Photoshop CS6—many problems. Slow.

[ladri-bici]

I'm hoping someone at Adobe can address the numberous bugs and general slowness in Photoshop CS6.

Before installing (MacBok Pro 2010 Intel i7, 8GB Ram) I whiped my drive and installed OS Lion. So CS6 went on clean.

What I'm finding:

1. General slugishness all around.

Layered PSD files I was using just fine in CS5 are now extremely slow. An examle is a small (20mb) web design file. So it has many layers (maybe 200, not 2,000) mostly comprised of typographic elements—not many layered effects to speak of. Not many image layers, either. Layer folders are slow to move, folders can't be moved using the shift + arrow key consecutive times, making it difficult to move a range of folders xxx pixels to the left, for example.

Things that were pretty snappy before, are now slow. This is very similar to the problems I and many others saw with the initial relase of CS5—in the next version (12.0.1 I think?) Adobe fixed the issue.

2. Problems with type, example keybaord arrow keys stop working many times when toye is selected. Frustrating.

More of a general rant here, but insted of (at least in addition to) a lot of other 'features' like video in PS extended (why not use Premiere?), 3d, etc., it would be really smart for Adobe to make core elements work better: A big complaint among interactive desigers is that type renders so poorly compared to CSS html. Maybe this could be addressed, as photoshop is used for the design of most all websites.

[Chris Cox]

There are many potential problems, and those vary for each application - and the majority of them for Photoshop are outside the application itself.

So we need to know more about what you are seeing, then we can try to narrow down the possible causes and help you troubleshoot your system.

Photoshop is working just fine for the vast majority of users, and we are trying to work with the people seeing slowdowns to figure out why they see them when other users do not.

Right now we only know of one significant slowdown in Photoshop CS6: the layer thumbnails, especially when moving a lot of layers on a document with many layers.  For the time being, that can be avoided by turning off the layer thumbnails.

Beyond that we've seen corrupt fonts cause problems, bad antivirus software, and some third party plugins.

[julienlanoo]

don't forget the drivers of the GPU that can not be up to date.. ( i hope he read that ),

& turn of dropbox:)

( No update from apple yet) ..

greets

ju

[paul campagna]

Somebody is smart enought to make a tool to run and check for know issues. I don't believe for one second that it couldn't be done. Every issue that pops up should be added to that "tool" to detect a possible issue. Every time somebody finds a problem, add that detection to the tool.

If you have a corrupt font, then the program tell you. If you have a 3rd party plug in, then the tool tells you. That would cut down drastically on people calling adobe trying to explain the issue, (usually to people in India, who don't have a clue what's going on), then those people make you run through a scripted series of questions that just wastes time if you've already done them.

Instead of wasting the time and money on that, create the program that checks for compatibility issue and potential problems.

I know i have weeks of my time trouble shooting adobe products. This year alone I have a few full days...

I'm at the point now where I just wait until the program becomes slow, swiitch to CS4 to finish the work until I go home and then the next day restart, purge, permissions, etc. It sucks i have to keep putting in my preferences, but at least i'm getting some use out of the software... (not as much as i'd like)

[erickbrian]

UPDATE:

Since the last Photoshop update, my computer has been running fine.

Nothing else has changed, and it also fixed problems with the coworkers.

That is all.

[julienlanoo]

when was the update ? did i miss that ?

[Noel Carboni]

There have been a couple of minor updates for components in the Photoshop CS6 suite (something about CSXS Infrastructure) but nothing that should have anything to do with this.  Certainly the much awaited 13.0.1 update hasn't been delivered yet.

-Noel

[paul campagna]

I am still having trouble with photoshop cs6 being slow. I should add that, if I work on a file (pretty much any file), after a while it just starts to run slow, then slower, then slower to the point of almost locking up. Then my whole machine is slow... I assume it's becasue PS is hogging all the computers memory, which would make sense if I had a huge file open and waiting for it to render something, but that's not the case. Once photoshop gets to this point, I have to close and restart to get the machine to right again, then I just use PS4 until I get that file done.

I'm really trying to use PS6, because I want it to work, but there has to be a problem with how its using memory or something. It is basically crippling my machine because it's hung up on doing something in the backgound(?)

The point being that photoshop is using too much of the computers resources while caching, or saving the histories or something.

[Noel Carboni]

More than likely it's because your display driver is buggy and is hogging resources.

It doesn't do what you're saying on my system.  I can edit images all day with it and it remains as fast as ever.  Photoshop's memory management looks weird at first - as though it's "hogging" the memory, but a) it will give it back to the system if the system needs it and b) it has its own internal memory manager and (according to Adobe) it's faster this way than if it uses the system's memory manager.  I've been skeptical about that last statement myself, but they say they've tried it both ways.

Have you tried adjusting the values in the Photoshop - Preferences - Performance dialog?  Maybe you're allowing Photoshop to allocate too much memory overall and it's causing the rest of your system to thrash?  Also try the various optimizations in the History & Cache section, as well as switching the Advanced Settings for the GPU to other modes (e.g., Basic).  MAKE SURE and quit and restart Photoshop after making any changes here, or you won't be testing what you think you're testing.

-Noel

[paul campagna]

I've done all that several times and it brings me back to my point that I shouldn't have to deciffer photoshops problems constantly, just  to get it to work like it did before. I have actual work I have to do and I'm sick of trying to make photoshop run right! You can blame my driver, my fonts, my system, etc, etc, etc, but if it worked fine before, then it should work fine now! If not, then give me a tool that can tell me where the issue is. I'm tired of working for Adobe to get their stuff to run.

I know how to maximize the setting to make it work correctly. I've been working with photoshop since "2" (1992-1993 ish) and on upgrades some things just worked better and some didn't. It seems that the last 2.5 upgrades has been a nightware. Don't even get me started on 5.5 as that was the worst photoshop EVER! I gave up after a month trying to get it to work right.

I shouldn't have to keep changing settings and trying this, or trying that to get it to work like the last version did. That's not my job, but Adobe's. If other people are having the same types of problems, then it is not just my system. It's a problem on Adobe's end by not finding these thing  out before the release (that's why things have Beta stages. I have work that needs done and I can't constantly tweak setting to get it to work.

Photoshop is hogging resources by keeping to much in it's cache, or just not managing the systems memory like it should. It worked before, but now it doesn't. Brings me back to the point they should make a tool that knows what could cause problems and identify them before you even install it.

[Noel Carboni]

paul campagna wrote:

if it worked fine before, then it should work fine now!

Actually that's kind of a flawed assumption.  There's every reason to think the newest version will use the system's resources more aggressively than the prior version.

I feel for you, I really do.  But I think you're among the minority of folks experiencing poor Photoshop operation, and it doesn't really look like anyone is going to step up and fix the problem for you.  We all have to take some responsibility for integrating things into our systems.

Perhaps your computer just isn't up to the task of running state of the art graphics software.  You could get a powerful new PC workstation I suppose.

-Noel

[paul campagna]

Noel Carboni wrote:

paul campagna wrote:

if it worked fine before, then it should work fine now!

Actually that's kind of a flawed assumption.  There's every reason to think the newest version will use the system's resources more aggressively than the prior version.

I feel for you, I really do.  But I think you're among the minority of folks experiencing poor Photoshop operation, and it doesn't really look like anyone is going to step up and fix the problem for you.  We all have to take some responsibility for integrating things into our systems.

Perhaps your computer just isn't up to the task of running state of the art graphics software.  You could get a powerful new PC workstation I suppose.

-Noel

Yeah, somehow it's my computers fault. I used photoshop until the system went to a crawl. closed all windows from photoshop so there was nothing open and Here's a screen shot of photoshop using over 4GB without a document open...

http://www.paulcampagna.com/photoshop-hogging.jpg

Strange it is asking for that much memory with nothing open, but sure my system is bad...

[paul campagna]

[Noel Carboni]

I already explained that.  Photoshop allocates memory from the system then manages it itself as long as it's open, and will give it back if something else on the system needs it.  I debated this quite hotly with the Adobe folks a year or two ago and was finally convinced that they do know what they're doing with regard to memory management.  It's worked this way since way back.

How much RAM do you have in your system, total?  What have you set the Photoshop limit to in the Performance preferences?

-Noel

[paul campagna]

6GB 3.06GHZ core 2 duo processor. I have 80% allocated to PS

I wouldn't care if it didn't bog down the whole system. I can't use anything until photoshop is done doing what it's doing. I end up restarting the machine for it to get usability back. So photoshop is still using resources even after i'm done with it. (?)

I'm disabbling the auto save, or whatever that is they put in the new version. I change all setting to what others said (i'm sure some of your suggestions were in there as well) but since i have work to do, i have to use cs4, which just pisses me off because I want to use CS6.

I want it to work, but it's fighting me.

[Noel Carboni]

6 GB isn't much by today's standards, and 80% of 6 GB leaves fairly little to the system.  How big are the images you typically work on?

I'd say that if you're working on images of substantial size (e.g., modern digital camera images of 10+ megapixels) and especially if you're using layers or deep data (16 bits/channel) your system will be swapping memory to the disk before long.  This may well be the slowdown you're feeling.  Photoshop accumulates history states for every operation you do, and when it runs out of RAM in which to keep them, it swaps them to its scratch file.  Reducing the History States setting to a small number could help with this.

I don't know what kind of Mac you have, but fairly healthy RAM upgrades aren't too terribly expensive nowadays.  Consider upgrading to 16GB or even better 32GB.

This also takes us to a second issue:  What have you set for Photoshop scratch?  Is it a separate drive, or do you have your Photoshop scratch set to your system drive?  Do you use SSD storage or just spinning disk(s)?  Nowadays spinning disk drives, able to provide up to 100 megabytes/second transfer rates, are no longer even close to state of the art.  As you can imagine, if your system starves for RAM and has to swap some gigabytes to a slow spinning disk you will see it slow down big time.

All this stuff matters when you start to push around gigabytes of data.

-Noel

[paul campagna]

Macbook pro, so 8 is the limit. History is set to 10 and 2 sratch disks with enough memory.

My whole point is I shouldn't have to adjust every setting to get the program to work like it did in the previous version. I can use CS4, but i got CS6 and i shouldn't have to find out how to get it to work properly, buy adjusting settings and adding more memory etc, etc (just to get it to work like the previous version.)

I'm just waiting for the next update and I mess with it when i have time. I'm done for now. I already spenttoo much time on this.

[Noel Carboni]

paul campagna wrote:

Macbook pro
My whole point is I shouldn't have to adjust every setting to get the program to work like it did in the previous version.

You're simply off base in that thinking.  There's no reason to believe a new version of software should be as easy to run as an older one.

I would never suggest someone try to do production work with Photoshop on a laptop.  Laptops are optimized for things other than performance, and I think you're experiencing that.

How old is your machine?  Consider upgrading to the full 8 GB and replacing one or both of your hard drives with big SSDs, and you may be able to get some additional life out of it.

-Noel

[paul campagna]

If i was doing huge files, then yes maybe i would agree with you, but these are not big files that are causing the issue. Photoshop shouldn't have to consume all of my computers resources working with a 500mb or smaller file. I never looked, but what are the minimum requirements? I can gaurantee it's not 8GB of memory or greater than a 3.06GHz core 2 processor.

I have a new macbook pro at home, so i'll try that when i get time, but my machine should have no trouble doing what I am trying to do. This is not a 3-d file, or video file (worthless things in photoshop if you ask me) I can run sketchup and final cut pro fine, so why would photoshop cause me issues with siple 4 layer files?

I will not belive the problem is my machine when I can run other high end programs with little to no problem. Then CS6 comes out and all of a sudden i can't work on files I worked on with CS4 without issues?

Noel, I see you try and help, which i appreciate, but you also try to blame the pesons machine too much. Sure there are always bigger and better machines, but I shouldn't have to upgrade when working on the same types of files that I worked on in the previous version. If it works in CS4, but not CS6, then it's CS6.  I will just continue to do my work in cs4, since that doesn't have the issues cs6 has and be done with it. (until a new update comes out and pray that helps....)

[Noel Carboni]

I wish you the best of luck, Paul.  I suspect an OS update will make your display driver work better at some point and you'll find Photoshop easier to use.

In response to Victoria's comment:  I'm not at Adobe.  I'm just another plain ol' user, helping fellow users.  I don't use a font manager - all my fonts are just installed in Windows 7.  I have a reasonably good 8 core 16 GB desktop machine that I've upgraded to SSD.  It is almost 4 years old now using 2 generations out-of-date Xeon x5460 processors.  I've done specific tests, as I still have Photoshop CS5 installed.  On this system Photoshop CS6 is overall more responsive than CS5.  Painting with brushes is a tiny bit slower, Camera Raw is about 25% slower, but most functions and filters are much faster, and I don't have to wait for saves so it feels far more responsive to use.  And Photoshop CS6 doesn't crash, where Photoshop CS5 did occasionally.  Do you start to see where my point of view comes from here?

I also believe Adobe should work longer to stabilize their software before release - there ARE a couple of serious bugs, and they didn't take any of the public beta feedback into account before releasing the product - but clearly they're being driven by their management to release as quickly as possible to keep the big bucks flowing into the executives' pockets.

-Noel

[vikki_w]

Ok, ok, if we are ALL suffering from PS6 performance issues, and you guys

over at Adobe are not and things are running swimmingly, why don't you guys

tell us what your systems are running? For example, what are you using to

manage your fonts? Etc? It's a daily fact of life that designers have more

than the stock fonts running on thier OS.  If the claim is that Adobe has

"found problems with FontAgent Pro in the past", well, what's the solution

for all of us who have used this font management program for years with no

issues?

I do agree with comments above. I don't care how different the programs are

and how much you can't compare one to the other, CS4 worked really well for

me (both on a Mac desktop and a laptop), and CS6 basically does not. It's

obvious from this thread that it's not just an isolated issue. Perhaps more

testing should have been done on buggier, real-world systems before CS6 was

put out. Too late now for those of us who have given adobe our $$ and are

left with a product that only works in perfect lab conditions, on perfect

machines that are perfectly kitted out to deal with CS6. So

many designers I know work on sometimes years-old laptops hooked up to

desktop monitors. I've never had a problem with previous versions of PS,

and now we're being told that LAPTOPS are the problems with why CS6 isn't

running properly? PLEASE. I think you developed this new graphics engine in

a bit of a bubble and it's allergic to much of the real world.

[JJMack]

The only performance problem I'm having is the bugs keep poping up in CS6 and they happen fast. Many bugs have been reporded to Adobe on their feedback site. Some bug reports are not bugs where other are and easly verified.  Adobe has acknowledge some as bugs made comment on some  and Adobe is even working on some.  They have a heavy load if you look at that site recent problems reports you will see there are 222 pages of these. There are about 20 problem reports per page so 4440 problem reports some percentages of the bug reports are real and some percentage are in Photoshop CS6. There is also the problem being work on thead there are 43 problems being work on some percentage of them  is in Photoshop CS6 I counted one but since some of the orher being work on are for older versions of Photoshop, Photoshop emements and lightroom Adobe might defer those to some future release and maybe fix them in CS6.  IMO Adobe is the only performance problem that needs fixing.

[erickbrian]

You know, for being such high end software, and the company knowing what's it's doing, and PLEASE don't take it the wrong way....I see a lot of defending of Adobe here....

If you pay for the software (or the company does) shouldn't the software just work as intended? If you machine meets the minimum requirements, exceeds it even, I don't see why the software can't adjust itself automatically to perfom at it's peak according to your machines specs.

Does it? I don't even know. I just see a lot of "oh it's your computers fault" or "something you have installed

.

Anyhow, my problems were solved...but now I have a new set of problems in Photoshop! YAY

Selecting a new brush or opening the brush panel sometimes locks up the software, and I have to switch back and forth from one program to another and come back to Adobe.

Same sort of problem in Dreamweaver as well.

1 out of 3 other coworkers are experiencing this problem. Another one is experiencing problems in Illustrator.

Running on Lion, we thought it might be that. Not sure, but these forums aren't helping out at all. Just seems like a lot of complaining and defending and just opinions rather than solutions.

[Noel Carboni]

In principle I agree with you, and on a number of occasions I've been critical of Adobe, on the general principle that it is among the most expensive software.

But what would you tell someone having problems if it was working perfectly for you?  "My setup must be somehow magically avoiding all the latent bugs"?  I like to let people know it can work right, and to keep up the search for the specific problems so it can work right for them too.  That's not defending Adobe.  That's reality.  We all have some responsibility to integrate the software we buy into our computer systems.

Here are some things to mull over...

• It's brand new software, that relies on state of the art features such as GPU acceleration.  It stresses systems arguably more than any other package.
• Display drivers are horrendously complex and they do have bugs.  Sometimes a lot of bugs.
• GPU makers (AMD, nVidia, Intel) all tend to care more about video games than Photoshop.
• Apple evaluates new drivers and rolls them into their new operating system releases.  You only see them after months of testing.

PC users have a bit of an advantage - they get to mix and match system software a lot more freely than Mac users.  So we get the latest new display driver from AMD or we can even roll back to one released a few months ago.  Apple users don't get that luxury, though they're supposed to get better drivers when they are released.  In practice...  Well...

Sure, there are some bugs in Photoshop itself too.  We all await the 13.0.1 update.  But it may be that the update won't fix the problems people are seeing - especially where other people are seeing it work okay.  From having been here helping people literally for years I can tell you that more times than not it turns out something on the specific system is causing the problems, and things like OS updates or display driver updates fix things a lot of times.

-Noel

[Guest]

Just want to say I agree w/ you.  We update automatically to every new CS version, (which I think is ridiculous, but if the co. wants to do it...) -- but I have spent more time wrestling with silly things in CS6 (PS, DW esp., but that's what I use most..)  that it is completely infuriating.  Honestly, if the prior version worked fine, than I see no reason at all why CS6 should be glitchy, slow and even worse -- crash as often as it does.

In my case it seems to be triggered (mostly) by using the Type tool - if it says "Type tool initializing" I nearly have a heart attack because now I know I'm gonna be sitting here for a good amount of time.  I might as well go for a break, but what I feel like doing is breaking the computer - it interrupts my work flow terribly!  Is that what your company is expecting out of its software??? I doubt it!  Another thing sometimes is cropping - excruciatingly slow. 

I did just remove duplicate fonts out of FontBook but ... we shall see.  I don't see why it would be a problem in CS6 when it wasn't in CS5, or CS4 etc. etc..... 

I've been working with computers since 1985 and my pet peeve is software manufacturers who just make things WORSE instead of BETTER.  We need to go backwards toward simpler in functionality and forget all the bells and whistles so the newbies can figure out how to turn on their computers!

[Noel Carboni]

Keltoid, I sympathize with your situation, but you should know it's not like that for everyone.  I know you may be hoping your problems are everyone's problems, but the problems you're seeing are most likely system integration issues having to do with the system you're running the software on and/or the other things on that system.

Probably the best thing you can do is to describe each of the specific issues you're having in new threads.  Chances are someone else has experienced the same problems and will be able to tell you things to do to fix or work around them.

Once you've gotten things working you'll find the new features provided by Photoshop CS6 allow you to do things and go places with your images that you've been unable to do before.

Best of luck.

-Noel