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Known Participant
March 27, 2022
Question

Photoshop freezing/crashing mac Big Sur

  • March 27, 2022
  • 5 replies
  • 552 views

Hi everyone.

First of all I want to say I'm usually pretty good at troubleshooting commputer issues, but this one is driving me nuts.

I own a macbook pro late 2013 with updated PS and Big Sur versions. and I've been using photoshop well over 5 years. I use it for photo editing.

It only started, maybe a month or so, randomly freezing/crashing. It only happens when photoshop is running, so I'm guessing that would be the issue as no other time my computer will be affected. 

 

What does exactly happen? After only a few minutes (no more than 5) of PS running, either one of two things will happen: The computer unexpectedly shutting down or the system freezing and staying frozen for about 10 seconds before having the fans going full speed and right after just shutting down. 

I don't know how to get a log report as it seems PS is not registering as having crashed. 

At first I thought my battery was causing the issue as it was in pretty bad shape, so I replaced it, but nothing changed. 

I downgraded PS to the 22.X versions but still having the same issue. 
I only use one plugin (Beauty Retouch) and have been using it for a long time without and issues. 

I really need help as I cannot even work on my images anymore and I'm losing clients. 

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

Known Participant
March 27, 2022

the problem persists after restting the settings.

 

Installing a previous versios did not worl either.

 

Ged_Traynor
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 27, 2022

Resetting the preferences restores Photoshop to it's default state, sometimes the Photoshop preferences file can become corrupt, I don't experience any issues running Photoshop but I'm on Windows, there are bugs in Photoshop but nothing that affects my work flow.

Known Participant
March 27, 2022

So I did the settings reset, didn't work. 

I opened an image and left PS open. I was away from my computer but looking at the screen (I was on the phone) and roughly 2 minutes after I opeened PS, the computer shut down.

I turned on the mac, did not get any crash/log/incident/report message. It is as if the shut down properly. 

Note: If I am not using PS, my mac can stay on without problems.

If I have PS open without any file open, I does not crash (I left the laptop overnight with LR and PS open just to check). 

I have GPU disabled under preferences to rule out GPU issues. gfxCardStatus does not seem to disable dedicated graphics (as it jumps back to default option) so I can't manually disbale my GPU. 


Known Participant
March 27, 2022

I haven't modified my settings in a long time so I'm not sure how that will help, however I will try it out! Thank you for the suggestion.

Ged_Traynor
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 27, 2022

Hi

First thing to try when Photoshop misbehaves is to reset the preferences

If that doesn't help try using the Adobe Cleaner Tool