Photoshop files take twice as long to open on an Apple Studio M1 Max compared to Mac Book Air M2

[SwearingDad]

I am running Photoshop 24.6 on MacOS Ventura 13.4.1 on an Apple Studio M1 Max 32GB RAM with 2TB SSD and on an Apple MacBook Air M2 16GB RAM with 512GB SSD.

Photoshop has 70% RAM assigned to it on both machines and has identical preferences.

When I open a Photoshop file, it literally takes over twice as long to open on the Studio as it does on the MacBook Air. It does not matter if the file is on the internal SSD on each computer, or if it is on an external SSD, 

Does anytone know why this shoudl be?

BlackMagic speed test shows SSD read speeds as follows:

MacStudio Internal SSD: 5344 MBs

MacStudio External SSD Drive A: 997 MBs

MacStudio External SSD Drive B: 630 MBs

MacBook Air Internal SSD: 2934 MBs

MacBook Air External SSD Drive A: 727 MBs

The open times are pretty much indentical on all the MacStudio drives. Same for the MacBook Air, except the laptop is twice as quick.

Anybody got any insights on how my £££ MacStudio is being outpaced by the compartively underpowered £ MacBook Air?

Thanks!

[Earth Oliver]

maybe add a few details about the file you're testing with? Psd? Tiff? 8 bit? 16 bit? File size? etc.

[SwearingDad]

Hello - to be clear this happens with all files. PSD. TIF. Etc.

I work mainly with 8 bit PSD files. The one I used for the measured speed test is a 386MB PSD with multiple layers. 

However there is a noticable lag whenever I open any file. And I find it surprising a MacBook Air M2 is faster than the Studio M1 Max which has twice as much memory and a faster SSD.

FYI the Studio had a 100% clean installl last year, so Photoshop has pretty clean preferences etc, and is not running in Rosetta. The MacBook Air used a time machine backup install from the Studio so should be almost identical.

[Earth Oliver]

I'd start with wiping the Ps prefs on both machines and go from there. And a 386MB file should open almost instantly on both machines, so i don't even understand how one could be 2x slower. Are there active fonts in the file?
But if you're experiencing general lag with the M1, then something else is probably going on.

[SwearingDad]

Hi. I have tried deleting the preferences and resetting them etc. This made no difference. And I repeat, the slow-to-open issue happens with pretty much all my Photoshop files. However many do contain text and so use fonts. So I will do a little experimenting along those lines and report back in due course. However as I said, the M2 laptop is twice as fast as the M1 Max Studio, opening the same files, and both have the same system etc so it still seems strange the laptop is faster than the Studio to open PSD files.

[SwearingDad · Accepted solution]

Hello - it was a font issue 🙂

Specifically FontExplorer was causing ths issue. The programme had reach end of life' so I have replaced with Typeface (which is also Apple Silicon native) and performance when opening files in Photoshop is so much better. Thanks for poiting me int he right direction.