Photoshop CS6—many problems. Slow.

Report · Jun 20, 2012

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.

Report · Mar 26, 2013

First, go download and install the updates.

Then check for external causes.

Report · May 07, 2013

Oh-kay. I almost feel bad for jumping on the wagon here, but the opportunity to have this possibly addressed by Senior Engineers from Adobe was too good to pass

I'm looking to move to Photoshop CC, and had been wanting to check out Cs6 for starters. Currently, we do all our web design in Photoshop Cs5 Extended. To give Cs6 a fair shot, I swapped out the 7.2k Sata HDD for a brand new 120gb Sandisk Extreme SSD. I have a fresh Windows 7 Professional (64 bit) install, with pretty much nothing but Photoshop and Illustrator Cs6 trials installed. While I absolutely love the new features, the dark UI (finally!) and other updates, it's near impossible for me to work on my PSDs anymore because of the lag in moving layers/nudging with the keyboard. The lag is an almost two second delay in the object actually moving to where the mouse pointer is. The lag is equally obvious while panning the document up and down, and zooming in and out. Editting text/adding new text is laggy. Editting shapes is a minor lag deal though. There is no lag interacting with the Photoshop UI/panels, however. And many times the Cs6 will simply crash on load. Or upon opening any document. Both the 32/64bit versions.

I have been reading through the forums on here and blogs out there about the things people have been doing to try and fix it. Here's what I've tried out so far (without luck):

- Layer panel previews are off.

- Switched GPU Processing On/Off. Toggled between Basic, Normal and Advanced modes. Turned Vertical Sync off.

- History States down to 10.

- Disabled Autosaving of documents.

- Image Previews set to 'Never Save'

- Swapped scratch disk to non-booting partition. Assigned both partitions to Scratch disks. Reversed orders.

- Switched to lower allowance of Ram usage for photoshop (40%). Tried moving up to 70%

- Downloaded the FontScript jsx listed in one of the threads on here and ran it. It went through all 900 fonts I had installed back then and said it was all Okay.

- Deleted all installed fonts (as many as Win7 would let me, barring the system fonts) and overwrote the folder with Win7 default fonts I found on this helpful gentlemen's blog http://www.withsteps.com/404/how-i-restored-my-windows-7-default-fonts.html

- Ctrl-shift-alt while loading Photoshop CS6 to reset preferences. Multiple times.

- Updated Cs6. It got the update that a lot of people on these forums said fixed it for them. No luck.

- Checked to ensure Adobe Service Manager (?) was being run at Windows startup

- Disabled my antivirus.

- Been trying with no other applications running alongside, all this while. Except an Adobe AIR based twitter app.

- Updated my nVidia drivers to the absolute latest from their website. I have an NVidia 1.5GB GTX 460M.

- Downloaded and ran benchmark tools on my new SSD. Results are at par with a SATA3 SSD running on SATA2 mode. (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BJn0TmfCQAA1FH7.png:large)

- Turned down tile size to 128k.

- Got a large Dell Diagnostics util (Alien Autopsy, as they like to call it) to run extensive diagnostics on physical memory, hard drive stress among other things.

- Got Win7/Performance Monitor running to monitor peaks in Memory/CPU Usage. Nothing out of the ordinary. Physical Memory usage as per task manager: 4.3GB to 4.7GB

I'm on an Alienware M15x. 1.7Ghz i7 processor on an Intel P55 chipset.

1.5GB Nvidia GeForce GTX460m

8GB Ram.

120GB SSD

Desktop is at 1600x900

Windows7 WEI scores for my system right now:

Processor - 7.1/7.9

RAM - 7.4/7/9

Graphics - 6.9/7.9

Primary Hard Disk - 7.7/7.9

My last PSD was 1600x8400px sRGB. FileSize: 45mb. 72DPI. Around 200 layers, if all Layer groups were expanded. The same PSD worked just fine with Cs5 on the same laptop, even with a lower thorough-put Sata 7.2k rpm drive.

So, what else can I do to fix this?

Here's a quick System Info grab from Cs6:

Adobe Photoshop Version: 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00) x32

Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit

Version: 6.1 Service Pack 1

System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:14, Stepping:5 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, HyperThreading

Physical processor count: 4

Logical processor count: 8

Processor speed: 1729 MHz

Built-in memory: 8181 MB

Free memory: 3322 MB

Memory available to Photoshop: 3255 MB

Memory used by Photoshop: 60 %

Image tile size: 1024K

Image cache levels: 4

OpenGL Drawing: Disabled.

OpenGL Drawing Mode: Advanced

OpenGL Allow Normal Mode: True.

OpenGL Allow Advanced Mode: True.

OpenGL Allow Old GPUs: Not Detected.

Video Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation

Video Card Renderer: GeForce GTX 460M/PCIe/SSE2

Display: 1

Display Bounds:= top: 0, left: 0, bottom: 900, right: 1600

Video Card Number: 1

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M

OpenCL Unavailable

Driver Version: 9.18.13.1422

Driver Date: 20130314000000.000000-000

Video Card Driver: nvd3dumx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um

Video Mode: 1600 x 900 x 4294967296 colors

Video Card Caption: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M

Video Card Memory: 1536 MB

Video Rect Texture Size: 16384

Serial number: Tryout Version

Application folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6\

Temporary file path: C:\Users\sawrb\AppData\Local\Temp\

Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled

Scratch volume(s):

D:\, 48.8G, 20.1G free

C:\, 62.9G, 15.3G free

Required Plug-ins folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6\Required\

Primary Plug-ins folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6\Plug-ins\

Additional Plug-ins folder: not set

Installed components:

A3DLIBS.dll A3DLIB Dynamic Link Library 9.2.0.112

ACE.dll ACE 2012/06/05-15:16:32 66.507768 66.507768

adbeape.dll Adobe APE 2012/01/25-10:04:55 66.1025012 66.1025012

AdobeLinguistic.dll Adobe Linguisitc Library 6.0.0

AdobeOwl.dll Adobe Owl 2012/06/26-12:17:19 4.0.95 66.510504

AdobePDFL.dll PDFL 2011/12/12-16:12:37 66.419471 66.419471

AdobePIP.dll Adobe Product Improvement Program 6.0.0.1654

AdobeXMP.dll Adobe XMP Core 2012/02/06-14:56:27 66.145661 66.145661

AdobeXMPFiles.dll Adobe XMP Files 2012/02/06-14:56:27 66.145661 66.145661

AdobeXMPScript.dll Adobe XMP Script 2012/02/06-14:56:27 66.145661 66.145661

adobe_caps.dll Adobe CAPS 6,0,29,0

AGM.dll AGM 2012/06/05-15:16:32 66.507768 66.507768

ahclient.dll AdobeHelp Dynamic Link Library 1,7,0,56

aif_core.dll AIF 3.0 62.490293

aif_ocl.dll AIF 3.0 62.490293

aif_ogl.dll AIF 3.0 62.490293

amtlib.dll AMTLib 6.0.0.75 (BuildVersion: 6.0; BuildDate: Mon Jan 16 2012 18:00:00) 1.000000

ARE.dll ARE 2012/06/05-15:16:32 66.507768 66.507768

AXE8SharedExpat.dll AXE8SharedExpat 2011/12/16-15:10:49 66.26830 66.26830

AXEDOMCore.dll AXEDOMCore 2011/12/16-15:10:49 66.26830 66.26830

Bib.dll BIB 2012/06/05-15:16:32 66.507768 66.507768

BIBUtils.dll BIBUtils 2012/06/05-15:16:32 66.507768 66.507768

boost_date_time.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

boost_signals.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

boost_system.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

boost_threads.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

cg.dll NVIDIA Cg Runtime 3.0.00007

cgGL.dll NVIDIA Cg Runtime 3.0.00007

CIT.dll Adobe CIT 2.0.5.19287 2.0.5.19287

CoolType.dll CoolType 2012/06/05-15:16:32 66.507768 66.507768

data_flow.dll AIF 3.0 62.490293

dvaaudiodevice.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

dvacore.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

dvamarshal.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

dvamediatypes.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

dvaplayer.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

dvatransport.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

dvaunittesting.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

dynamiclink.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

ExtendScript.dll ExtendScript 2011/12/14-15:08:46 66.490082 66.490082

FileInfo.dll Adobe XMP FileInfo 2012/01/17-15:11:19 66.145433 66.145433

filter_graph.dll AIF 3.0 62.490293

hydra_filters.dll AIF 3.0 62.490293

icucnv40.dll International Components for Unicode 2011/11/15-16:30:22 Build gtlib_3.0.16615

icudt40.dll International Components for Unicode 2011/11/15-16:30:22 Build gtlib_3.0.16615

image_compiler.dll AIF 3.0 62.490293

image_flow.dll AIF 3.0 62.490293

image_runtime.dll AIF 3.0 62.490293

JP2KLib.dll JP2KLib 2011/12/12-16:12:37 66.236923 66.236923

libeay32.dll The OpenSSL Toolkit 0.9.8g

libifcoremd.dll Intel(r) Visual Fortran Compiler 10.0 (Update A)

libmmd.dll Intel(r) C Compiler, Intel(r) C++ Compiler, Intel(r) Fortran Compiler 10.0

LogSession.dll LogSession 2.1.2.1640

mediacoreif.dll DVA Product 6.0.0

MPS.dll MPS 2012/02/03-10:33:13 66.495174 66.495174

msvcm80.dll Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 8.00.50727.6195

msvcm90.dll Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 9.00.30729.1

msvcp100.dll Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 10.00.40219.1

msvcp71.dll Microsoft® Visual Studio .NET 7.10.3077.0

msvcp80.dll Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 8.00.50727.6195

msvcp90.dll Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 9.00.30729.1

msvcr100.dll Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 10.00.40219.1

msvcr71.dll Microsoft® Visual Studio .NET 7.10.3052.4

msvcr80.dll Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 8.00.50727.6195

msvcr90.dll Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 9.00.30729.1

pdfsettings.dll Adobe PDFSettings 1.04

Photoshop.dll Adobe Photoshop CS6 CS6

Plugin.dll Adobe Photoshop CS6 CS6

PlugPlug.dll Adobe(R) CSXS PlugPlug Standard Dll (32 bit) 3.0.0.383

PSArt.dll Adobe Photoshop CS6 CS6

PSViews.dll Adobe Photoshop CS6 CS6

SCCore.dll ScCore 2011/12/14-15:08:46 66.490082 66.490082

ScriptUIFlex.dll ScriptUIFlex 2011/12/14-15:08:46 66.490082 66.490082

shfolder.dll Microsoft(R) Windows (R) 2000 Operating System 5.50.4027.300

ssleay32.dll The OpenSSL Toolkit 0.9.8g

tbb.dll Intel(R) Threading Building Blocks for Windows 3, 0, 2010, 0406

tbbmalloc.dll Intel(R) Threading Building Blocks for Windows 3, 0, 2010, 0406

TfFontMgr.dll FontMgr 9.3.0.113

TfKernel.dll Kernel 9.3.0.113

TFKGEOM.dll Kernel Geom 9.3.0.113

TFUGEOM.dll Adobe, UGeom© 9.3.0.113

updaternotifications.dll Adobe Updater Notifications Library 6.0.0.24 (BuildVersion: 1.0; BuildDate: BUILDDATETIME) 6.0.0.24

WRServices.dll WRServices Friday January 27 2012 13:22:12 Build 0.17112 0.17112

wu3d.dll U3D Writer 9.3.0.113

Required plug-ins:

3D Studio 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Accented Edges 13.0

Adaptive Wide Angle 13.0

ADM 3.11x01

Angled Strokes 13.0

Average 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Bas Relief 13.0

BMP 13.0

Camera Raw 7.4

Chalk & Charcoal 13.0

Charcoal 13.0

Chrome 13.0

Cineon 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Clouds 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Collada 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Color Halftone 13.0

Colored Pencil 13.0

CompuServe GIF 13.0

Conté Crayon 13.0

Craquelure 13.0

Crop and Straighten Photos 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Crop and Straighten Photos Filter 13.0

Crosshatch 13.0

Crystallize 13.0

Cutout 13.0

Dark Strokes 13.0

De-Interlace 13.0

Dicom 13.0

Difference Clouds 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Diffuse Glow 13.0

Displace 13.0

Dry Brush 13.0

Eazel Acquire 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Embed Watermark 4.0

Entropy 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Extrude 13.0

FastCore Routines 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Fibers 13.0

Film Grain 13.0

Filter Gallery 13.0

Flash 3D 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Fresco 13.0

Glass 13.0

Glowing Edges 13.0

Google Earth 4 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Grain 13.0

Graphic Pen 13.0

Halftone Pattern 13.0

HDRMergeUI 13.0

IFF Format 13.0

Ink Outlines 13.0

JPEG 2000 13.0

Kurtosis 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Lens Blur 13.0

Lens Correction 13.0

Lens Flare 13.0

Liquify 13.0

Matlab Operation 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Maximum 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Mean 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Measurement Core 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Median 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Mezzotint 13.0

Minimum 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

MMXCore Routines 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Mosaic Tiles 13.0

Multiprocessor Support 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Neon Glow 13.0

Note Paper 13.0

NTSC Colors 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Ocean Ripple 13.0

Oil Paint 13.0

OpenEXR 13.0

Paint Daubs 13.0

Palette Knife 13.0

Patchwork 13.0

Paths to Illustrator 13.0

PCX 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Photocopy 13.0

Photoshop 3D Engine 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Picture Package Filter 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Pinch 13.0

Pixar 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Plaster 13.0

Plastic Wrap 13.0

PNG 13.0

Pointillize 13.0

Polar Coordinates 13.0

Portable Bit Map 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Poster Edges 13.0

Radial Blur 13.0

Radiance 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Range 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Read Watermark 4.0

Reticulation 13.0

Ripple 13.0

Rough Pastels 13.0

Save for Web 13.0

ScriptingSupport 13.0.1

Shear 13.0

Skewness 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Smart Blur 13.0

Smudge Stick 13.0

Solarize 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Spatter 13.0

Spherize 13.0

Sponge 13.0

Sprayed Strokes 13.0

Stained Glass 13.0

Stamp 13.0

Standard Deviation 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Sumi-e 13.0

Summation 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Targa 13.0

Texturizer 13.0

Tiles 13.0

Torn Edges 13.0

Twirl 13.0

U3D 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Underpainting 13.0

Vanishing Point 13.0

Variance 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Variations 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Water Paper 13.0

Watercolor 13.0

Wave 13.0

Wavefront|OBJ 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

WIA Support 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

Wind 13.0

Wireless Bitmap 13.0.1 (13.0.1 20120808.r.519 2012/08/08:21:00:00)

ZigZag 13.0

Optional and third party plug-ins: NONE

Plug-ins that failed to load: NONE

Flash: NONE

Installed TWAIN devices: NONE

Report · May 07, 2013

Turn off "snap to layer", set the layer thumbnails to "document bounds" instead of layer bounds, and delete unnecessary layer comps (too many comps causes slowdowns, and I haven't had time to fix that one yet).

Report · May 08, 2013

Yea, I turned those off too. No luck. Does this sound like a Video Card/driver issue, or a Hard Drive throughput issue?

Report · May 08, 2013

Without a lot more details - it could be anything.

But those steps solve every issue we've seen so far.

If you have a document that is especially slow, send it to me (ccox /at\ adobe [dot] com) and I'll take a look and see if we can reproduce the problem.

Photoshop CS6—many problems. Slow.

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