Photoshop 2021 slow and laggy [LOCKED]

[adamt18510785]

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I'm going to start this new thread for the new version of photoshop. 
There are hundreds of comments about 2020 being slow and laggy and not a single adobe rep has even acknowledged it. I was hoping the upgrade would solve everyone's issues but alas that isn't the case. 

So this thread is for all you old and newcomers with new and old machines where photoshop runs like crap to complain about. Maybe their newest software might be seen for them to do something.  

I'll go first: 
Ryzen 9, 64 gigs of 3200 ram, 1080 ti gfx, 1nvme 3200mb.s ssd for programs, 1 tb sata sdd cache drive, 2 tb WD black for files. 

Photoshop takes almost 3 seconds to do simple things like changing to a shape pen tool to make shapes. 
Lags on anything pen tool, and type tool
Played with every setting in the performance and went through their pages on optimizing. 
I even went through the Nvidia setting but only gained a slight boost in performance. 

[Hi_Fi_Guy]

Photoshop "upgraded" to version 22.3.0 today... what fresh hell is this? Selecton tools like Lasso and Marquee are horribly slow and do not keep up with the cursor and/or cause photoshop to spin for minutes, Absolute junk of an upgrade. 

MacOS 11.2.3 32GB ram 8GB vram

[Guest]

For whatever reason, anything input related makes the CPU usage spike hugely and then everything lags after that. I've been merging large panoramic images and that process seems to be behaving normally... as soon as I use any mouse/keyboard input the whole thing grinds to a halt.. 

[eapfoto]

Hi All.

I've been having this same issue on a 2019 iMac, super buggy laggy and horrible with 2020 & 2021 versions of Photoshop. The last version that worked well for me was 2019. After trying every possible optimization technique available, testing various GPU settings, etc., I had all but given up. And then today I had an idea that worked!

I dawned on me that as a long-time user of P.S. (since v1.5), I've grown accustomed to migrating all my customizations to each new version of Photoshop. And I had a hunch that maybe older versions of things like keyboard shortcuts, tool settings, workspaces, actions, etc.. might not be compatible anymore. So I uninstalled the Photoshop app via the Uninstall button in CC, then poked around in the Application Support and Prefs folders on my Mac to delete any remaining related files. And then did a fresh install of the latest 2021 version. And now it runs super fast, just like it should.

So now I've spent an hour recreating all my shortcuts and settings natively in the laterst version of the app, and everything is still working smooth and fast. No more lags, no more SBOD, just regular functionality. Don't know if this will work for anyone else, but it's worth a try. I have felt your pain, and wish you luck.  

Cheers!

[csscms]

Thanks for sharing but I migrated things by hand but PS2021 is unsuable for me. PS2020 works so will stay a year behind moving forward.

[adamt18510785]

Issue a lot of us are having is even with a full fresh copy. 
Some of the things I've done to try and fix this: Fresh install on all of Adobe CC, deleted profiles, created a new win admin account, made sure no plugins are installed, tuned up my $1000 pgu just for PS, called adobe and had them run me through all of that again. 

[csscms]

And add to the list a drastic erase and install of OSX, something isn't right with this release.

[adamt18510785]

Yeah, I'd put money on the new tools making processor locks from using 20 year old code 

[smackmick]

I cleaned everything and loaded a fresh version.  It still takes 30-2minutes for the tool to come up.  The menu and picture all show immediately, but then it is doing something as the screen locks up (you cannot move it) until it finally releases.

[Susanne5EDC]

At this point there is too little programm and too much bugs. I can't.

[Ashburz]

I've been having similar issues with the past few versions and found what seems to be a possible cause for the stuttering issuers many people are having.

For users with G-Sync displays, it appear that having it enabled while using Photoshop causes an excessive amount of slowdown. This can be fixed by disabling G-Sync in individual program settings in the Nvidia Control Panel.

It hasn't completely eliminated all the lag, but it's a lot faster than it was.

[herryC]

I do not have that Monitor Technology option. What is your GPU and screen brand? 

Mine is GTX1060 GPU and Dell U2719D screen.

[symphonym88449613]

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

As an update, uninstalling creative cloud fixed a lot of my issues

[bysea]

Didn't help, per se, but once it's up and running and let it think out all of it's code thoughts, it comes around, but does hesitate still...and now another issue, the Neural filters no longer work - get a generic error notice. Maybe Pshop doesn't work on days ending with "y". YMMV.

[DJ Karlton]

I'm running Catalina on an IMac Pro and all Aobe programs i'm using PS, ID, Ai appear to be glitchy at the moment even on really simple tasks.

[jasonsnell]

iMac Pro here too (Big Sur), and same. Photoshop 2020 ran well, but 2021 is impossibly slow. This is an 8-core Xeon with a Vega 56 GPU! And yet I literally can't pinch and zoom in on an image without enormous lag. I haven't seen Photoshop this slow in literally decades. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Creative Cloud on this iMac, and it didn't help one bit. 

Hey Adobe, what is going on here?

[Ramsey Jansen]

After some weeks of intense frustration and complete dslike of everything Adobe, I think I have at least a beginning of grasp on what makes Photoshop so g*dd*mn slow.

I had a working Adobe Photoshop version on my Microsoft Surface Book Pro 3 (the vesion with an Nvidia Quadro RTX 300 inside), which wasn't super powerful, but useful. Everything configured optimally for performance. The desktop or laptop 'workstation' I desired, was not what the company delivered, to my surprise, this Microsoft top model was the result I got. Frankly, I was surprised to see the configuration of that machine. I received it brand new, first one in the company. 

I was a bit of a sceptic at first, having to work wit something of a glorified tablet as a workstation, but at first I wasn't really dissapointed. I worked with 2 external monitors (32" 4K + 24"). All was completely OK.

And then, after a about 3 months, after couple of cumulative Adobe Photoshop, MS Windows and Surface Book firmware updates, everythink went haywire.

Opening a tiny .jpg, .png file took more than a minute to even open. Any action I tried to do on a file - especially working to make cut-out pictures using the 'paths' tool - I couldn't use, every action - even basically drawing a path - required me to wait for several seconds to take effects.

Completely unusable. I removerd the latest Photoshop update, reinstalled earlier versions, but evry time the same problem arose.

Then our IT-section wemnt to work on it. And then I couldn't use the Surface Book Pro anymore for anything Adobe - or else.

Conclusion was: Quadro RTX 3000 wasn't active. All hardware accelleration was futule - it just didn't work anymore. The conclusion was that I had only been able to use the  Intel Iris graphics card (onboard the 'tablet') all the time before.

Any reinstall / update / etc. resulted in disaster - Surface Book didn't work any more at all. Graphics cards didn't recognise my external monitors (32" 4K + 24") anymore.

IT-techs were at a loss. Made an appointment to turn the machine over to have it overhauled.

I decided to do some more 'trial & error'. Any way I cvonnected the external monitors, they weren't recognised.

Then, completely frustrated, I decided to eject the 'tablet' from the 'base'.  Then I reconnected them, and evrything worked again. Only the Intel Iris graphics card (onboard the 'tablet') was active again, and I decided to turn of 'hardware acceleration'completely.

And then: Photoshop worked again. Not 'blazing fast', no graphic acceleration, but it works. And maybe, just maybe, the IT-department will be able to get the damn Quadro RTX 3000 to work.

[Guest]

This is common to all of us here, on laptops, tablets, workstations, PC & MAC... we do everything we possibly can to try and fix the situation and we get to the common ending of  "well its not fast anymore but its not terrible" this is purely an Adobe issue. I just completed editing a job with some large panoramic images (some 25k pixels long) and they opened up just fine in Affinity Photo... multiple layers, cloning, masks, dodge.. burn.. everything.. not a single lag.

[working dog]

I too have lost so many hours of time - not to mention the frustration and loss of concentration - since the latest update.

I have a high spec mac pro and spend 5 to 10 seconds with the spinning beachball every click in PS. Feels like we've gone back to 1990!

[Guest]

The software worked fine in 1990 though! 🙂 

[Andre5FAC]

I turned off virtial sync in the video card drivers and then turned off the user of the graphics card in Photoshop and all the performance is back however this is a temporary solution as I would hope to use the power of the video card when using a photo editting program like Photoshop. This kind of defeats the purpose of having a Quadro card in my case.

[working dog]

after uninstalling PS completely and reinstalling from scratch, I seem yo have my speed back.

Tools are missing from the palltte and preferences are scrambled but no beachball so far!

[RachChrisPhoto79]

So when do the lawsuits begin? This is insane. My computer just crashed for the second time today while using Photoshop 2021. This is a brand new Mac, running on Catalina. I replaced my two year old computer in January, praying it would make a difference. It did not.
My work time has doubled. Adobe has given up helping me after a multitude of phone calls and shared screen sessions. They're doing nothing. 

Something is wrong yet I'm still being charged for a program that runs half as well as it did this time last year. I'm at my end. 

[Guest]

Thats the worst part... if we bought a tv and the speakers didnt work we could return it, if the brakes on our car didnt work.. we could return or fix it. At the moment we just have to cop it and have no recourse.

[MKSA]

Both 2020 and 2021 have been giving me issues, working nicely for a day or two then suddenly getting extremely slow. I reset preferences on 2021 yesterday after almost smashing the computer and all the problems are gone (for now) .... it seems maybe the caches or something are just growing and slowing it down. I will have to see how the next few days go but neither 2020 or 2021 is anywhere close to the performance of 2019 which Adobe refuses to allow us to install anymore. 

[bysea]

Just updated to the latest version (see below w/ other specs) and it seems to be running smoothly after launching it and waiting for a minute or two (or three). There was no delay after initial funkiness with startup, dumped it, started it again w/o any issues w same startup delay (loads a bunch of stuff in the background). I'm on a gaming laptop, nvidia GTX 1060, w/ dual drives (one SSD, one spinning), and dual NEC monitors + laptop monitor.
Maybe they're getting a handle on it, but as always, YMMV.

Adobe Photoshop Version: 22.3.1 20210406.r.122 990be2c x64
Number of Launches: 538
Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit
Version: 10 or greater 10.0.18362.1500
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:14, Stepping:3 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX2, HyperThreading
Physical processor count: 4
Logical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 2592 MHz
Built-in memory: 24532 MB
Free memory: 13475 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 22458 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 60 %