Known Participant

Question

Photoshop is extremely slow

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
October 7, 2020
28 replies
25057 views

Ive seen other posts here regarding photoshop running slow, but here's my 2 cents worth.

The new 2020 update is just cripplingly slow. I have a really fast PC as well as the benefit of a server farm for processing and rendering.

I've switched to legacy compositing, altered the ram usage, added, removed, and added scratch disks again and I don't use my C:\ drive for any scratch disk, also switched off PSD Compression.

Opening a file takes anything from 2-5 mins, even for a small 1mb file. Dragging a file from a folder or the desktop, takes again, anything from 2-5 mins. Clicking the visibility of Layers takes ages too, click the eyeball and nothing happens for quite a while, same re-enabling the layer or resizing something with a smart filter or that's a smart object. I cannot work this way.

The Creative Cloud App itself, is also a bloated, slow resource hog. Rebooting, the app almost always doesn't load properly, stating that it's being slow and I have to click restart. Just recently, my Libraries failed to load and I had to update the library plugin, surely, this could have been done via the million updates the CC App does, yet always has the same issues.

System Specs:

Windows 10 Pro, 64bit
Intel® Core™ i9-9900K Processor 5.3ghz
64 Gig DDR5 Ram
2 x nVidia 2080 Ti's (Bridged together) giving me 22Gig DDR 6 Video Ram
2TB Samsung 850 EVO 2 SSD
3 x Asus 4K Monitors at 3840 x 2160px

So, with these specs, why is photoshop so slow? No other CC Apps does this, only Photoshop and the CC App itself. I know it's not my PC or the build, it' has to be Photoshop because there a many, and I mean MANY posts like this one with Photoshop 2020. I hope it's fixed in the 2021 release or I'm cancelling my subscription.

This topic has been closed for replies.

NS23

Inspiring

Aside from being slow doing a lot of tasks - One doozy is that I can't open
files from the File menu it just disappears before I can select open or
new. Also, on a similar note PSD files can't be opened from Finder - have
to drag them onto the Photoshop dock icon. Save is constantly getting stuck
at 99% and the app is not responsive, usually coupled with disk save errors
leaving heaps of Adobe... temp files, etc... Ended up just giving up and
reverting back to 2022 where the same files are working fine.

MacOS Monterey 12.5

--

*Nick Sullivan *

Digital and Motion Graphics Designer

[personal information removed as per forum guidelines]

Farrellart

Known Participant

Sounds like a Hard drive issue.

NS23

Inspiring

Thanks for the input. However, if it was a hard drive issue, wouldn't you think I'd be experiencing the same problems with Photoshop 2022 and all Adobe and other software? It's very noticeably only Photoshop 2023

K

kevin landers

Participant

I have used and loved photoshop for 10+ years. I now hate it. Photoshop 2023 is 100% been distroyed with the new software is "Horrible." I spend hours, upon hours trying to solve missing and hidden controles. Worst experience ever from what was once an amazing software.

M

mosemalti

Known Participant

Hey Everyone,

I am currently desperately looking for answers. I posted here on the adobe forum. They gave me a couple of tips that I already knew, but then they stopped giving me more tips.

Here is a video clip showing photoshop performance on my PC. I left the task manager open to show that there is no load showing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZZg-xO744U

My Machine is a

Windows 11 Pro.
Core i9-9900k.

64Gb ddr4.
Nvidia 1080ti.
2 Samsung Nvme's (1 for windows and 1 for work)
1 Viewsonic Elite monitor. 2560 x 1440px - 165Mhz

Hopefully someone can help me out.

Thanks,

Etienne

Farrellart

Known Participant

That looks annoying. How is your scratch disk setup? It's always best to have it on a separate drive away from the OS and Photoshop.

I know the specs have changed for the PSCC2020, have you tried an earlier version of PS for testing/troubleshooting?

The bottleneck might be your graphics card, try disabling it in the preferences to see if that is the issue and put the monitor refresh rate down to 60Mhz ( temporarily ).

The problem with cloud-based software is they'll eventually make your computer obsolete for using their software, for that reason I always have CS5.5 and CC2019 installed for back-up as I know they are solid and perfect for producing my large format digital paintings ( 250cm wide@200ppi ). I have noticed a definite slow down with PS2022, they keep making changes that mess things up, even the transform tool has annoying glitches.

I would step back a few versions and compare the performance.

I hope this helps.

M

mosemalti

Known Participant

Hey, thanks for the reply.

I use two Samsung m2 drives. The first is the windows one, and the second is an empty drive, and I bought it to test it out as a scratch disk.

I had a long chat with Adobe, and I even gave them access to my PC to do some tests. The only solution they found is to use the 2020 version for now, which works slightly better than the new version. Still not good as the 2019 or earlier versions, which are not available anymore to download.

Re. Video card, I did a test with and without and at a lower refresh rate. Still same issues. I'm afraid of forking out money on a higher tier video card and ending up with the same problem.

Note: I tested out an Nvidia 1660 super, which didn't improve that much. Still really sluggish.

I hope they find a solution as I lost work to figure out this issue and still have similar problems.

They must understand that this is not hobbyist software; users earn a living out of Photoshop.

NS23

Inspiring

Hi all,

That's a very good point, was only wondering this exact thing a couple of
days ago. Why would anybody use the Magic Wand tool these days? With all
the new improved selection tools, e.g. Object Selection blows it away! I'm
sure there are a lot of other tools that fit the same criteria.

But to be honest I doubt this would be causing Photoshop to run slow, maybe
affect load start-up times but that's about it.

*Nick Sullivan*

*Digital and Motion Graphics Designer*

*CARNIVAL STUDIO*

(PII removed by moderator)

M

Michael_Visser

Participant

Photoshop is badly in need of sone pruning. So much new stuff has been added that it's become bloatware.

Not that the new stuff is bad, but there's a lot of outdated stuff that needs to go.

Why do outdated, useless tools like the Magic Wand still exist?

Let's go Adobe, it's time to clean out the underbrush!

KShinabery212

Community Expert

No issues on my PC thank goodness.

How old is your computer?

I would love to see your set. The three monitors sound intriguing.

I am running a 32" BenQ monitor and XP-Pen Artist 24 Pro.

Let's connect on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kshinabery/

M

Muadib

Participating Frequently

not sure if this is a direct reply to my post. i got this reply notification.

i do run on three monitors:

4k eizo, secondary dell, and cintiq on the side. powered by two 1080ti, 7700, 64gb.

cintiq is mostly off, unless painting.

H

Hakan5FEF

Participant

If you don't need to edit photography, USE FIGMA. It's blissfully fast. Switching between the two I can't understand how I used Ps all of these years.

M

Muadib

Participating Frequently

thanks,

i am actively looking for alternatives to photoshop and cc. i just cant handle this nonsense anymore.

photoshop has been the most reliable workhorse for decades.

each new version brings nothing new of interest to me and makes things unusable.

lasso tool is straight up broken. cant use it. updated to the last version, nothing is better.

i am looking forward to the day where i will not be tied to adobe software. ditched autodesk and some other subscription software, adobe is the last one. their incompetency is just incredible.

M

macsnapper

Known Participant

Photoshop is often terribly slow on my Windows 10 PC laptop. But it's inconsistent, so sometimes it works reasonably and sometimes it's a dog.

But even worse is that if Photoshop is running the other apps I usually have open, e.g. Affinity Publisher, ThumbsPlus and Microsoft ICE (Image Composit Editor) are grossly affected and sometimes almost unusable.

Potoshop seems to be hogging my system resources and doesn't seem to release them even after closure.

Farrellart

Known Participant

Just a thought, how's your scratch disk set up on your laptop, even if you have loads of RAM, Photoshop will take as much as it can get ( it has always been like this ) on my aging Art Workstation (Asus P9x79, i7 3820-3.6GHz, DDR3 32gb RAM, Nvidia 1070 8gb, dedicated 60gb SSD scratch disk ) PS runs fine and I can load up my 120x240cm @200 ppi digital paintings in around 10 seconds and there is no lag at all while digitally painting.

I am also wondering if it is a Win10 permissions issue, try installing PS outside of the protected C:\Program Files environment and see if that makes a difference, or maybe reseting PS settings might make a difference.

I find it odd that high end systems struggle with PS2021, which leans me towards some kind of configuration issue in either Win10 or PS, or a combination of both causing a slow down. This is the problem with subscription/cloud software, instead of the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' philosophy, the developers tinker with the code so people paying feel like they are paying for something new each update, which sometimes breaks the program on some set ups.

H

Hoover1979

Known Participant

PS got another update and has not improved at all. It STILL takes up to 10mins to open a small JPEG file. This is ridiculous. Adobe needs to fix this, but I doubt they will.

S

Sheamus91

Participant

I am having extremely slow issues with the new photoshop 2021, each update seems to make it worse and worse. It was fine on the PC last summer (2020), but now at this point, it's nearly un-usable.

I'm running a Ryzen 3950k with a Geforce RTX 2070 Super and 64gb of RAM. My system is OP for using photoshop, yet I can craft 3D models fully textured and rendered smoothly in 3DS Max and Blender with NO ISSUES at all.

This is a ripoff, what are you guys doing to your software to f*#$ it up this badly? And how long will it take to fix? I've been on support chat with them and they just scratch their heads, tossing me from tech member to tech member until they just tell me it's my computers problem, which is an absolute load of crap.

H

Hoover1979

Known Participant

I wonder if this issue is with Windows 10 PC's or if it affects Mac users too. at my work we use iMacs and the company is only using ACS2020 as they had too many performance issues with the CS2021.

We really need this fixed. PSCC2021 takes nearly 10mins to open a small JPEG.

H

Hoover1979

Known Participant

PS2021 is Still slow. It takes its sweet time to start and it takes a few mins to open any file, regardless of if it is a 4K PNG or a low-resolution JPEG. This is ridiculous (Ryzen 9 3900x, 32Gb 3200 DDR4, GTX1080). The more I read about this the more it looks like us using Windows 10 PC's are having issues. At my work, it runs flawlessly on their Mac's. I also find when using the Filter Forge 9 pro plugin take forever to render out my custom filters and barely use the CPU at all. I have been using PS to make HD texture replacements for retro video games but it is a constant uphill battle with PS2021 on my PC.

H

Hoover1979

Known Participant

After the last update, PS CC2021 is now even slower! This is ridiculous that so many of us can't properly run Photoshop on a Windows 10 PC.

Farrellart

Known Participant

I think it's because they keep tinkering and changing features for the sake of it. Yesterday I tried to render video, it did not work at all ( spinning wheel for two hours ). So I used 2020 and the render took 30 seconds. Maybe Adobe has interns making the code now.

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