop gets released.

Most of the machines being used every day across Adobe are standardized in order to make things easier on our IT organization. There is still some variability, but probably a bit less than the rest of the world. We do have a variety of machines in labs, but the variability there is still a fraction of what happens in the rest of the world. As an example of just one variable, just think of how many different kinds of video cards there are; it's a lot. We also don't have a lot of variability in other things, like network configurations. On the positive side, we do tend to use most of the other software everyone else does, and that helps with collisions that occur there.

You can see the combinations of configurations and environments are enormous. And when you factor in how a user or team is using the product, there can be additional variability. Sometimes we discover users and teams are using things in an unexpected fashion. In the past we have bought specific hardware when we had narrowed things down enough to justify that route. We are not seeing a pattern that indicates some specific hardware is the issue here.

Remote access works in some cases, but other times you have be there. With extra tools. With debug code. And so on.

This is appearing to be one of those cases. We have not replicated the problem. And we eventually need to do it in front of a developer.

We're frustrated too; we'd very much like to fix things for you.

[Guest]

Hi Christopher,

I understand and agree with your comments about the difficulties the developers face in attempting to diagnose and fix these problems.  Being no stranger to software programming myself (though not for such mass-market products) I have at least some idea about the frustrating issues that can arise.  I'm wearing two hats here, since within the company I work for, we too are having performance issues with the Adobe CC apps.

Whilst there can probably never be any 'one size fits all' solution for apps development, I do feel the next best thing would be to take greater responsibility and steps to minimize the pain for users by providing quick & easy roll-back options for all new versions and updates.

Users are constantly reminded to regularly make full backups of their systems and data, allowing them to undo any damage when needed. I couldn't argue with such advice.  However, in my experience the great majority of users simply do not back up often enough (or some not even at all!).  To be fair though, there are several reasons why backing up & restoring is not always so simple as it sounds, e.g. time pressures, inconvenience, confusion about the tools & strategies used (and sometimes their unreliability), etc. etc.

It would be no small feat for apps developers (and not just Adobe's) to always include full roll-back options in their product updates.  Yet this should be the standard approach by all, in spite of the extra costs & time incurred in doing so. Too many companies would rather just leave the onus on their customers to deal with or tolerate bad updates pending a fix.  A shame because the companies themselves would also benefit in many ways overall.

Roll-back is not always the perfect solution of course - new versions & updates do usually fix some previous issues, albeit at the expense of potentially introducing new ones.  At worst this could bring users the dilemma of choosing the lesser of two evils.  Sometimes users simply have no choice but to upgrade, especially in the design industry where using outdated versions hinders or prevents inter-working with third parties.  But having said all this, a roll-back option would much more often than not prove to be a welcome Godsend! 

I think there's an inherent reluctance by companies to allow users to revert to previous versions.  For one thing, it wouldn't exactly imply great confidence in their latest offerings by effectively suggesting they might actually break something.

Anyway, please let us have software roll-back options built in as standard I say.  There's no technical reason why that cannot be done. Nor any other reasons why it shouldn't, as far as I'm aware.

Paul.