Photoshop issue when using certain tools

[Jordan Barling]

Hi collective,

I've been pulling my hair out the last week with photoshop refusing to work for me on certain tools and I've tried everything I can think of to remedy it.

I'm extremely fortunate that the tools are more graphic design based, so I havent needed to use them in a very long time, so this issue might have been more long-lived than I'm aware of.

In short, whenever I use any of the shape tools (Rectangle, Line, Triangle etc) or the frame tool, photoshop hangs up on me in the middle of creating them, and although TECHNICALLY does make the shape desired, I get the spinny wheel of death forever until I remove it again. Photoshop isnt crashing completely, or totally frozen, just extremely lagged to the point of being unuseable.

Screenshot to demonstrate the frozen state, first prior to any issues, and then once hung up:

I can see that resource usage increases, but far from the maximum possible for the system.

My system rundown really quick.

- MSI z790 A Max Wifi motherboard - most recent BIOS version

- i7 14700k - mild undervolt to reduce heat production, AIO cooling

- Geforce 4070 ti (not super)

- 64gb DDR5 ram

- 2 x 1TB M.2 Drives for storage, one with windows and programs, the other with photo/video files for editing.

- Windows 11, most updated version

- Photoshop 26.5

- MSI MPG321CURX Monitor (4k 240hz) 10 bit colour

Things I have tried so far:

- Disable GPU acceleration (including disabling different individual GPU settings within performance menu) No improvement, which leads me to think this is a CPU related issue

- Increase available ram for photoshop to 75% of system ram (which has never come close to actually using)

- Increase cache settings

- Changed settings for remove tool etc to stable (from faster)

- Reset photoshop preferences

- Installed older version of photoshop (26.0)

- Uninstall/Reinstall photoshop via creative cloud

- Reinstall windows

- Reduce undervolt in BIOS

- Disable GPU OC through Afterburner

- Force photoshop to use Dedicated GPU

- Disabled G-Sync for photoshop specifically

- Uninstalled photoshop with creative cloud cleaner tool and reinstalled

- Disabled HAGS

- Updated all drivers I can think of

- Reinstalled up to date graphics drivers

- Opened photoshop both directly AND via Lightroom

None of these has had even the tiniest impact on this matter. I am out of ideas and I need some extra brainpower from you guys here. All I can think of might have an impact for some unknown reason is that my monitor might be causing issues, as I bought this only a few months back, but don't foresee how that would be likely, no issues otherwise.

Tools I use regularly like remove tool, stamp, adjustment layers, brushes (both regular and mixer), crop tool, dont seem to have any issues. Once I used content aware fill and there was a little glitching of the brush when adjusting the affected area for drawing information for the fill - but unsure if related.

Anyone seen this before, have any ideas? Will be extremely grateful if you can suggest anything that helps me get to the bottom of it.

[Aleke]

Hi @Jordan Barling! I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble with Photoshop. Could you please share your System Info as it appears in the app? You can find it under Help > System Info. Just copy the info to a text file and attach it to your response, or share it with us through Google Drive, WeTransfer, or another file-sharing platform.

Thanks a bunch! 😊

Alek

[Jordan Barling]

Hi Alek,

Thankyou so much for looking into this, I've had no success in changing the situation since.

System info attached.

Additional things I've tried:

• Changing the monitor resolution to 1080p
• Changing the refresh rate from 240hz to 180hz and 120hz

No changes with either of these.

I've noticed that the initial lag is quite significant, whilst generating a layer for the shape being made, but once it is made, the system seems to free up a little, and is MOSTLY responsive until trying to resize or move the shape again. These futher changes or amendments lag about just as bad, BUT they don't last for anywhere near as long (if that makes any difference in diagnosing).
Additionally, once the initial lag is freed up, selecting a different layer again seems to make the lag/issue go away completely, right up until you select the shape once again.

Kind regards,

Jordan

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Just to make sure: Did you restart Photoshop after disabling GPU usage? 

[Jordan Barling]

Sure did, have restarted photoshop between pretty much every change made - and restarted the entire PC the vast majority of those times too for good measure.

Times like this I'm grateful I have a beefy PC, I'd hate to think the cumulative time lost to restarts otherwise! 😄 

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Could you please post screenshots with the pertinent Panels (Toolbar, Layers, Properties, Options Bar, …) visible? 

Does setting the Tool to »Pixels« instead of »Shape« make a difference? 

[Jordan Barling]

Screenshot below as requested.

After checking, changing the tool to both pixels and path mode produce absolutely no issues. It appears to only be when set to shape mode that this issue presents itself.

Anything that I can check/change related to this?

[Anshul_Saini]

Hey Jordan, I appreciate the detailed breakdown. That’s a seriously beefy setup you’ve got! Since the issue only shows up in Shape mode (not Pixel or Path) could be tied to how Photoshop handles vector rendering on your system. Could you please share a screen recording showing the issue in action (both Shape and Pixel mode)? That’ll help us flag it to the product team. Also, a quick screenshot of your Preferences > Performance panel would be great to review!

Best,

Anshul Saini

[c.pfaffenbichler]

After checking, changing the tool to both pixels and path mode produce absolutely no issues. 

Does the issue re-manifest if you use »Path« to create a Path and then create a Shape Layer via Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color? 

[Trevor.Dennis]

Does your Resource Monitor screen shot show system activity while the spinning wheel is on screen?

That looks like reasonably high CPU usage.  Does it settle down when the spinning wheel stops?

Your screen shot of the entire workspace (they are usually very helpful) suggests that the documewnt is not huge, but you have several layers and a bunch of text, so take a look at your primary Scratch drive to see how big the Photoshop Temp files are?  I doubt this is causing your crashes as RM does not show a lot of drive activity.

You have tried resetting Preferences.  Did you do that manually? Give that a try if not.

https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/photoshop/using/preferences.html#Manually

Do you have the Beta version installed?  It would be useful to test on a separate installation.  

You obviously need to pay most attention to @Aleke and @Anshul_Saini and hope that the rest of us are not muddying the waters.