Photoshop Crashing Mountain Lion

Question

Ive been dealing with my mac crashing seemingly randomly for over 10 weeks. I've taken it to the genius bar 3 times, had a video card replaced, and I recently got elevated to Tier 1 apple support. The only software I have installed on my machine is Photoshop and Illustrator. I've been exchanging crash logs back and forth with apple support over the last 2 weeks. The last email I got from apple support said they found something in my logs that pointed to Photoshop being the culprit. Here is what they sent:
Feb 27 11:20:45 Daniels-iMac.local WindowServer[82]: _CGXGetWindowOrderingGroup: Operation on a window 0x5a requiring rights 0x5 by caller Photoshop
Feb 27 11:21:08 Daniels-iMac.local Adobe Photoshop CS6[310]: clip: empty path.
Feb 27 11:22:45 Daniels-iMac.local Adobe Photoshop CS6[310]: clip: empty path.
Feb 27 11:22:45 Daniels-iMac.local Adobe Photoshop CS6[310]: clip: empty path.
Feb 27 11:24:47 Daniels-iMac.local Adobe Photoshop CS6[310]: clip: empty path.
Feb 27 11:31:23 Daniels-iMac.local WindowServer[82]: _CGXGetWindowOrderingGroup: Operation on a window 0x5a requiring rights 0x5 by caller Photoshop
Feb 27 11:32:07 Daniels-iMac.local Adobe Photoshop CS6[310]: clip: empty path.
Feb 27 11:33:48 Daniels-iMac.local Adobe Photoshop CS6[310]: clip: empty path.
Feb 27 11:39:11 Daniels-iMac.local Adobe Photoshop CS6[310]: clip: empty path.
Feb 27 11:39:11 Daniels-iMac.local Adobe Photoshop CS6[310]: clip: empty path.
Feb 27 11:39:30 Daniels-iMac.local WindowServer[82]: _CGXGetWindowOrderingGroup: Operation on a window 0x57 requiring rights 0x5 by caller Photoshop
Feb 27 11:41:09 Daniels-iMac.local WindowServer[82]: _CGXGetWindowOrderingGroup: Operation on a window 0x5a requiring rights 0x5 by caller Photoshop
Feb 27 11:43:01 Daniels-iMac.local WindowServer[82]: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Photoshop" for over 1.00 seconds. Server has re-enabled them.
Feb 27 11:43:03 Daniels-iMac.local WindowServer[82]: reenable_update_for_connection: UI updates were finally reenabled by application "Photoshop" after 2.36 seconds (server forcibly re-enabled them after 1.00 seconds)
Feb 27 11:43:28 Daniels-iMac.local Adobe Photoshop CS6[310]: clip: empty path.
Then the system was force-restarted.
These are the logs the engineers reviewed.  They may not make perfect sense but with Adobe's help it will.
Any ideas on how to proceed?

Answer 1

If you have a freeze or kernel panic, the odds are it's hardware based (or a driver for a piece of hardware). Yes, it could be a bad system install. The only way to know for an EXACT fact is to do a total disk wipe and fresh install–which of course is extreme (and a pain pain in the arse).
But a spinning beach ball of death (SBBD) certainly points to hardware. Note, it could be ANY hardware connected but likely CPU, PCI controllers, HDs. It could be bad ram, but that shouldn't normally cause a hardware freeze...less likely (but possible) could be any PCI card or any piece of hardware that's connected directly to the motherboard or PCI slots. Really hard to tell...but, regardless of what Apple may say, software simply can't (or shouldn't be allowed to by the OS) bring the hardware down.
It ain't Photoshop...but Photoshop is a really great canary in the coal-mine. If ANYTHING is wrong with the hardware, Photoshop is really good at exposing it. Unfortunately (or fortunately-depending on your point of view).