PS CS6 Extremely slow and sluggish. Brush tool delay.

[ForeKeith]

Hello everyone.

I own a copy of Photoshop CS6.

Switching from Photoshop CS to CS6, I have found this version to be extremely slow and I can not find a reason why it is like this. It is impossible for me to work on it.

Problem: Slow performance, when using the brush tool there is a long delay - lag. The brush takes more than 8 seconds to catch up with my strokes.

Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS6 x64
OS:	Windows 7 x64 SP1
CPU:	AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE
GPU:	Radeon 6790 OC @ 920Mhz
RAM:	A-Data DDR3 1333Mhz CAS9 4GB (x2)
SSD:	A-Data 510 128GB SATA3
HDD:	Samsung SATA 1TB

Tried:

- Memory usage allowed upgraded to 6GB, nothing changed.

- Default selected "Scratch Disk" is the main SSD which has over 58GB of free space, I've tried selecting the secondary HDD as well but nothing changes.

- Disabled the "Use Graphic  Processor" square. nothing changed.

- Disabled the "Use open CL" square in advanced Graphic Processor Settings. Nothing changed.

- Changed power management settings in windows to "High Performance". nothing changed.

- Disabling tablet pc service doesn't help.

Notes:

- Graphic drivers are the latest release on AMD website

- Windows is completely updated

- SSD Firmware is the latest available.

- The issue happens both with mouse and tablet.

- 1px brush and 5000px brush lag just alike in zoomed and not zoomed canvas.

- This happens on both x64 and x86 versions of the software.

Any help is aprecihated.

Thank you in advance.

[PECourtejoie]

Evan, in Post 49, an Adobe Engineer working on Photoshop tells you " I believe using multiple video cards is not supported by Photoshop because of the problems it causes. "

another user of the forum quoted another engineer in saying that "Cuda is not used in Photoshop's mercury graphics engine" OpenGL is, as OpenCL, but only in one group of filters for the latter.

[PECourtejoie]

I'm sorry, I understand that you are trying to have a machine tuned for Ps, Pr and Ae, but the info posted in this very thread prior to your post go against what you ask...

[john worthington]

Evan, It is currently my understanding that Photoshop has troubles with multiple GPU card drawing contexts. This is on our list of issues to look into but we have limited engineering time and we try to find features/improvements that will improve workflows for a broad range of customers and most Photoshop users run with a single GPU card.

[Zaise]

I also experience this problem since installing PS CS6 on a fresh installation of Windows 7 on an SSD (Samsung 830 128GB). The brush often lags behind, making the brush tracking inaccurate and slowing me down a lot. It also happens with no plugins or software running in the background as far as I can tell, and antivirus disabled. RAM is not full and lowering the GPU settings or trying other drivers (GPU Radeon 6870 1GB, trying Catalyst 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 12.6 beta) didn't help. Working with GPU disabled isn't feasible, but I'm not even sure if that got rid of it. Barring that due to lack of testing, I haven't been able to find a state where it doesn't happen at some point, nor a state where I can accurately produce the problem other than by simply working. Task manager shows PS at 50-52% CPU usage when it happens (dualcore E8400 @3.9Ghz), though there is nothing to calculate. There are periods where it runs smoothly, and it didn't happen in with my old system which was different only in that I didn't have an SSD and the CS6 Suite yet, using the PS CS6 beta on my old HDD with windows 7, and having 4GB instead of 8GB RAM, that being the only thing slowing down my work.

I hope you will look into this further. From my perspective it looks like a bug in your software, since this and similar problems seem to be occuring on very different systems, and on systems that did not have this problem before. I don't want to have to revert back to older versions of PS or to using a HDD as the system drive.

Some more detail. I do digital painting on an Intuos 3 with new drivers, using touch strips to resize brushes and zoom, buttons to switch tools, and keyboard shortcuts often as well. My current document is Lab color, 16 bit, maybe around 50 layers including adjustment layers, around 6000*4200px, 920mb on disk. When the problem occurs, it happens even with the smallest and simplest brushes, and also affects things like opening menus; a general CPU overload (constrained to one core/Photoshop?) describes it best.

[Guest]

Yes i believe that 1 sec is pretty normal so that's fine but the brush* still feels so laggy when using it.

you can almost see every brush point is creates.

[Guest]

there is no black pixel outline, i dont get the second one? It's not the cursor not following the mouse, it's the cursor that feels laggy when using brush but not when using liquify, actually its the opposite, when using liquify tool then it moves laggy and response strange but when starting to hold down the leftclick button then it goes back to normal and no lag until i let go of the mouse again. I dont know if you understand, it's kind of hard to describe.

[ForeKeith]

Curt Y wrote:

Here is a note from the person with the GT240.

According to NVIDIA Tech Support,on Adobe's website it tells what cards are compatible. Tech said GT240 was not and that Adobe lists the GT470 as the minimum.

Seriously? Thats funny

Although there is only GTX 470, no GT version was ever released.

I would try asking AMD about this stuff but I don't believe HD6790 is not compatible because, as I said, it has the same processor HD6850 and HD6870 have, and slower cards work perfectly...

This is confusing.

[darkdzire]

I have the same problem. My computer is running on a i7 Processor, EVGA GTX560 1G, and Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM. Anything with strokes lags and I use the brush and clone tool the most. Why does this happen? It seems like with these specs, shouldn't CS6 Extended run perfectly fine?

[Guest]

Okay I found this thread after contacting Nvidia and running through everything with them.

My specs are

Windows 7 x64

Intell i7

Nvidia Quadro 4000

8Gb RAM

*Photoshop up to date

*Latest Quadro driver

*Latest wacom driver

*Dynamic feedback from windows 7 disabled (necessary cause i'm also using 3d studio max and the flicks are just interfering with out workflow)

*Tried every performance tip in the book found on other threads in the adobe community (brush spacing, scratch discs, every Open GL feature available, changing the wacom utility from standard to recognition-data, ...)

*1000x500 pixel document on 72 DPI 8bbp still laggs using either wacom or mouse

*No mercury engine on computer

*Using photoshop singular doesn't help anything

*Putting windows 7 in full-performance mode and switching the eye candy off doesn't help

*Changing the Nvidia Quadro settings to full performance or other modes doesn't help

We switched from Windows XP x64 with Photoshop CS5 x64 to Windows 7 x64 because Photoshop CS6 x64 doesn't support Open GL in Windows XP x64 anymore, so we HAD to upgrade to Windows 7. So I hope you can see how this is a serious thorn in our eyes when we even change platform in a 200-man company to upgrade our software and then find out it doesn't do what it's supposed to do. We're here to start following up and help where needed.

Photoshop was always our trusted ally in finishing renders as a post production tool when our 3D application would cut it or we would be time-limited. This is now out the window... We really need adobe support on this one.

Warm regards,

Ethan Janssens

[Adam Jerugim]

Ethan,

I assume you've tried changing the tile size to 128K instead of the default 1024K?  If that didn't work, please contact me directly so that we can work on this.  Email me at:  my first name dot last name at adobe dot com.

Thanks,

Adam

[Jimmy Chelsea]

I'm another Photoshop CS6 user facing the same LAG & SLUGGISH problem.

My computer spec is:

Processor  3.5 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory  24 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Software  OS X 10.9.3 (13D65)

Graphics  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB

This problem is so............so.........irritating, I have no solution so far.

[Jimmy Chelsea]

I noticed that this problem has got NO SOLUTION yet.

Look at the reply above me Adam Jerugim Mar 5, 2013 10:31 AM   <<< this date until my latest reply is 1 year and 1 month, Photoshop CS6 has NO SOLUTION to this LAG & SLUGGISH problem.