Photoshop 2020 Slow performance on macOS Catalina

[Susan-G]

Trying to work in Photoshop has become a nightmare, editing time has trippled, work lost, not to mention my emotional state of frutstration.

Photoshop would bomb out without any warning, or it's so slow, or it would freeze and only way out is switching the computor off.

After having my new iMac (6months) checked twice and software upgrade from Mojave to Catalina, the problem persists. It happened in Mojave and in Catalina as well. 

Please help.

Susan

[Sahil.Chawla]

Hi Susan,

Sorry to hear that Photoshop is performing slow on macOS Catalina, would you mind telling us the exact version of Photoshop you're working on? You can verify the version by going to Help > System Info

Also, you may try optimizing the performance of Photoshop and let us know how it goes: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html

Regards,
Sahil

[OHKO_53]

Hi, I have the same Problems.

I run Photoshp 2020 on OS Catalina Macbook Pro End 2019 30 GB RAM. It takes 2-3 Minutes for Photoshop to even start up. The older Photoshop Version runs much faster. PS 2020 also crashes every day. Optimizing the preferences does not change anything. Other Problem solving solutions available?

Kind regards,

Katja

[DaveJCummings]

Which version of Photoshop 2020 are you using? Certain versions have been reported to work better. I do illustrations in PS and 21.0.3 seems to work more smoothly than 21.1.1. But it's an issue they are aware about and are addressing 

[JJMack]

If the older version run much faster and does not crash. Why are  you using the new version that does not work well for you and crashes?  Wait for the next update for version 2020 to see if problem that effect you are fixed. In the mean time use 2019 or any older version that works well for you.  I wait a long time before removing version of  Photoshop.  If a version runs very will and still has all the functions an older version has  I will remove the older version. You always need more than one version of Photoshop installed.  You never know when Adobe will brake the current version the next time.  I do not enable Auto Update.  I wait some to see what problem users are having with it to decide if I will install it.  Currently I have CS3, CS6, CC 2014, CC 2018, CC 2019 and 2020 installed. I may remove CC 2018 soon  CC219 is a good replacement for it.  I have removed CS5, 2015, 2015.5, 2017.   I can re-install those that I have removed for I downloaded Adobe stand alone installers for them.  There are Problems in Photoshop you need to be able to work around Adobe problems. Some may never be fixed.

[adamt18510785]

I just bought affinity photo, it's half off and extremely fast and works better imo and I've been using PS since 1995. I got sick of having to jump from version to version. Like shape tools in 2018 are good but the smooth brushes are laggy. 2019 has better smooth brushes but shapes and pen tools are sticking. 2020 is unusable.
I start about a month ago moving all my client's new projects to other software hopefully by this time next year I'll be cloud-free and stop paying monthly for bloated software that baby steps new functions and never fixes it's issues.  
 

[OHKO_53]

Well, since my update to PS 2020 I can not use Save for web with PS 2019. I get an error message – unknown error. I can't fix it or find a solution to save my life. That's why I am stuck with PS 2020. 😞

[Susan-G]

Hi Sahil

Thank you for your reply. I use the latest update of 2020 version.

What I did in the meantime was adding Photoshop to Full Disk Access in my computer's System Preference, Security & Privacy (Privacy) block. Performance seems to be better when processing 1 image at a time, it starts to drag a bit when doing up to 10 images. I haven't tested big bulk processsing yet.

I've done the optimizing Photoshop performance just now, as you suggested with the link you send, so will see how it performs after this.

Best wishes

Susan

[adamt18510785]

Welcome to the club, there are several threads about how PS 2020 is unusable on all types of systems and adobe performance fixes don't work. The only solution we found was to buy other software until they fix the issues.
You can read all the problems people are having in this thread. 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/photoshop-2020-running-slow/td-p/10719152?page=1

[rszatko]

I am having these issues as well. I just bought a new imac last week and am using the latest version of Catalina and Photoshop (21.1.2). When I run Photoshop my whole computer slows down, not just when I'm working in the app. I hope this is fixed soon b/c it is driving me nuts as I work in photshop everyday for most of my work day.

[adamt18510785]

Welcome to party, so far the best options are going back to 2018/2019 or getting affinity photo that's 50% off now. 

Adobe hasn't even acknowledged this

[Susan-G]

Hi

I might have solved the problem parcially. My mac is not that slow anymore, although I think it should be faster, but at least Photoshop is not crashing on me.

What I did: 

I first uninstalled Photoshop then added it again from my Adobe account.

Then on my mac in System Preferances - Privacy menu I added Photoshop to Accessability and Full Disk Access.

Hope it will help

Susan

[Susan-G]

Hi

I might have solved the problem parcially. My mac is not that slow anymore, although I think it should be faster, but at least Photoshop is not crashing on me.

What I did: 

I first uninstalled Photoshop then added it again from my Adobe account.

Then on my mac in System Preferances - Privacy menu I added Photoshop to Accessability and Full Disk Access.

Hope it will help

Susan

[Boyd_DuPree]

Our design business has been using Photoshop since it launched in 1990 and we have moved through every system upgrade, on practically every Mac out there. I finally upgraded to Catalina (10.15.5 on my MacPro) and downloaded Photoshop 2020. I expect little bugs here and there; work arounds, etc.  

But this is the first time Photoshop has failed to meet basic performance standards. Like, when I drag a brush across my screen (2300 X 1800px, 300dpi), I literally only see my brush stroke and a super pixelated area of the papery layer underneath. Everything else is just blank (white) because it won't render the entire page. Wait, what?! 

I've been such a fan, such an advocate for Adobe over the span of my entire career. I still want to be. But why should we all have to find ourselves here searching for answers on how to make photoshop 2020 useable? Why should we even be thinking we have to bail on 2020 and go backwards? Shoudn't there be some basic expectation met right out of the box? 

I didn't trash CC 2018 (skipped 2019 because I feared losing plugins) version but now I can't even 'save for web' with it now. Why should I have to google my way out of these problems? I'm still a fan but I'm just not getting why some of these huge issues weren't discovered and addressed in testing before it was launched. I mean, Catalina launched Oct. 2019, some 8 months ago. 

Please help me not have to bail on the app that has literally helped defined my productivity, my creativity, my career, my life for 30 years. Note to readers: I don't even know if there's something else out there. I don't want to even look! 🙂 Thank you.  

[john saxon photo]

Yep. I've been using Photoshop forever and have never experienced the kind of laggy performance I'm getting on my new (not M1) Mac Mini 32GB 6 core i7. It's truly ridiculous and nearly unuseable. I'm cropping a little 400px square image and dragging the crop corners is super slow and choppy. Just insanely bad. I halfway expect to hear the old beep boop of a telephone modem starting up. So I buy a brand new fancy Mac, pay Adobe $10/ month for the latest greatest and I get performance from 15 years ago. Thanks, Adobe. 

[wnwka]

Seems Adobe don't want Professionals anymore. The Main target of Adobe seems to be making the program user-friendlier for non-professionals to get more people paying them every month. I'm a freelancer and this program cost me Money and Time. There are huge performance issues since at least 2019.

And the fact that they send a mail a couple of years ago, where they say that we even not allowed using older versions of Photoshop due to license reasons drives me crazy.

I've to work with these programs to earn money, do you understand?

Instead, you're just focusing on my money without giving me what I pay you for.

The End of an era