Remove tool causes memory to max out after a few uses and freezes Photoshop

[Brian_Ackin]

This bug has been reported before, but persists, making editing arduous.

It only became a problem recently, so I feel it is a version issue, say after 25 or so. I have not downgraded as of yet, but may have no choice.

After a few touch ups (nothing major, like skin blemish), the tool will freeze and then memory use will ramp up until entirely maxed out (64 GB). I see it in the Task Manager graph. After about two minutes (if a person was willing to wait), a dialog box pops up saying there is no more memory to complete task. When closed, I can save the image and proceed.

This has happened each and every time I edit an image and I cannot go more than 5 uses before this happens. 

I contacted support over the phone and was told to increase memory usage under performance. I does not help and resetting preferences also does not help.

This issue needs to be fixed as I feel the remove tool is one of the core tools users now rely on.

If it would be helpful to downgrade to a previous version, please advise.

[Mark27374293jj6h]

I've tried everything (including trying a different system) but reducing the history states is the key!! 

[Clocktowerphotography]

I won't say reducing history states is a complete cure but it does make the tool usable.  Glad it worked for you. 

[Mark27374293jj6h]

Yeah if you find anything else out please share, I have been having issues with this for a year and had to keep going back to older versions of PS. It locked up at 25 History states, so it does seem that 10 is a safe place. I have over 3TB of NVME storage free with scatch disk, 96GB memory, 14900k, 4090... I was thinking it could have been the CPU but it's a fresh one (traded from a 13900K) so Intel could be part of the problem here. Bios up to date, Drivers.... Been a royal pain but this should do for now

[D Fosse]

It locked up at 25 History states, so it does seem that 10 is a safe place.

By @Mark27374293jj6h

This is really odd. What that sounds like, is that those history states are actually kept in RAM instead of just being sent to scratch disk. If that's really what's happening, it's clearly a bug.

[Mark27374293jj6h]

Yes, and it also could be an issue with my Wacom driver as removing pressure sensitivity seemed to help as well.... However I really want to keep the pressure sensitivity on if I'm removing stray hair. Much more testing to do...

[Clocktowerphotography]

I just wanted to followup on my previous post regarding the remove tool working for me.  I have had mixed success with the remove tool.  After seeing the post about using presure sensitivity on the tool I will try making sure I've got that setting set to use pressure sensitivity.   I am really frustrated with the lack of support from Adobe on this seamingly insignificant problem that can be a massive inconvenience.  

[Sarel5E84]

Thank you!

[defaulta5rtmtvfseo1]

It appears the error has nor been fixed, I have exactly the same issue , a few strokes of the remove tool on simple edits causes the system to max out at 98% memory useage and freezes the program for several minutes. Error message states not enough memory to complete the task..This is a new PC, running windows 11, 64gb Ram Intel I7 14000. more than enough to run photoshop.Ihave a 500mb scratch disk attached,I have tried all of the prior suggestions and still no Joy. I am running Photoshop 2025 version 26.10. 

any suggestions to solve this other than those previously suggested, It is a complete pain trying to work with this

[D Fosse]

I take it you mean 500 GB, not MB? Please post the full Help > System Info from Photoshop.

We've seen a few varieties of excessive memory consumption. In a lot of these cases, users have come back reporting that a full and complete reset of preferences fixed it, so try that.

It seems systems with integrated GPUs are vulnerable to this, as these GPUs use shared system memory, and most likely the memory is taken by the GPU.

[defaulta5rtmtvfseo1]

Yes I meant 500 GB. I have an external Graphics installed Geforce 4060. I have tried all of the suggestion within this thread,apart from reverting back to an earlier edtion of PS. This I will do as my next move

[MikeRosenberg]

Possible Solution

I tried replying before, but I do not see it in this thread. I also had the same issue back in March, PS freezing and then crashing, and found the issue. My system is Win 11, latest build, i7 processor on an ASUS board w/64 GB RAM, and a Gigabyte Nvidea 4070 Pro card w/64 GB Ram. I tried all the suggestions listed here: set up a separate scratch disk, increased ram usage, reduced cache levels, cleared cache, and etc. Monitoring GPU usage I could see the memory was not being released (remove tool, DXO Camera RAW layers, generative remove, etc.) Downloaded most recent card driver, notta. Going on the Win 11 community board for display options I found out that Win 11 25H.X has settings calling on the video card, and does not use the MB-onboard video chip. This is specified in: >Settings>System>Display>Graphics......Custom settings for applications.

It seems that Windows is calling on the GPU for PS. Both are trying to use the card, and Memory is not being released.  To test this I disabled/unchecked use the GPU in PS, and the issue disappeared. Memory is freed up, no more freezing and crashing. Windows is using the GPU for PS at the same time that PS is calling on memory. I have seen no way to turn off or delete. But it works! Note in the drop down menu in the screen shot that I have seleted High Performance, and you must add a PS app sniffer.exe.

Hope this works for others as it has for me.

Mike

[D Fosse]

@MikeRosenberg 

Yes, that is what I've been saying, above and elsewhere. This memory is used by the GPU.

But it's not as simple as what you describe. The GPU is an integral component in Photoshop processing, and it's performing tasks directly called by Photoshop.

A red flag here is that this seems to happen on systems with an integrated GPU, and the notable implication is that an integrated GPU uses shared system memory.

A discrete GPU has its own onboard memory, and this doesn't seem to be an issue there. What I've noticed is that the GPU tends to use memory as long as it's available, and then level out. That's fine and unproblematic with onboard VRAM, memory is there to be used, but when it starts to eat into available system memory, it needs to be checked. And that doesn't seem to happen in these cases.

I'm not ruling out a Photoshop bug here. I don't have a degree in computer science, so I won't have an opinion about causes - but you can certainly make observations that point in a certain direction.

In any case, as I've also pointed out before - a lot of users have come back reporting that a full reset of preferences fixed it. That points to a configuration issue, and configuration is precisely what the preferences contains. Corrupt preferences usually look like application bugs.