Help! Photoshop CS6 hangs when using brush, clone, healing brush tools etc on Mac

[BarneyHamilton]

I am having a big problem when using the new CS6 on my Mac (os x 10.7.4). When switching to a new tool, like a brush, or clone stamp, or healing brush etc, Photoshop hangs for about 20 seconds before resuming. It's not 3rd party plug-ins, because I get the same behaviour when I run using the shift key and third party plug-ins are disabled. It doesn't happen every time, but it happens frequently. I've heard that others have had similar problems... are there any solutions - is it a known bug?

[Adam Jerugim]

I feel like we're starting to get a better understanding of the issue, but I need everyone's help getting me a very important data point:  can you get CS6 to hang if there aren't any other applications running on your system at the same time as PS CS6?

Thanks,

Adam

[Jesseham-jc1rvC]

Where did everyone go?  Well, Adam knows this already, but I can not confirm the hang when only Photoshop is running.  Likely apps that I had running when seeing the hang: Safari(probably with window open to gmail), iChat and Spotify.

[bcmorrison99]

Adam, you mean absolutely everything? Close Bridge as well? We're not going to get much work done but I will try to give it a shot when I'm back in the studio on Tuesday.

On another note - the suggestion from another user to click out of photoshop, then back, then back out and back to PS seems to give me back control. Annoying, but it works (so far).

[Adam Jerugim]

Yes, I mean absolutely everything - no other applications should be running at the same time as PS CS6.

Our suspicion is that the hangs when using CS6 are due to another application running at the same time as PS and stealing focus from it. 

Can you reproduce the hang if Photoshop CS6 is the only app running?  If not, what other applications do you have running when PS hangs?  If we can narrow down which app (or apps) aren't playing nice with PS (or vice-versa) that'll go a long way to helping us get this issue resolved.

Thanks again,

Adam

[bcmorrison99]

Adam,

I was able to give it a quick test this morning - no other applications at all were open, just Photoshop. I was unable to reproduce the hangs while using it for about 30 minutes; I was using lots of different tools and changing them frequently, and this kind of behaviour would normally inevitably lead to the issues we have been experiencing.

Normally, the applications I have open would be - Photoshop, Bridge, Firefox, Postbox, iCal. There are frequently others, but those are typically what I always have open.

I appreciate you taking time to look into this with us. But can I say that I hope that the "solution" to this problem is not to only have Photoshop open? That would really be a major annoyance.

What are the next steps here?

[Adam Jerugim]

The solution is to figure out which other app(s) are causing Photoshop to hang and then make whatever change is necessary to ensure that other apps can run concurrently with PS without it hanging  

That's where I need everyone's help.  The next step here is to identify which app(s) when run along with PS trigger the hang.  Any extra information that can be provided would be greatly appreciated.

Believe it or not, I actually feel like we're making progress on this one.

Thanks,

Adam

[bcmorrison99]

I'll try what I can over the next few days. Busy shooting schedule so we'll see.

[bcmorrison99]

I'm beginning to suspect iCal

[Jesseham-jc1rvC]

No iCal here.  Just Safari, iChat, Spotify and, if it counts as an app, the google notifier...

[edit] and possibly Illustrator.

[bcmorrison99]

Nevermind, I got it to hang without ical running. And just for the record, I have none of the apps running that Jesseham does ... is it likely that this isn't an issue related to any other specific application?

[AllynSar]

I just experienced a hangup with only Bridge and Photoshop running. It was cleared by the window dance described earlier. It is important to note that the first touch of the Wacom pen was detected but dragging was not done. This problem is so random that I would be looking for a race condition associated with preparing to track dragging. Since I was not interacting with Bridge at the time, I suspect it was idle. Bridge was used to bring an image into Photoshop. I performed two curve adjustments and then activated an action to perform localized midtone contrast. That action selected a brush tool for me. Before using it, I resized it using the control-option on-screen mechanism. The first brush stroke caused the hangup.

[Was DYP]

I finely found a hang that I could repeat everytime. After making a selection with the Magic Wand and then going to Lasso I could get it to hang everytime and not be able to do anything in PS for 5 to 10 seconds.

http://www.dypinc.com/Photoshop_Hang_on_Lasso.txt

[Chris Cox]

How are you switching tools?  (I tried keys, mouse, and tablet)

What sort of document?  (I tried 8.5x11 300dpi RGB 8 bit)

A screen recording might help.

(we still can't reproduce this -- there's some variable missing)

[BarneyHamilton]

Adam, or Chris

Any progress in solving this yet?

[Chris Cox]

Nope, we haven't been able to repeat the problem.

There is some factor that we're missing - something that you're doing, or something on your system that differs from most systems.

We need to know that missing factor to reproduce it.

[BarneyHamilton]

What's the best way of doing this for you?

I've seen some software developers take remote control of computer to solve problems - would that help?

[Chris Cox]

We might do something like that, but after the July holidays.

[Brandman]

This is also happening to me. I use a wacom tablet. it seams to happen more when i make a quick mask. it also seems that in lion when it happens i go to mission control and click on the desktop that has my photoshop document. and then click on the direct selection tool and that seems to knock it out of its stuper a little faster, but could be just me giving myself something to do while it happens

[Was DYP]

Because of this bug I really don't use Photoshop CS6 anymore, but I had it opened by accident when I went to do some background removal today. Almost every time I made a selection with the Wand tool then did a Expand and Contract to eliminate small pin prick areas and then choose the Lasso tool PS would hang as soon as I tried to use it. If I walked off and let it set for 5 minutes it still would not come back. The only way to get PS back was to click back and forth on the desktop a number of times. This is not a workable solution so this why I use PSCS5 to get real work done, but I though I would do a search to see if there have been solutions to this issue and could not seem to find any.  I have the latest Wacom driver (released 7-11-12) installed.

So has anyone found any conflicts that cause this hang? I gave up testing this hang because I could never find any consistency in these hangs. Even today it would do this 7 of 10 times when doing the exact same thing.

CS5 has no hangs like this at all on the same system, so why does CS6 have this bug.

[bcmorrison99]

I can't correlate this behavior to any other specific application, and I'm not sure that would mean anything - if you look at the whole discussion here, there was another user who mentioned what apps he had running and the list had no overlap with mine. So we're not looking at any specific outside culprit. Is there any real point for me, personally, figuring out that it's only "Application X" that causes this to happen (indeed, if there is anything specific one at all that causes it), only to have another user say it's Application Y, and another Application Z?

[Fried_Egg_Sandwich]

Are we any closer to resolving this issue? Any updates greatly appreciated.

[geigreg]

Same problems here. Lasso tool just freezes and when I hit Esc it allows me to use other tools. Have similar issues with dodge and burn tools hanging for 5 or more minutes. Using Wacom tablet. Really frustrating. Adobe? These issues make it really tough to use the app and be productive.

Help?

g

[bcmorrison99]

I hope that Adobe hasn't given up on following this thread ...

[Adam Jerugim]

We haven't given up and FWIW I'd still really like to figure this one out.  I was out of the office on vacation and now that I'm back at work I'm ready to re-engage here.

I have one other thing I'd like someone to try (as we continue to gather data to try to resolve this).  Try reducing the overall memory allocated to PS from the default (60-80%) to under 2GB.  Does the problem still occur?

[sean_b99]

reduced it to 2000mb and didn't get the problem although as it's intermittent with me I'm not sure that's necessarily conclusive - turned it back to 6gb and didn't get the issue either - I'll leave it at just under 2gb for a while and see if issue returns...