Photoshop slow when working with smart objects

[bsnebold]

Yesterday I was working with a file that contained several smart objects on my 2017 MacBook Pro (16gb). I noticed that doing simple things like press cmd-plus or minus to zoom in or out, using the grab tool to pan around, and click visibility of layers on or off would be met with a delay of a second or two. If I switched to a tab with a file that had very few or no smart objects (about the same size or larger) the delay would disappear. I assumed that the problem was with some settings, so I messed with some performance settings and I thought it helped for a while, but then the problem came back.

Today, I am experiencing similar delay issues while working with a similar file on my 2012 Mac Pro (64 gb). Has anyone else experienced this issue? Is this a bug in the latest update?

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

It seems that this is a file issue not the software if you aren't experiencing it across the board.

What are the file specifics? Size (MB/GB), Image size, layers, etc.

[josephlavine]

This sounds like a file size issue and not software. Smart Objects are great, but often people forget that Smart objects can be large as they retain the original file information. This, even though someone crops their image expecting it to be small, all the original information is still there.

[nikunj.m]

Hi there,

We apologize for the performance issues you are facing while working with smart objects in Photoshop.

Would you mind sharing the version of Photoshop you are currently using by going to the Help menu > System info? Also, approximately how many smart objects do you have in the document?

You can try to optimize the preferences of Photoshop using the steps mentioned in the link below.

https://helpx.adobe.com/in/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html

If optimizing the preferences does not help, you can also try to reset the preferences using the steps in the link below.

https://helpx.adobe.com/in/photoshop/using/preferences.html

Regards,

Nikunj

[mark@headTrix]

There are so many variables involved in this. 
You mentioned having multiple documents open, and you could also have multiple applications open, you might not have the recommended 8GB of RAM, you might not have much hard disk space, your computer is old so might be running slowly, and the smart objects could be huge bitmaps, and smart objects retain the actual file size so the files could be really large. Lots of different factors here.

[bsnebold]

Mark, as I mentioned, this is happening on two completely different computers. One is a fairly new MacBook Pro with 16GB of ram and a good sized ssd drive with plenty of space on it. The other is an older Mac Pro, but it's got 64 GB ram. These files are not huge files. And I don't have a lot of other apps open.

The other tab I have open has a few small smart objects in it, but mostly is raster and text. The slowdown only happen when working with the one file, and not the other.

[mark@headTrix]

I see. A little odd for sure. Maybe you can try duplicating the file, doing a save as, and then start removing some of the layers to see if it fixes it. Or create a new file and drag the smart object in, one at a time to see if it is causing the issue. Then you can also double-click your smart objects to open them and see what is inside of those files. Maybe delete anything you don't need or even flatten the smart object layers if you feel confident it won't change. This file would be a duplicate anyway, just in case.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Can you send the file specifics? It may appear that the file is small, but if you have a large smart object embedded inside, it can bloat easily.

[matarua]

Hey there, yes something is up with the more recent versions of Photoshop CC, or you are hitting the roof of the capabilities. What has happened to me with recent updates and was previously not a problem, is a file that has around 70 layers in it of 60px icons for a website that I use to drop in and colour etc, has been fine fine fine adding to it and it has grown over time then adding in one layer now and Photoshop just grinds to a complete halt, it's only using 10% CPU, has 30+ GB of Ram available, is using a GTX1060 + 8700K i7 3.70GHz machine, it's fast and does most everything instantly - NVME scratch disk and lots of ram applied to it too. Windows obviously - but I feel I have reached the cap of the ability of Photoshop to handle smart objects at around the 60 mark, not all layers are smart objects, I have had to break the one file up to three groups of 25 layers now so I can work on it. Even the mouse skips and jumps when I am going over the page, but I can swap out to any other app and it's working fine, ram usage is 2GB and CPU no more than 10 at peak, go back to photoshop and nothing changes but the computer just seems to lag like it's maxed out in every respect. Mouse lags, stops, clicks take a minute to register, then happen all at once etc. It's horrendous. So I would say we both have pushed things beyond Photoshops capabilities. It needs to be fixed.

[GC Dave]

I experience similar issues as well, I use a machine with 32GB of RAM, Separate drives for temp files and project files, SSD and non SSD don't seem to change anything, Large and small files alike.  The only thing I seem to be able to do to stop it from stalling out on a regular basis, is forcing it to open a small file of any kind, suddenly the transform or whatever I'm trying to do happens almost instantly and then it goes to the other file. This began with CC2019 and I did not have the problem with CC2018 or CC2017 but I can no longer install those versions.

As a result now, I just have to keep opening a super small photoshop file every time it starts lagging out (which is very often).  I'm so glad I finally found someone else having this issue, it's been driving me nuts. forcing a file to open however, somehow makes it all happen magically when if I don't open the file, it can take several minutes sometimes to finish whatever is happening.

[KbyMew]

You could try linking the larger images instead of embedding. I'm not sure how that would work if they're smart objects you created within the file or separate images. Though, it really helped me. It would cause an issue should you move the linked files of course.