Photoshop freezes at launch, iMac unresponsive & loses Bluetooth connectivity

Hello,

For the past couple of months I have been having severe performance issues with Photoshop.

It freezes at launch, even without opening any files and during that frozen state my iMac loses Bluetooth connectivity to both my mouse and my keyboard. Also, the cursor is showing the loading “beach ball” and all my other opened windows/applications become unresponsive as well. This frozen state lasts anywhere between 5 to 20 minutes. Sometimes it even makes my iMac restart on its own.

This ONLY happens with Photoshop, all the other programs (InDesign, Illustrator and so on) run perfectly with zero issues even with very large files.

I suspect this problem began because of a recent Photoshop update and it carried on to the following updates as well because in the past I have never had any issues running it. My Photoshop is always up to date (currently 2023 version) as well as my iMac (currently running macOS Ventura 13.0).

Below are my iMac specifications, although I am certain that the issue is with Photoshop because, as I mentioned, all the other Adobe CC programs run very smoothly.

Processor: 3,8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5

Graphics: Radeon Pro 580 8 GB

Memory: 24 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

macOS: Ventura 13.0

I need to use Photoshop daily and this issue makes me unable to get any work done. Help is immensely appreciated, this situation is beyond ridiculous.

Things I have already tried:

- uninstalled and reinstalled Photoshop

- reset preferences

- increased memory allocation to 80%