Photoshop CS5 freezes

[Yefolio-KBIqSr]

Hi,

Have been using PS CS5 since the trial became available. But seems CS5 responds a lot slower than CS4. Sometimes, it just freezes or slow the whole computer down when I tried to open a many-layer file. I had to force quit the application, It's really frustrated because the system responds very slow even I tried to quit PS. Once it's quite, everyting's back to normal. Does anyone have this problem?

Thanks,

[samhamann]

Let me add this to the mix. When I installed, I was instructed to install adobe acrobat 9. I was just making a pdf in Acrobat 9 and everything slowed way down- it was likethe windows were opening in SLOW motion...coincidence?

[Chris Cox]

Since the cause we're looking at now involves corruption in Apple's font cache -- that could cause problems in many applications that use Cocoa (which includes Acrobat).

[lkemper]

Would that be affect those of us that are experiencing freezes but not on Snow Leopard?

[_scott_]

lkemper wrote:

Would that be affect those of us that are experiencing freezes but not on Snow Leopard?

Yup.

[Chris Cox]

To add to Scott's statement: Yes.

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

I put a thought to this as well.

A font cache problem can be tied the way an application reacts to a certain font(s).

It would seem to me that the users involved with this problem may have on their system fonts that do not react well to the OS, PS r another application or plug in.

The plug in need not be a PS plug in, which is what i was trying to get at in a previous post.

For instance if the font cache is bloated by another usage outside of PS CS 5 but that application can live with this bloat it still might effect Phoshop which might not be able to accept this bloat.

Such as this scenario say the application and or plug is is Illustrator which is running 32 bit Illustrator might slow a bit but it is happy basically with that but PS CS 5 running 64 bit says oh no I want to run like the wind and you are just to much baggage for me. Then you have a problem.

And maybe only sometimes since some functions really require 64 bit enhancement and others might not care that much.

That is my thought about this for all it is worth.

[Khaos2800]

Well I first have to say I love the addition of the wet brush in PS and the 64 bit support all around.

Like so many others here I'm having issues with the type tool. After opening PS I can click on any tool, EXCEPT for the type tool.

When I click the type tool I get the spinning pinwheel, and it takes roughly around 30-45 seconds (with no document open) for PS to stop freezing up and consuming all the memory.

Note: Any additional clicks on the type tool work as normal, after the initial freeze.(with no document)

The only thing that's seemed to help is:

     -Delete any fonts that FontBook doesn't validate.

     -Delete the system Font cache. (Terminal: ' sudo atsutil databases –remove ' )

     -Disable Font Preview

     -Disable Open GL

     -Click on the type tool before opening documents and let initial freeze process.

( I've found I can still use Font Preview if I disable open GL. BUT you have to wait for each font preview to build every time you open PS. This also still causes a freeze to occur. It's still not much help, unless you really need to see your fonts.)

*Now I admit that I rarely use PS for typography, but I discovering this issue yesterday from mis-keying and hitting "t" causing PS to freeze up and stop responding at all, and making me lose my progress on that piece. It does help to pre-load the type tool to prevent PS freezing entirely, but this extra step and time is a bit of an annoyance.*

My best guess is the type tool is at the root of the problems, and not so much the fonts or cache.

I hope the bug is found soon, and an appropriate patch from Adobe and/or Apple is released.

System:

Mac Pro
OS X 10.5.8

2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
14 GB DDR2 @ 800MHz  (8GB allotted to PS)

2+ TB of Scratch Space

ATI Radeon HD 2600 ( REALLY WISH ATI WOULD MAKE FirePro MAC CARDS! )

[Chris Cox]

My best guess is the type tool is at the root of the problems, and not so much the fonts or cache.

There are a few bugs in Adobe's font code that we're testing fixes for.

But right now the serious problems are in the Apple font code that we call (things like  "what is the file path for this font?" = crash, memory corruption, etc.). We're working on a number of issues related to Apple's font code and font cache.  When we have more information, then we can figure out if the bugs might be worked around, or if we have to wait for Apple to issue a fix.

[lkemper]

I have no idea if this is relevant but I had a freeze and did Force Quit (which actually worked after 4- 5 minutes) and when I restarted PS I got the message that PS encountered a problem with my display driver and has turned off GPU enhancements and I need to download a new driver (which is a whole new story since it is not available and I have to do a whole system reinstall).  But since then I have had no problems and I can use the Text tool with no problems -  it use to work but was very s-l-o-w.  I have the nvidia GeForce GT 120 display cards (2).

[lkemper]

I take that back, I just tried to cancel a Save As dialog box and it froze again!

[Chris Cox]

I have no idea if this is relevant but I had a freeze and did Force Quit (which actually worked after 4- 5 minutes) and when I restarted PS I got the message that PS encountered a problem with my display driver and has turned off GPU enhancements

You managed to quit Photoshop in the middle of an OpenGL call, so Photoshop thinks that the OpenGL call crashed the app, and that the video card driver has a bug 🙂

[_scott_]

When that happens with an nVidia 8800 card I simply close the image and reopen it...OGL is back then.

[vel0city_uk]

Any updates or workarounds in progress?

[Chris Cox]

We are still investigating.

But so far, it looks like the freezes are all due to corrupt font caches in Apple's side of things.   Deleting the Apple font cache has solved the problem so far (but then means we can't do any further testing on that system).     What we're still really unsure about is how a corrupt font cache causes problems for the Window Server.

We have not been able to reproduce the freezes here at Adobe, so we can't debug the code and figure out the Window Server problem.

Without a reproduceable case, all we have are guesses.

But we're continuing to test, and work with Apple to figure out what is going wrong with their font caches.

[lkemper]

Do you recommend we try and delete our Font Cache and if so where is it located and what are the negative consequences?

[Chris Cox]

If you are experiencing hangs that affect the whole system, you can try clearing the font cache.

See http://www.macworld.com/article/139383/2009/03/fontcacheclear.html

You want to remove ALL the caches, not just per user.

And I suggest rebooting after removing the cache.

[nnnickk]

I tried this fix-- cleared the caches, rebooted, started working in PS CS5.  As soon as I select the type tool, beachballs.

[lkemper]

And I am not sure I am having the same type issue because I can use the type tool most of the time, it is other things, just like opening a file, going to Mini Bridge, using content aware scale, etc that cause mine to freeze and it

is not always the same thing every time and it seems fairly random but I can count on 2-3 hard freezes a day.

[nnnickk]

If you're going to use Photoshop CS5 and suffer from these problems I would recommend keeping the "Force Quit Application" window open at all times-- or memorize command-option-ESC. A few less steps to deal with the crash.

For me, that won't work because it freezes too often-- so Photoshop CS5 is unusable.  I'm forced to use CS4 until this is resolved.

I have to remove horses from pastures the old fashioned way!

[Chris Cox]

Nicknlsn - that sounds like you just have a bad font.

We're talking about freezes that affect the whole machine (not just Photoshop).

[nnnickk]

It may be possible, but I don't have too many fonts installed (400)-- however, as mentioned I'm able to use CS4 (and all other installed programs) without problem. 

As well, I recall a couple instances where I didn't select the font tool and I got the slowdown.  That hasn't happened recently as I haven't been using PS CS5.

In an effort to isolate a potentially problematic font, I tried removing all my fonts-- then flushing the font cache-- then I was able to work with the type tool (I only tried for a few minutes) and then attempted to load blocks of fonts and test out PS. 

I would load a block of fonts and try the type tool.  This worked for a while as I reloaded nearly my entire font collection-- but then I started working with a font and after maybe 5 minutes I got the program hang / window server 100.5% usage.

Again, no problems in CS3 or CS4, nor any other program in CS5 (AE works fine, Illustrator, Flash), nor any non-adobe program that uses fonts.

I think most of the people here are reporting the same thing-- a freeze that they can break out of eventually by using "force quit".

[_scott_]

The performance of CS4 or any other app is irrelevant. Every other app, including CS4 has an entirely different code base.

[J453]

Nick, the font problems are specific to Cocoa/64bit api, so that's why you won't see them in Carbon/32bit apps (Like Photoshop CS4).

[lkemper]

So would they effect Lightroom3?

[DG. David Escalante]

Im experiencing the same problem.

Photoshop CS5 suddenly freeze (it do not crash since the program itself still running). But I always have to use "force quit"

It mostly occurs when I chose the type tool (I mostly activate it from the keyboard shortcut), but it also crash randomly when I zoom in-out or when I drag something, this second is rare but still happening.

I noticed when photoshop freeze a process called "windowserver" use 100% of my processor and this always happens don´t matter what trigger the freeze on photoshop.

Im using Mac OS X 10.5.8 and my video chipset is not supported so I have not hardware acceleration.

All my fonts are verified and there is not conflict, error or any kind of corruption.

- David