I'm working on a project that's 4000x4000 pixels at 72 DPI and about 16 layers. Usually, when I start working on the file, it's fine, and everything is really responsible. However, when I do anything like change the layer or undo the last action, Photoshop slows down to the point that it becomes unusable, particularly with regards to brush lag.
I've tried absolutely everything listed in the performance optimisation guide and elsewhere in the forums, and nothing works. I am running Windows 10, 16 GB RAM, 1070 GTX graphics card and overclocked i7 6600 CPU.
Can you check to see how much free space you have on your hard drives when Photoshop slows down? Are there any other applications running at the same time as PS?
I have about 60 GB of free space where Photoshop and my files are stored (it's an SSD). I have tried running it without any other applications open, but it doesn't appear to make any difference. I don't know if it helps, but Photoshop's CPU usage never seems to go above 50% in the Task Manager either.
I'm curious how much free space you have available when Photoshop slows down. Is it 60GB or is it less? My guess is that you've used up the available scratch disc and things are slowing down because PS is having to swap data from RAM to disc.
That would make sense. I have 16 GB of RAM, but Photoshop never seems to use more than 4 GB (and yes, I am running the 64-bit version). Also, Photoshop is set to use 60% of my available RAM, though I bumped this up to 70%, which made no difference. Nonetheless, my free disc space does seem to drop by several gigabytes while editing large files.
Is there a 4K monitor being used? I've found that performance suffers a bit when pushing that many pixels around unless you have a beefy video card. The GTX 1070 isn't any slouch, though. It should be up to the task.
If this hasn't been an issue in the past and you recently updated to the new CC 2017.1, you are probably experiencing the memory mismanagement issue the I had discovered with the new update. I had to rollback to CC 2017.0.1 to get things back on track.
I'm using an ultrawide monitor 3440x1440, which I'd have thought my system should be able to handle. I might try rolling back to the previous version and see if that works though. I'm still on my 7-day trial, so I haven't actually used the previous version yet. How would I get it?
Thanks for the tips anyway. I hope I can get this sorted out, otherwise I'll have to find another photo-editing programme. 😕
Not sure if you can use an earlier version on a trial.
I'm not sure if you'll find any other program to be as responsive as your video performance might be your bottleneck. I can push it with my GTX 950 with 4000x4000 pixel composites at 300 DPI in 16-bit on a 4K monitor. Switching to 8-bit really ups the performance.
As a test, did you try other things like lowering your bit depth?
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