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evaxebra
Participant
December 30, 2013
Answered

Why is the "Quick Selection Tool" working so slowly? - Photoshop CC in Windows 7

  • December 30, 2013
  • 10 replies
  • 34077 views

Every time I try to use the Quick selection tool, it takes a REALLY long time to select. I had CS5 and it was super fast, even with large RAW files. Now with CC, it takes at least 20 minutes to select a person out of a photo.

I already tried "resetting" the tool - that did not work at all.

Please help!

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer shootmyphoto_com

    Hey! I had the SAME problem... solved in 30 minutes because I had put CC on my laptop and the Quick Selection tool is fast, but on my Mega-fast desktop (16gb, 4.2Ghz, blah, blah) Photoshop CC was DRAGGING BUTT.
    The difference is I loaded the desktop from scratch. The Laptop had CS5 prviously, and PS copied the settings from Edit/Preferences/Performance that existed in CS5... it was all about the History & Cache section. Hit "Big and Flat" for the 1024K cache tile size, and it set the cache states to 6. I backed that up to 4... eh whatever

    You are welcomed
    (I was about to uninstall the PS CC! It's all good now... BTW - I even yanked out the Nvidia GTS450 thinking it was a driver issue, but there was no difference with the onboard Intel HD Haswell i5 4th gen graphics... so, don't do that!)

    [edited] I just did some experimenting, 8 levels with a small cache size works too... so, just get out of the 2 levels at 128k if that is what you are set at. I am at Big and Flat which is 6 levels/1024K.

    Tim

    10 replies

    D
    defaultois6hv8vxoz6
    Participant
    July 12, 2021

    Although this reply is majorly late, I only started to play around with photoshop recently. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere but while looking for a solution to this problem I came up with one of my own. I have an older slower computer that is still strong enough for doing a lot of the things I do but I noticed with higher resolution images that I've scanned in act up in the same way when trying to do a selection...

    My solution is to make a duplicate copy of whatever you are working with or a stamped layer, convert it to a smart object, enter the smart object and reduce the resolution, then just remove anything you don't want to select save it and go back to the original and just ctrl-click the smart object to transfer the selection...

    I know it's late but if I'm reading this today it might help someone else in the same boat 😉

    dough45957423
    dough45957423
    Participant
    July 25, 2016

    I'm on a Mac, and simply changing the cache size from 1 to 4, (as previously suggested), was the solution. I re-booted PS and the tool Quick Selection tool began working normally (fast) again.

    JohnVo
    JohnVo
    Inspiring
    May 30, 2017

    hi

    i have clicked to big & fat , photoshop set cache at 6 and 1024K

    after i set the cache to 4

    i can't notice any differents between 4 and 6

    which is the right value?

    what do you use 4 or 6?

    thanks

    D
    Danette5
    Participating Frequently
    September 1, 2015

    You are my hero shootmyphoto.com  Worked like a charm!!!

    A
    Acufocal
    Participant
    August 13, 2015

    I'm having this problem and it even extends to certain selections made through other methods. I've done all of the advice in this thread and nothing has fixed it.

    shanksmyster
    shanksmyster
    Participant
    July 1, 2015

    I have changed the settings using some of the above suggestions but nothing has worked for me. I recently updated from Photoshop 2014 CC to 2015 CC. I am on a Mac with 4gb ram and 2.66 Dual Core Processor, but never had quick selection behaving so slow until I updated. My current settings are cache level and history 6, tile 1024k, and I have restarted photoshop.

    D
    Dy Fuente
    Participant
    December 31, 2014

    Just one more advice if you are having this issue.

    1) i set as ppl told here the chacle levels to 8 and cache tile to 1024

    2) i set the scratch disk to only my fast SSD HD

    3) MOST IMPORTANT ---> Changes only did effect after i closed and restarted the Photoshop CC.

    I hope this help someone !

      F
      Flavio Gomes
      Participant
      November 22, 2014

      I'm using PS CC 2014. After updating I noticed that quick selection was unuseably slow. I went to Edit / Preferences / Performance and noticed that cache levels was set to 1. Increased it to 4 and the problem was solved. Notice that is necessary to exit and restart PS for the modifications to be effective.

        K
        Kees van Surksum
        Known Participant
        May 16, 2014

        Hi Everybody,

        up till yesterday everything worked fine on my copy of Ps CC. Then I encountered "all of the sudden" the same issue as described in the original post. Glad, the solution offered to the original poster works, but it didn't work for me and as I read, I am not the only one. And apart from that, I suffered crashes as well ...

        I looked at the performance settings in my copy of Ps CS6 (in which the quick selection tool works fine) and they were exactly the same as in Ps CC. But I oversaw the amount of RAM appointed to Ps ... Then I recollected, that I had changed this setting in Ps CC the day before. Because I have 24 Gig of RAM, I put up the slider there to the max Ps recommends. (i.e. appr. 15 Gig). I put the slider back a little (appr. 13 Gig) and everything worked fine again ...

        So, no driver updates, no cache level or graph card resettings necessary here. Just try this simple solution ....

          S
          Soualmalivre
          Participant
          September 13, 2014

          You're my hero!!! This solved the problem on windows 7 with 12gb of ram and Adobe Phtoshop CC 2014.

          B
          Berit Møller
          Participant
          October 19, 2014

          Im sorry to bring this topic up again. But none of the above suggestions work for me. Quick selection too is getting slower the more area I select. Any ideas?

          S
          shootmyphoto_comCorrect answer
          Participant
          January 15, 2014

          Hey! I had the SAME problem... solved in 30 minutes because I had put CC on my laptop and the Quick Selection tool is fast, but on my Mega-fast desktop (16gb, 4.2Ghz, blah, blah) Photoshop CC was DRAGGING BUTT.
          The difference is I loaded the desktop from scratch. The Laptop had CS5 prviously, and PS copied the settings from Edit/Preferences/Performance that existed in CS5... it was all about the History & Cache section. Hit "Big and Flat" for the 1024K cache tile size, and it set the cache states to 6. I backed that up to 4... eh whatever

          You are welcomed
          (I was about to uninstall the PS CC! It's all good now... BTW - I even yanked out the Nvidia GTS450 thinking it was a driver issue, but there was no difference with the onboard Intel HD Haswell i5 4th gen graphics... so, don't do that!)

          [edited] I just did some experimenting, 8 levels with a small cache size works too... so, just get out of the 2 levels at 128k if that is what you are set at. I am at Big and Flat which is 6 levels/1024K.

          Tim

            E
            evaxebraAuthor
            Participant
            January 15, 2014

            Sulaco: Thanks for your help! I run a 16gb RAM desktop that my husband is jealous of and says I could use it for gaming, so I wouldn't expect it to be slow. I tried resetting the specs and made sure the tool settings were as you described and it didn't help much. I started working with the low res images until that last poster came up with the solution.

            Trevor.Dennis: I appreciate all the time you took to try and figure out the problem! And coming up with the work around. It is much appreciated!! I tried the cache levels you recommended and it was just as slow. I used your workaround until the solution got posted:

            Shootmyphoto.com: THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I would not have expected lowering the cache states to make it work faster! Once I changed the cache states down to 4 and tile size to 1024K it went back to normal!!

            And, I would like to add, you solved an additional problem I was too busy to post about - when I opened a file that was shot at ISO 400+, the photo looked extremely grainy/noisy in photoshop CC, but completely normal in any other program or online. Now after I changed those settings, the photos look normal again!! THANK YOU!

            Sulaco
            Sulaco
            Inspiring
            January 15, 2014

            Cool to hear that you solved the problem! Also nice to learn something new, thanks shootmyphoto! I have never fully understood how cache levels and tile size works! Mine is set to 4 and 1024K also ...

            Trevor.Dennis
            Community Expert
            Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
            Community Expert
            December 30, 2013

            What operating system?   My laptop slowed to a crawl after it updated from Windows 8 to 8.1.  When I checked Preferenes > Performance, I found that GPU Acceleration was no longer ticked, but a visit to the nVidea driver site fixed it.

            E
            evaxebraAuthor
            Participant
            January 4, 2014

            Thanks Trevor (sorry for the late response!)

            Actually, I'm still using Windows 7, and it's not the computer that's slow - only that one tool. It's really weird!! I checked my video card and it seems to be set up fine...

            Thanks for the advice, though!

              Sulaco
              Sulaco
              Inspiring
              January 8, 2014

              Thanks Curt,

              I went ahead and updated my drivers again, but it did not help at all. (Radeon HD 5800) The tool is SO slow that it's pretty much useless. It was one of the reasons I wanted CC. That and Content Aware - which works fine. I'm thinking there's some setting somewhere that makes it slow?


              Just to clarify things a bit: Is it slow while you are painting with the tool or after you release the mouse button? Is it significantly faster if you work with low-res files or is it the same?

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