the new photoshops are so terrible.... how and why?

[nickh78896922]

I have been using PS since 1999 and these new versions [cursing removed] are unusable. I have spent days trying to solve erros and bugs. Why did you nuke such a well oiled software. almost every update since 2018 [cursing removed].... why is there no alternative to PS [cursing removed].

why break something that worked so well decades ago

[Peepijeep]

Since PhotoShop 20 or 21 (2018), there are so many problems. Sluggish scrolling when Navigator is open etc. I really dont like it anymore.

[nickh78896922]

i mean some of the new tools are good.... but not at the cost of crashing and display bugs and errors. When you have been using the sameworkflow for decades just a minor tweak throws you off so much. For deacdes photoshop was super solid and never crashed.... like never. Since 2018 i have had tons of issues daily.

[Edward3141911269e4]

Absolutely disastrous and unusable.

New versions also require 50GB of free harddrive space even for simple tasks on small images.  It is as all the worst programmers who were fired from Microsoft got scooped up by Adobe and decided that what we really needed wasnt a functioning app but instead a costly vending machine app.

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

This is almost always caused by one of two things:

• an outdated graphics card that no longer meets Photoshop requirements (or driver bugs, but that's much more rarely seen now)
• not enough scratch disk space (or memory allocation in preferences set too high)

If you're interested in troubleshooting, go to Help > System Info and paste the whole thing in a reply here.

[Edward24653726sngl]

Indeed I have a mere 5GB of scratch space on my hard drive which only had 500GB to begin with.

Photoshop says it needs 50GB to open.  That isn't an app, it's an operating system.

[D Fosse]

It's not Photoshop, it's advanced raster image editing. There's just an enormous amount of data that must be moved around. All that data has to go somewhere, so it's written to disk. This goes way beyond any RAM you may have installed.

The scratch file contains all history states for all open documents. Each history state potentially adds the full uncompressed file size. If you also use smart objects, the scratch file explodes rapidly.

The scratch disk is Photoshop's main memory, with RAM as a fast access cache.

For any serious work with reasonably big files from a modern camera, you will need 500 GB and up, preferably 1 TB. Especially if you have several files open.

I have 4 TB.

[Edward24653726sngl]

Congratulations.

I have 35 TB at work, but not on my laptop that is use on the road and at home.

Photoshop used to be a go-to app for all photo editing.  Apparently they have given up that market and only want the pro market.  That is what I needed to know.  The good news is that Photoshop being so unusable has opened the market for competitors like Affinity, or even freeware like GIMP to become more popular.  I guess I got the message.

[D Fosse]

Photoshop is, and has always been, professional-grade software. As such, it's optimized for speed and efficiency, and makes no concessions for limited hardware resources. It is the user's responsibility to make sure it has the resources it needs.

If you want something simpler and more user friendly, there's Photoshop Elements. There's also a new range of mobile-oriented apps from Adobe.

The thing with Photoshop is that it has such a total market dominance that everybody feels ownership to it. That can be a problem, because it can't make everybody happy at the same time. A lot of consumer-oriented features have been added, but Photoshop cannot compromise on its high-end capabilities. That would pull the floor out from under it.

[Vaal Twize]

I'm very advanced user from 1996, now I have M2 MAC and I see photoshop now unuseful, buggy, sluggish

[c.pfaffenbichler]

In my experience the people who feel the need to mention just how long they have been using Photoshop on this Forum are not necessarily as insightful as they think. 

Please read this (in particular the section titled "Supply pertinent information for more timely and effective answers”):
https://community.adobe.com/t5/using-the-community/community-how-to-guide-tips-amp-best-practices/td...

What have you done about general Photoshop performance and Scratch Disks so far?
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/scratch-disks-preferences.html

What have you done for all-purpose trouble-shooting so far?
Restoring Preferences after making sure all customized presets like Actions, Patterns, Brushes etc. have been saved might be a good starting point:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/basic-trouble-shooting-steps.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/troubleshoot-gpu-graphics-card.html

[nickh78896922]

In my experience people who share useless opinions are less insightful than they claim to be and all around a waste of time. 

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Just to make sure: Your post appears to be »In Response To Vaal Twize«, so if you were referring to my post that would be unclear. 

[c.pfaffenbichler]

In my experience people who share useless opinions are less insightful than they claim to be and all around a waste of time. 

By @nickh78896922

Would you consider 

• complaining about an issue without providing pertinent information

• or inquiring about that information and the steps taken to address the issue

more useful? 

[D Fosse]

@Vaal Twize

There's a lot of things to say about Photoshop, but "sluggish" is certainly not one of them in my experience. It's always been snappy and instantly responsive in all functions.

"Sluggish" usually boils down to a GPU-related problem. You might want to take that up in an Apple forum. Photoshop uses the GPU in ways that very few other applications do.

EDIT - or perhaps more likely, you don't have enough disk space for the Photoshop scratch disk.

[Vaal Twize]

fully agree!!

[tom gore]

I absolutely agree.  I'm using a new Mac Studio with lots of RAM and huge scratch disks and each new version of Photoshop is worse than the last, with aspects that don't function properly and increasing performance issues.  We need fast and sleek to maintain workflows but after more than thirty years of using Photoshop it has become more and more of a bloated dysfunctional pig.  

[Derek Cross]

Can you be more specific about an issue that we can replicate please.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

@tom gore , please read this (in particular the section titled "Supply pertinent information for more timely and effective answers”):
https://community.adobe.com/t5/using-the-community/community-how-to-guide-tips-amp-best-practices/td...