Photoshop Uses Up All Memory, How to Submit a Report?

[mmiummiu]

So as of recently Photoshop has been unusable on my otherwise fairly powerful MSI laptop (12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H 2.70 GHz, 32 GB of RAM, Windows 10 OS). Whenever I open it, everything drastically lags. It doesn't matter what I open, how many files or how large. It just struggles.

As evident from the screenshot below, I'm using the 2022 Photoshop and it seems to produce a lot of processes which I do not understand. I cannot find a way to submit directly a report to Adobe, this is why I'm writing this here.

I also have activated a script that deletes extra data in files at close, as months ago at some point PS started to produce huge files with lots of metadata. I don't know if it matters.

Any suggestions on what to do since support doesn't seem to exist?

[CShubert]

Hi @mmiummiu curious if this solves this for you.

Go to Preferences > Technology Previews... and enable “Older GPU mode (pre 2016)” - Restart Photoshop. Does the problem persist?

It may help if we could see your Photoshop System Info. Launch Photoshop, and select Help >System Info...and copy/paste the text in a reply.  

[mmiummiu]

Hi Cory, 

I don't see an option in Technology Previews called Older GPU mode (pre 2016)”. I just checked and my version of Photoshop is 2022, however it says Adobe Photoshop Version: 23.3.0 20220405.r.394 in System Info. 

[Test Screen Name]

The version number seems correct (and you are indeed using an old version for some reason - no point reporting problems with that, Adobe have moved on).

The year number and version number don't match, but they are by accident very close.

Don't know why you say "support doesn't seem to exist". Did you find the phone unanswered, and chat not responsive, or can't you find support info (it can be hard to find)?

[mmiummiu]

I can't find where to file a support case. Last time I had an issue, I think it was some months ago and Illustrator was closing seconds after opening - back then I was able to chat with support. However, I don't remember how I got in contact with a person. Right now I literally can't find a chat window to file a complaint, or send an email. 

Edit: as for the version, I'm using the older one because I got the impression the newest photoshop is way slower for me, back when I installed it. 

[davescm]

Your screenshot looks puzzling. You say in your post your PC has 32GB of RAM. Yet it shows 97% in use with Photoshop only using 16.2GB. It sounds perfectly reasonable for Photoshop to use 50% of your system RAM when available (in Preferences - Performance it is often set to use up to 70%.

What else is running that is using the other 47%? or if 16GB represents 97% is your PC RAM actually much less than 32GB?

Dave

[D Fosse]

My thoughts exactly. There's no excessive Photoshop memory use here. That's not the problem.

I'd be more concerned with all the processes you have listed under Photoshop. I have absolutely no idea what's going on there. I have exactly one process per open file, and that's it. None of these other cryptic listings.

Do you have a lot of plugins, extensions, background scripts etc.?

[mmiummiu]

I'm attaching an image of what's currently going on. The reason that I didn't attach a larger screenshot of the memory usage is that I most certainly knew what was using up the rest of the memory - about 3GB were used up by Chrome, IIRC. Or maybe by Chrome and Firefox combined. 

Yes I also don't understand why I have 79 percent used up but I know for a fact that I have 32 GB of RAM. Windows' System Information lists Installed Physical Memory (RAM) as 32 GB, but Available Physical Memory as 9 GB. I have no idea what that means. 

[mmiummiu]

I hope you see my previous reply, but I wanted to add the screenshot of the processes here too: 

Basically 80% means around 14 GB of photoshop usage + 3 GB of my two browsers plus some 1-2 GB of whatever else on my otherwise 32 GB machine. I don't get it. 

[Test Screen Name]

It's difficult to interpret memory statistics, partly because they don't distinguish well between real memory (RAM) and virtual memory (RAM expanded by disk). But I think *available* memory is the currently completely unused memory; this should go down to zero in any busy system. The other problem is that video cards (GPU) can use a lot of memory themselves, especially the cheap integrated GPUs. Your screen shots also don't seem to be from all the same time. Please try showing the processes, and the memory details, from Task Manager taken at about the same time.

[D Fosse]

Ah, yes, now we're on to something. Why didn't I think of that, tunnel vision there for a second I suppose.

Integrated graphics (which the i7-12700H has), will eat into system memory. And it can eat up a lot! It doesn't have its own onboard VRAM like a dedicated GPU has. So it uses system memory from a shared pool.

I'm pretty confident (now that I think of it) this is at the root of all your other problems too. For Photoshop, there are two major problems. One, an integrated GPU is really not sufficient to run Photoshop these days. It's just underpowered. You need better.

Two, an integrated GPU tends to conflict with any dedicated additional GPU. Dual GPUs sounds like a splendid idea, and it is for simple applications that just send data in one direction downstream. But Photoshop uses the GPU for data processing, actual computer work, and the result returned to Photoshop for further processing. It goes back and forth. There can only be one GPU in that equation, you can't send data to one and get it back from the other. So often one has to be disabled.

[mmiummiu]

My screenshots were 2 minutes apart, as I was writing my first comment. Obviously I can't post the whole Task Manager, there are too many processes. My GPU is pretty powerful, and now that I read the last comment I'm starting to think that's the issue, alongside the processor which apparently has an integrated GPU somehow.

Edit: this is really annoying, my latest reply hasn't been posted and I managed to copy it, but I can't post another reply at all. So here it is:

--

D Fosse, you may be onto something, by the way I have noticed that PCs nowadays have built in graphics but didn't realize it's in the processor somehow. 

So in Settings > Performance I see the "Use Graphics Processor" ticked in, my GPU is RTX 3080 and should be pretty powerful. 

I do not, however, see any other setting to disable any other graphics card. 

The problem gets severe whenever I open more than say, 2 decently sized files, in this case I opened some phone mockups.

Actually I just saw in Taks Manager, whenever clicking around the mockups, there's a GPU engine section that says GPU 0 - 3D and sometimes GPU 1 - Copy sign appears. Does this mean that when idle, Photoshop is using only the integrated, processor's GPU? 

I'm reading help articles. GPU Compatibility is fine: 

But how can I manage GPU usage if I don't want to use both integrated and secondary GPU?

Should I disable OpenCL and see if it gets better?

I will be also updating Nvidia's drivers as there's probably a newer one. 

-- 

And another reply that I managed to set PS to now only use the secondary GPU and Memory usage is still high, but at least PS is now using only the RTX graphics.