Why are brushes in photoshop so laggy?

[defaultll9ahozh6h7f]

I am a proffessional artist. I use photoshop a lot mostly for drawing and painting but no matter what I do I'm always waiting for the program to catch up to me. The lag can vary from a slight delay in my strokes (strokes always seems to be trailing behind my brush cursor, a problem which worsens when smoothing is enabled to any degree) to several second brush slowdowns. I've even experienced the program just straight up not drawing my strokes and undos and then "popping" them all in a couple of seconds later. No matter what the lag is though it's always incredibly annoying and detrimental to my workflow as drawing is best done when you can actively react to what your strokes are looking at and waiting for the program to catch up sort of ruins that. I've recently switched to Clip Studio Paint for drawing and the experience is frankly night and day. It's the closest thing I've experienced to drawing in real time as I would with traditional media and whenever I have to go back to PS the shift in brush speed is very jarring/disappointing.

My machine specs are:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900x

Graphics Card: GTX 1660 (latest studio drivers installed)

RAM: 2x 32 GB (64 GB)

Drawing Tablet: Wacom Cintiq Pro 24'' (most up-to date drivers installed)

All programs and the OS are installed on an M2 drive which is used as my scratch drive as well (because in the year 2021 this program's autorecover still doesn't function if you change your scratch disk from the C drive...)

I have done everything I can think to minimize the lag barring working at lower resolutions which is frankly not a solution. I need to work with larger files for my work and most professional artists I know need to do the same. We all have this same complaint too, but most just deal with it as a fact of life but imo that's unacceptable. Now, I understand the issue existing with more complicated brushes, but for this to exist even with the most basic drawing brushes is crazy!

Any suggestions on how I can make my drawing experience as speedy as Clip Studio Paint would be very much appreciated. Barring that, I would really like to make the suggestion to Photoshop's developers to please work on improving this.

[defaultll9ahozh6h7f]

OS: Windows 10

Version: 22.5.1

[Leslie Moak Murray]

You are not alone! See if this tutorial helps:
https://youtu.be/eS-0BTroqaI 

[rayek.elfin]

Ah yes, the same old answers.

Turning off smoothing and working in a lower resolution are not the answer. It's an inherent issue with Photoshop's brush/drawing engine.

If other drawing apps have no such issues, one starts to wonder what's up with Photoshop in this regard.

[D Fosse]

It's an inherent issue with Photoshop's brush/drawing engine.

By @rayek.elfin

Let's try to pin down exactly how bad this is, and if we're all on the same page.

I just tested with a 9400 x 5250 pixel image, 3 pixel layers and 3 masked adjustment layers. That should qualify as a big file, just so that's out of the way. Brush size is 2165 pixels, 100% opacity and flow.

As long as I keep smoothing at a low value, 10% or so, brush response is for all practical purposes instant and real-time. If I paint really fast, as if I was making doodles on a piece of paper, I can make out a slight lag. The best way to describe it is about a brush width behind, taking about 1/4 to 1/15 second to catch up (as a photographer, I'm pretty familiar with fractions of a second).

To my surprise, brush size doesn't seem to matter much. I tried 2165 pixels and 243 pixels, and got about the same response.

With smoothing turned up to, say, 80%, I'm beginning to see a lag. Smoothing clearly has a price. The funny thing is that it's mostly near the end of the stroke, as it's catching up the final bit. To finally catch up, I'd say it takes about 1.5 seconds. Again, not much difference with brush size.

Then I downsampled the file to 2000 pixels - and got pretty identical results all over. Again, a surprise.

So - are we all on the same page? Is this what you're seeing?

EDIT: It should be clear that for my normal use, I'd never notice any of this, and I haven't been aware of any lag until I looked for it now. But I'm a photographer, not a digital painter.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Dag, what was your brush spacing?  The defaulk 25% (of brush size) is too lumpy for drawing and inking. 5% makes for a solid line with nice straight edges to the stroke

Using the test I outlined below, a 5000 pixel brush at 5% took 3.6 seconds, and at 25% 1.6 seconds.

[D Fosse]

OK, see below.

[defaultll9ahozh6h7f]

Thank you for the link, but I have seen that video and applied it's suggestions already (it should be noted as well that you can no longer switch drawing modes in the newest update of PS.) They have helped a little I guess but have not really solved the problem.

[rayek.elfin]

I have no anwer for you, except that this has been the case with Photoshop for a long time now. Many artists complain and have complained in the past, and it seems that PS hasn't kept up with the requirements for higher resolution work. So far, it's only become worse.

Years ago I switched to a combination of ClipStudio and Krita for my digital drawing & painting. Never looked back.

ClipStudio is in a league of its own: as you mention as well, it has some of the best immediate "drawing feel". Heck, it even works fine on a 12 year old Windows tablet with Wacom screen of mine. Can't even run Photoshop on it.

Curb your expectations in regards to PS performance improvements. The code is old, and in need of a complete rewrite, as far as I can tell. The Krita developers went through a couple of rewrites to get good drawing performance, and implemented a special quick drawing mode to deal with more complex brushes.

I just don't see the PS dev team pulling through that same effort.

Krita, an open source and free app, performs better than Photoshop when drawing and painting. And ClipStudio remains in a league of its own. And I paid a one-time perpetual license fee for ClipStudio 14 years ago, and received free updates ever since.

[JJMack]

I do not understand why you are using Photoshop for Drawing and Painting. Why are you using  an image pixel editor  for you work.  Do you need a large larger canvas size that  Drawing and Painting application do not support.   I would think a Drawing and Painting application would be optimized for that type of work. Have you tried using Adobe Fresco. It may have some of Phtoshop's featured and should have better tools for drawing and paintings.  I would think it brush support would be better then Photoshop's support. Fresco is designed for drawing and painting. Its brush engine would be optimize for good painting performance. You seem to like Clip Studio Paint you should use what works best for you.  You seen it know its not Photoshop. Photoshop was designed more for working on high resolution photographs not for painting its brush support is well suited for touching up high resolution  digital camera images.

[defaultll9ahozh6h7f]

I have only briefly played with Fresco so my impressions are still limited, but from what I experienced it feels like a beginner's program. Like an upgraded version of MS Paint or a basic drawing program like Sketchbook Pro. Fine for doodling, but not great for actual professional work. The reason people draw and paint in PS is precisely because of it's editting capabilites. Fresco pales in comparison to PS in this respect. The ability make quick but drastic changes becomes an integral part of the design process and severly cuts down the amount of time it takes to generate a peice. PS's better transformation functions, filters, layer modes, ability to make versatile brushes on the fly and color management/correction functions are all also integral to the digital artistic process. Furthermore, Fresco has an overly streamlined UI that hides way more information than it should and (to my knowledge) does not function without Windows Ink which is a really terrible digitizer. 

"Photoshop was designed more for working on high resolution photographs  not for painting its brush support" is an almost insulting excuse to give this complaint at this point. People have been using this program for drawing and painting for DECADES now. It is an industry standard program and media conglomerates and professionals alike pay for subscriptions exclusively for these exact purposes. Adobe must know this, for them not to would border on willful ignorance. I'm not bringing up this issue because "photoshop doesn't work for me" and I want to force a square peg into a circular hole; I'm bringing it up because it's a powerful program the use of which is an industry standard and it being so lacking in this very basic function is incredibly frustrating.

[Trevor.Dennis]

I wonder if it is to do with the Cintiq's performance?  Can you clarify how this works?  I'm thinking that it connects to a computer, and the specs you note are for that computer. i.e. the CintiQ does not have an OS?   Those specs are really good and you really wouldn't expect to see brush lag uusing Photoshop directly on such a system.

I've never experienced brush lag. Not ever over multiple hardware upgrades, and I usually set brush spacing to 5%.  I do own a Cintiq Companion 2 which was the nearest I've come to experiencing lag, but I didn't reaally like it and have not used it in years.  So is it down to inadequate hardware?

A test we sometimes use on this forum to test systems is to create a 30,000 X 30,000 pixel image document and time how long it takes for a 5000 pixel fully hard brush set to 1% spacing takes to draw from one corner to the diagonaly opposite corner.   I am currently using an 

i9 7900X

RTX2070

64GB RAM

Samsung 840 PRO NVMe for Scratch

Time to draw stroke 13.8 seconds

The above document created 23GB scratch file space.  I did not know that using other than the system drive for Photoshop's Scratch drive breaks Auto Recover, but either way, if your document neeeds significant scratch space then that can be a bottleneck.  We would expect that is not your issue with an M.2 drive.

It's interesting that using Windows 10, and bringing up the Resource Monitor while doing the above test, we can see that most threads and fully 50% of the CPU are used when using the Brush tool, and your 3900X outperforms my Intel 7900X.  So is the bottom line here that it is the Cintiq that is causing the lag, and if so, how can you imnprove that?

[Trevor.Dennis]

I've just had a wee Google, and it does seem that this is a common issue with Photoshop when using a Cintiq.  

Photoshop lag with Cintiq Pro 24 - Adobe Support Community - 10136145

I note that you are using Windows, which is a good thing.  Are you using Lazy Nezumi Pro?  At its most basic, it takes brush smoothing away from Photoshop, and does a better job of smoothing as well, but LNP does so much for your $35 it's a total no brainer.

This page perports to reduce lag with Windows systems, but you have probably tried all this.

7 Steps To Fix WACOM Lag On Windows | Eliminate Photoshop Brush Lag! (boutiqueretouching.com)

If only we could get Bert Monroy to contribute to this thread.  He has used multiple large Cintiqs since year one, and with massive documents like his Times Square illustration.

I don't have any answers for you.  It sounds like the large Cintiqs work OK with other drawing apps so it must be doable.  Could you use different apps for different aspects of your illustrations?  Krita is free so worth a try. Paintstorm Studio is $19 so almost free, and both of those apps are excellent for drawing, and both do things that Photoshop can't.  

[D Fosse]

A tiny bit slower than yours, Trevor - 16.1 seconds to your 13.8.

That's a 5GB Quadro P2200, i7-7700K, 32GB RAM and Samsung EVO+ 970 dedicated scratch disk. So overall a little lower nominal specs. Oh, and no Wacom, this is just mouse.

What are your numbers, defaultll and Rayek?

Again I should stress that in normal everyday use I have never experienced any lag whatsoever.

[JJMack]

Try having a huge canvas zoom way out so the canvas fits on screen set mixer brush to be large and spacing set to 1%.   See if you don't experience lag then.   I think Photoshop has to apply strokes into the larger canvas before it can render the stroke on the quickly scaled canvas being displayed in Photoshop UI.  I think you will see lag for Photoshop is dealing with so many pixels the latency will be noticeable

[rayek.elfin]

In my experience it is less a problem related to overall performance, and more of an inherent issue with the brush engine itself and how it responds to input. Allow me to explain.

Photoshop works fine in terms of raw processing speed. When I create a 15000px square file in Photoshop, Krita, PhotoLine, and ClipStudio Photoshop does really well in this area: it processes a 1000px regular brush stroke without smoothing (or a few % smoothing) nicely. It performs better than ClipStudio, which really struggles in this case.

My problem, however, with Photoshop has always been the inherent lag when drawing. It lags behind where the mouse cursor is too much, even when smoothing is completely turned off. And smoothing in Photoshop is really problematic: I prefer to draw with as less smoothing as is possible to ensure the lines come out as I want them.

But smoothing in Photoshop increases this delay in response. Photoshop's response is always behind. And when I deactivate smoothing the quality of the lines is, to me, unacceptable with quickly drawn curves often resulting in slightly flattened curve segments. Subtle, but noticeable to me.

But to clarify: whether or not smoothing is activated, that innate laggy response is still there.

When I compare this to Krita or ClipStudio this "drawing feel" is very different. The response is far more direct. And it doesn't matter if the brush size is set to 1px, 50px, 500px, or 1000px: the other apps' drawing experience is just more direct than Photoshop.

Smoothing is also a bit of a problem in Photoshop, since turning it on will only excacerbate this innate lag. In Krita the Basic brush smoothing does not affect the instant feedback while drawing. In ClipStudio the same with lower settings. But in Photoshop even a mere 5% smoothing setting slows down the response to such an extent that I walk away in frustration.

I am aware that many users may not care about this all too much. But speaking for myself once I got used to Krita's and ClipStudio's drawing response, I just can't go back to Photoshop for inking or even sketching. Painting is not such an issue, but even then it feels too indirect.

And it is funny, because I tested this the other day on a different setup at my work as well: a very large HP drawing screen. Krita just felt right, while Photoshop had that innate slower response.

I don't think it is a problem related to performance (in some user cases it is, though, because Photoshop is resource hungry, while ClipStudio runs fine on very bottom of the barrel hardware), but more to do with how the brush engine in Photoshop is implemented. This has been an issue for as long since I first noticed it after discovering ClipStudio 14 odd years ago.

Just my two cents.

[davescm]

9.8 seconds here for Trevor's test

i9-10920x  128GB RAM     RTX3090 24GB VRAM    Scratch and system on NVMe drives

I had heard some mention turning rulers on and off made a difference, but I cannot see any difference here by doing that.

Dave

[jane-e]

14.5 seconds on my 2017 iMac.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017)

3.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5

64 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

Radeon Pro 580 8 GB

Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 64 GB

@Trevor.Dennis : how did you make your line so straight?

~ Jane

[Trevor.Dennis]

Jane, I have a feeling you will have lost a bit of time doing that test judging from your slightly curved brush stroke.  I stamp down the brush in the top left corner, and then Shift stamp down the brush in the bottom right corner.  That makes it repeatable.

[jane-e]

Jane, I have a feeling you will have lost a bit of time doing that test judging from your slightly curved brush stroke. 

By @Trevor.Dennis

I'm laughing this morning, Trevor, not only because I use Shift-Click all the time when selecting in a mask, but because it's amazing what you can "forget" when you are exhausted and other things are intruding on your mind.

14.2 seconds this morning.

Jane

[D Fosse]

Just occurred to me to try on my work machine. 10.2 seconds here (16.1 at home).

Which is an interesting result because these two machines are pretty much identical - except a newer CPU, 9700K instead of 7700K, but a slightly older GPU, P2000 instead of P2200.

So that indicates an answer to my own question: GPU or CPU. Apparently the CPU does most of the heavy lifting here.

EDIT: geez, this nesting, it makes my head spin. Now I'm answering to a post that appears below this one. How can anyone follow a thread logically... 

[D Fosse]

Has anyone been able to figure out if this is mainly GPU limited or CPU limited? Or even disk I/O? Or all of them?

Not that I worry too much about my 16 seconds. This is after all a typical test bench exercise with little practical relevance - if the number was 96 it might translate to real world performance problems.

Still - as Trevor says, absolutely repeatable and comparable, and that's always a good place to start. I'd like to see numbers for those who say it affects their everyday work. Just to know if we're all on the same page, or not.

[JJMack]

How much you GPU is use by Photoshop may depend on which machine and model and makers device driver support OS support I sure difference between Mac and PC support. Also there are Photoshop GPU settings and Adobe seems to change its GPU support in each version 22.x update.  In general Photoshop is not a graphic intensive as video and computer games.   Photoshop only  GPU processors in some of Photoshop features.   Photoshop has many operations that are sequential in nature there is not much that can be multi thread in some features,  Even operations the can be multi threaded need to be synchronized.  One process being a threaded can slow down all processing for the others thread need a thread to complete its task before they can carry doing their processing.   Photoshop also does  not always utilize multi processors on machines with more than on processor.  My workstation is an old Dell desktop  tower with two slow 6 core xeon 2ghz processor. It has a Nvidia Quadro Display adapter that Photoshop seems to support it to some extent. The Card is like 6 year old.

I see some Photoshop filters  use all 24 processor for threading their processing. I see times when Photoshop use only use one xeon processors 12 threads will be active 12 will be idle.   Photoshop can not thread all processing. 

Photoshop has many Brush type tools and several Paint brush type tools and there are many brush settings and brush tip types.   I can  easily  make paint brush tools lag using unrealistic settings.   Size spacing and options must be reasonable. 

I use windows here you will see Windows Task manger Performance displayed for my Machine where Photoshop is open on a 15000px by 1500px document My Photoshop GPU preferences setting showing where Photoshop is idle.  This is followed a  captured where Ins constantly paint brushing with brush type,  Spacing set to 1%,  Tip size set to 100PX.  All brush show lots of lag  because of the size canvas tip size and spacing 1%.   The GPU utilization seems low in all cased 4 to 10%.  CPU requirement different,  First a Solid hard round tip. Second a soft round tip, Third a Leaf Simple tip, and last a Mixer brush.  A machine with the fast clock cycle would be best.  I think a GPU will not make much of a difference when it come to Brush performance.  One Processor is maxed out in all cases.