Photoshop CS5 slow as molasses

I just upgraded from CS3 to CS5 because I needed RAW support for my new camera which was not available in CS3 and ACR 4.x. Well now I can open those files but working on them is no fun anymore. There is a significant lag between the the cursor motion and the actual drawing. Using the lasso tool or the spot healing tool the actual drawing is about half and inch behind where the cursor is.I'm running Windows 7 x64 and everything was honky dory in CS3. I don't understand why a new SW version would be slower in drawing performance on the same system compared to an older version. Shouldn't it be faster and more performant? I understand that new functions like content aware fill etc. may need more CPU horsepower, but why would simple drawing, lasso, healing brush, and brushes in general be slower than before? I don't understand.

LOL, some nVidia fan creates a test program that shows off some esoteric 3D filtering strength of a nVidia card as compared to ATI, and you call it "a severe filtering issue".
In all seriousness, in the examples posted I like the look of the results from the ATI better.
Can you name a specific operation in a specific piece of software where that "filtering issue" is going to be troublesome? Or how it might affect a Photoshop session? Do you even know whether Photoshop uses any of those filtering features, even in the 3D Extended code? Do you know what the tradeoffs between speed and quality are in this situation? Did you notice the frame rates in some of those screens?
The stuff these graphics programmers (of games most likely) are debating is WAY out there on the cutting edge of graphics rendering, and reading through the comments it's clear even the "experts" can't agree what's "better". From the looks of things I suspect they may be nVidia and AMD employees arguing publicly, frankly. It's good for us; competition will make all the products better.
I suspect the "severe filtering issue" listed might make it more difficult to see the reflections in the venom dripping from the fangs of the snake that's in the grass across the street in the latest 3D shootemup, but it has little to do with Photoshop or anything most of us might run on our computers.
But I encourage you to buy the card that makes you happy. The good news is that even the cheap ones have teraflop power nowadays.
-Noel

Similar Messages

Photoshop CS5 Slow Panning

Hi, I started this discussion in a different thread (Photoshop CS5 Very Slow Liquify) - my problem concerns panning in Photoshop CS5, which is very slow and jerky when compared to Photoshop CS4. To go into more detail this is my set up and the problem I'm finding.
I'm using a brand new MacBook Pro i7 with 4GB Ram. My computer is set to Automatic Graphic Switching (I have also tried it with automatic graphic switching turned off, forcing it to use the high performance graphic card, with exactly the same results). In Photoshop CS5 prefs, it is set to enable OpenGL Drawing and in the advanced setting it is set to Advanced (Again, here I have tried all the other settings, including disabling OpenGL with the same results).
When I open a 21MP image, zoomed to 100% and try to pan across the image using the trackpad on my MBP, the response is very slow and jerky (when moving slowly you can see that the image jumps several pixels in the direction of the movement rather than moving smoothly). It takes approximately 5 'sweeps' of the trackpad to move across the entire image.
Compare this to the same image opened in Photoshop CS4, panning is much smoother and more responsive and only takes 2 sweeps of the track pad to move across the image.
Incidently the slow panning is also evident in Adobe Camera Raw 6.0, and is if anything even more slow and unresponsive when compared to ACR 5.7.
This direct comparison between Photoshop CS5 and CS4 ( and ACR 6 & 5.7) on the same computer with the same settings is evident to me that there is a real issue here with the new software.

I know this is a Mac thread, but I thought this information might help.
It is very clear that this problem is an Adobe software issue and not hardware or OS brand or version.
If panning can be good anywhere (which it is), it can be equally good everywhere. Somebody at Adobe has the software doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.
I'm on Win 7. Desktop. Mouse. i5 3.2GHz 8GB NVidia GT320   21 MegaPixel file
In Photoshop CS5, when I pan (click and drag) with the hand tool @100% (or any magnification):
Open GL OFF:     Panning is perfect, as if the image is mechanically connected to the mouse.
Open GL ON (any combination of settings):   Panning is pretty good (tolerable), but jerky and should be fixed.
Bridge:
21MP file @100% (preview mode: spacebar + mouseclick). Panning is pretty good/jerky, about like in Photoshop with OGL on.
When I check "Use Software Rendering" the panning becomes more jerky and on the verge of intolerable.
Adobe Camera Raw 6.1:
21MP CR2 file @ any magnification. Panning is totally unuseable and makes me want to NEVER buy or use anything Adobe EVER again!!!!
(200% and greater the panning is a little less bad than it is at 100% or lower)
Using the spot removal tool in ACR is an equally HORRIFYING experience.
Why must I report this stuff. Why don't I get paid for all this troubleshooting? Adobe is supposed to deliver a finished product. If I delivered unfinished junk like this in my business, I'd be horrifyingly embarrassed!
Please Adobe, I NEVER want extra features if they don't work right. I ALWAYS want a fully debugged program with fewer features over a buggy (beta?) program with more features.
There are lots of other things newly wront with CS5 (over earlier versions) but that is for a different thread.
There are a few things in CS5 that I like, but this thing should still be a beta in the development, debugging, and refining stages.

Photoshop CS5 - Slow launch time Mac

Takes a long time to launch: Starts out "application not responding", then rainbow pinwheel for a while, then finally it "Intialized Type Tool". Usually good to go after that.

When I got my Mini in June, it had 4Gb DDR3. I installed CS5.5 and CS6 Master Collections. CS5.5 ran "OK" but CS6 was slow and my Photoshop wouldn't enable 3D because of the integrated GPU and shared VRAM was only 256Mb with that setup. I got 16Gb from Crucial and installed it, and even with Mavericks, things run fast. The oNLY time I see any lag is when opening or saveing a file, and that's Finder, not Photoshop, becuase I get the "spinner" for about 30 seconds before I can see a file to open or a folder to save.
Have you reset your PRAM recently? or your Photoshop preferences?

Photoshop CS5 slow to save .psd

Hello!
Im running a 6.2. Macbook Pro with 2.4GHz i5 and 8gb of RAM.
The problem is, that whenever I save a .psd file it takes awfully long time for the "Writing photoshop format"-bar to progress. For example an image from my dslr with only few layers (photoshop shows the document size to be under 700mb) it can take almost a minute.
This is pretty frustrating when saving a file between steps of editing - it really disturbs my workflow. The funny thing is, that it doesnt seem to have any meaning whether I have the file on a external drive or the laptops drive. So I dont think it's the drive's fault, I could always be mistaken.
I dont experience these problems when using older Imac's at our school running CS5 - with them the save-command is always instant. I also never remember waiting so long for saving to happen with previous Photoshop versions.
What gives? How should I configure this to be bearable or is this how it actually works?
Already tried:
- Re-Installing CS5 (also using the CS5 CleanUp utility)
- Defragmenting my laptops harddrive (restoring the os from time-machine)
- Setting the option for "Maximize .psd and .psb file compatibility" to "never"
- Trying out different memory usage settings (just randomly testing different values - doesnt seem to make a difference)
- Trying out different history & Cache settings
- Disabling GPU usage
- Trying different Scratch disks (external with FW800 and also making a partition on my Macbook HD (I know it isnt supposed to help if its on the same physical drive))
- All updates are installed (CS5 & OSX)
Is something wrong or is a i5 macbook pro with 8gb of memory slower to do this than a core2duo Imac from 2008 with 4gb of memory. Or Am I just looking at the wrong things.

There is probably nothing wrong with your install or your computer.
large layered photoshop files (afaik) (PSD and PSB) use heavy lossless compression that is not very fast and single-threaded... almost all of my files save at a relatively slow rate of 8MB/s (on a fully stuffed mac pro) due to the "compression). try flattening your files... they should write then at almost full HD speed. alternatively, as long as your files are below 2/4GB, save them as layered TIFF files with little/no compression... much faster than PSD. (but also check your system/PS memory usage... if you encounter heavy system swap and PS swap at the same time, your computer will also become very slow).

Photoshop CS5 slow Save for Web (Win 7, 64 bit)

Hi.
I have problem with save for web in PS CS5 (12.0.1). It is extremely slow. For example selecting anything from menus takes couple of seconds. I deleted PS preferences files but that didn't help.
Any suggestions how to fix this?
Thanks.
My system is Win7 x64, Intel i7 930, 8gb RAM.

Nothing should be slow on a machine like yours.
Some possible suspects:
Make sure you have updated your video drivers from the web site of the maker of your video card.
Check what other software you have running on your computer. How many processes are running? Have you installed tons of "handy" stuff? All that takes resources.
See if you are having system errors by looking in the Windows System Event Log.
-Noel

Photoshop CS5 suddenly slow.

Never seen this before. My 8 core 2.8 GHz Mac Pro has 10 GB RAM and a blank 100 GB scratch disk. Photoshop is always quick. Has been for years. Suddenly today, Photoshop is slow like molasses to open & save files. Lots of progress bars and wait cursors. Everything else on the Mac is fine. It boots quickly & normally, and other apps are happy. My boot drive, a clean installed Mountain Lion system, says S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified. In Activity Monitor, a process with ID # 0, Kernel Task, was using 700 to 800 MB RAM, while another process, mds, with ID # 44, is using 350 MB RAM. Does anybody know what is going on?
I should add that I booted from a backup system and its copy of Photoshop was also doing the same thing. In addition, a high level troubleshooter on Apple Discussions informed me that my present level of 500 MB RAM for Kernel Task is normal. So all I know is Photoshop is suddenly slow.

Gary Politzer wrote:
I have rebooted numerous times. Interesting that you are aware of others with this issue.
I was thinking specifically of this thread: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1026715
There's a fair bit of noise in that thread, and at least some folks found the 13.0.1 update to fix things up or them.
You do have the 13.0.1 update, right?
-Noel

Photoshop CS5 very slow performance, MacBook Pro i7

Hi, I've noticed some posts on slow screen redraw, but my issue seems to be with specific performance with web based files having many layers and layer groups.
A sample file is a 27mb psd. It has lot of layers (525), mostly type layers (limited to 3-4 typefaces in the file) and layer groups. If I select a particularly large layer group and try to move it on the canvas, I get the Adobe throbber cursor icon for at least 20 seconds. Even small layer groups bring up the throbber cursor for a few seconds. Overall, things seem much slower than CS4. Not good! And I'm just speaking of basic operations, not hitting intensive tools or major filters yet.
I've looked at the site below, but not much information except the option to purchase some scripts to 'warm-up' Photoshop. After what I spent on Design Premium, I don't think I should have to purchase third party scripts to warm it up. (I did experiment with the tiles option under performance pref's, but upping that made opening files take 2 minutes, where before opening was achieved in 10-15 seconds.
http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html#OptimizingPhotoshopCS5
I have a brand new MacBook Pro i7, 8GB, 7200 internal drive. I installed everything from a fresh install of Snow Leopard. CS4 has never been installed on this Mac.
Any thoughts?

if you have 4GB RAM, the system would need about 1-2GB,
so if you quit all other apps and only run PS, it has 2-3GB RAM left.
you can set RAM-usage in percentage, in the settings menu of photoshop,
i set it to 70%, the rest is for osx.
so lets say PS uses 2GB RAM in your case, the more hires images you open at once and the more layers they have,
and the bigger they are, the 2GB RAM are gone and PS will use the scratch disc for the mentioned images you opened at once, which is also configured in the settings menu. usage of a scratch disc (PS writes data to the scratch disc permanently) will slow down overall performance, it may lagg and everything is slower than before (in my experience). best for scratch disc usage is a separate, fast, internal disc, as huge as possible (50-250GB discsize and empty, no files on it, so that PS can write continously, in order to avoid disc-fragmentation, which would slow down the writing process additionally)
thats the reason i would add 8GB RAM.
RAM is very important for photoshop CS5.
(also processor clock speed and number of cores - in the moment 2 cores are enough
as CS5 isnt optimized yet for more than 4 or 6 cores. more to come soon, i hope...
in my case, i added 24GB RAM, cause i want to avoid usage of a scratch disc at all. this is a huge gain of performance for myself.
i never liked my old scratch disc, as working was terrible slow with it. i also had only 4GB RAM in my last mac, and working was no fun
i work on large format files, 50-100cm at 300dpi and lots of layers, each layer has to be seen like an image itself, so each layer rises RAM consumption.
its a pitty that i never saw adobe delivering some kind of performance guide for photoshop, how to improve performance for professional users, like posting that guide on their main photoshop site, i had to digg for these informations for a long period of time and found it in the end at diglloyd´s comprehensive site. i wonder why adobe makes a secret about photoshop performance, a lot of my friends at work mentioned formerly, that they have had huge lag issues and dont know where to begin solving these problems, which are solvable for sure.... (new hardware, proper settings and so on)
you can read detailed instructions, on how to speed up things in PS here: (where i took it for myself)
http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html
subtopic:
http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS5-Intro.html
enjoy your new macbookpro!
peter

Photoshop CS5 Very Slow Liquify

I've noticed that in Photoshop CS5, Liquify just works terribly slowly. When I click and drag to distort an image, the image gets distorted sometimes even 10 seconds after I've lifted my hand. Sometimes I have to wait 30-40 seconds for the distortions to happen before I can regain control of Photoshop.
Also, panning is a bit more choppy than in CS4, which annoys me a lot, as it was the case with CS4 compared to CS3, etc... I predict that panning in CS7 will look like a slideshow.
And another thing, when you Flick-Pan, and release the mouse, the canvas flies across the screen, and during that flying animation, in CS4, you could still zoom in and out with the keyboard. In CS5, you have to wait until the canvas has slowed down to a stop to be able to zoom. This is also a strange feature.
Adobe said CS5 will have performance improvements, and I can see filters, adjustments and brushes perform a tiny bit better, but basic things like panning, zooming and liquify got MUCH worse and less responsive, and this is not worth the tradeoff for me, since I use these features very frequently, many times a second.
I use a Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet most of the time, and I noticed that Liquify is much faster (although still too slow for me to use it) when I use my trackpad instead of the pen.
I'm using the Photoshop CS5 trial now, and I have Photoshop CS3 and CS4 both installed on the same computer, so I can tell that CS3 ran much faster, CS4 was a bit slower and CS5 is a LOT slower. I'm using a late 2008 15 inch Unibody MacBook Pro with 9600M / 9400M graphics, 4GB RAM and 2.53 GHz CPU, and speed gets a bit better when using the 9600M.
Here are my questions:
Has anyone else had any of these problems, especially Liquify?
Has anyone else used CS5 and noticed that Liquify runs just fine?
Does anyone have any suggestions of what I could try to cure any of these problems?
Is it possible that this is the way Photoshop CS5 should run on my computer, due to my hardware limitations and bloated software?

How long is it going to take to fix this liquify problem?? Come one guys I need it to work now and better than in CS4 not worse!!! Otherwise why did I spend almost 1K to upgrade???
Looking into the problem isn't enough!!! I need a solution since I use the liquify tool for almost 99.9% of my images (fashion/beauty photography retouching).
Is there a temporary fix??? using the CS4 liquify plugin into the CS5 software?????
do a google search on slow liquify and see what comes up..... still pretty nice and insecure requests for the reason why it is so slow because users think it is their machine (computer) but if I don't get an answer and fi very soon (couple of days at the most) this nice and insecurity will vanish for a HUGE ADOBE *** kicking campaign !!! Since photoshop is known for their arrogantly slow updates for their software and waits till the next big update to correct things....I am not going to wait 18 months for you guys to fix the liquify problem!!!
SO GET TO IT NOW!!!!! So I can do my work and make enough money to keep spending on adobe upgrades!
And as a side note...didn't you "wizzards" have enough time to discover this BIG problem beforehand?? Or were you to busy fighting with Apple about your huge Flash problem??

Slow Brushes In Photoshop CS5

Hi:
I've just started experimenting with the new capabilities of brushes in Photoshop CS5 and I'm having problems with the brush response being abysmally slow. I'm working on a Mac Pro Quad Core, 2.93 GHz with 8 MB of RAM and a wrireless mouse. Can anybody tell me what might be contributing to this slowness??
Herman R.

I've installed the 12 02 update and the latest drivers for the
FX3400 graphics card. Now when CS5 opens it tells me its disabling theGPU enhancements. I have the GL turned off.
It also likes to crash when I run Imagenomics plug ins.
So CS3 did not use GL? Whatever. So that means that its slow and crashes now. I can see in other threads here and elsewhere the retarded brush action is common. They released CS5 too soon. Its not even half-baked. Also I want the images to open on the right monitor but with CS5 I have to drag each image over to work on it.
I'm back to using CS3 and they said my refund will be credited to my card the first week of January. I'll have to monitor to see if they get their application working before I return as I have wasted so much time with this I think they should pay me for helping with their product development.

Slow photoshop cs5, mac os x

Hello.
My photoshop CS5 is not working well recently. It is extremely slow, so slow It is not possible to work on. I have all the Design Premium, and photoshop is the only one making this problem. I uninstall all the CS5 Design Premium from my computer (via adobe uninstaller) and reinstall it, but the same problem still occurred.
I work on Mac OS X Mountain Lion operating system.
I wold like you to help me solve this problem.
Thanks,
Gili Richman.

Good day!
Please read
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4587299#4587299
and provide information on your RAM, scratch disc etc.
For general Photoshop performance improvements please read
http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-performance-photoshop-cs4-cs5.html
Boilerplate-text:
Are Photoshop and OS fully updated and have you performed the usual trouble-shooting routines (trashing prefs by keeping command-alt-shift/ctrl-alt-shift pressed while starting Photoshop after making sure all customized presets like Actions, Patterns, Brushes etc. have been saved and making a note of the Preferences you’ve changed, 3rd party plug-ins deactivation, system maintenance, cleaning caches, font validation, etc.)?
Regards,
Pfaffenbichler

Photoshop CS5 considerably slow

I have Photoshop CS5 x64 for my Mac, and over CS4 and CS3, I have noticed a considerable speed decrease in how it runs and handles images. I mainly use it for photography work like RAW conversions and image editing. When I bring RAWs into Camera RAW, it takes PS about 1.5x slower than CS4 to import them. Then when i'm moving the sliders for each category, there is about a 1 second delay upon the image changing. Now when I did this in CS4, it was instant. Same with something as simple as moving from one image to the next in the thumbnails to the left of the screen, there is major lag when I want to move between images. Moving away from CameraRAW, when I try to open a batch of images straight into PS, it takes freakin' forever to do so, CS4 took about half the time to import a nice sized batch, it's rediculous. Why is PS so slow, is it just because it's fresh out of the box and needs an update?

Try the 6.1 update. There are several performance tweaks in it:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_6.1

MacPro Running Super slow with Photoshop CS5

My MacPro is running extremely slow with Adobe Photoshop CS5. I have tried uppping the ram usage to over 14 gigs of ram and its still even slower than my macbook pro. the healing brush is the slowest, but even layer masking seems to lag a lot. how can I fix this?

There are dozens of threads, faq, guides, tips on how to configure a Mac especially for CS5. Best places to start.
http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS5-Intro.html
Scratch drive or array
Disable Spotlight on scratch
Move your files to scratch for work and then save as you go and move back to media drive when done
fast system drives. maybe even SSD if you can, or 10K 600GB VR
Upping RAM helps if you work with large images, layers, etc (in some cases 16 or 24 or 32GB, and if you can run in 64-bit mode get a little better).
Some specs on the setup?
http://www.macgurus.com/guides/storageaccelguide.php
http://homepage.mac.com/boots911/.Public/PhotoshopAccelerationBasics2.4W.pdf
Quadro CX (Windows CUDA for Photoshop Windows only)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/productquadro_cxus.html
Adobe Optimize CS5 Mac
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404440.html

Photoshop CS5 & Lightroom running slower than expected...

Hi All,
Hope someone can help me out here. I have a 2.66 Quad Core MacPro (2009) with 8gb RAM & I find Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom don't run as quickly as I would expect.
For instance a lot of times when applying actions in Photoshop I will get the blue "applying filter" bar which will sit for quite some time.
I have IStat widget installed so tonight as Photoshop really slowed down I went to the widget to take a look and this was what was happening: (not sure if this is useful or not?)
CPU was 97% idle
Memory was Wired-643mb / Active-4.91gb / InActive-2.42gb / Free-11mb
Processors was Adobe Photoshop between 6.8% & 23.6%
Any idea what would cause the slow down and if there is anything I can do to speed things up?
Appreciate it.
Andrew

There are a number of guides to setting up Mac Pro.
http://macperformanceguide.com/
Read, test, and follow this guide using your own files and such:
http://homepage.mac.com/boots911/.Public/PhotoshopAccelerationBasics2.4W.pdf
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11661836&#11661836
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404440.html
10.6.4 + CS5 + Graphics
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2462882&tstart=0
Double your memory probably if not more.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1066-memory

I work with photoshop CS5 and the stamp is very slow. Why?

I work with photoshop CS5 and the stamp is verry slow. Why?

If you can afford it, go with a Crucial M4 SSD.
If your in a limited budget, go with a Seagate Momentus XT 750GB.
The SSD will be the fastest one and the Seagate being faster than a conventional drive.
If you decide to go conventional, avoid the Western Digital Scorpio Blue. They tend to have issues with Macbooks.
Good luck

Photoshop cs5 Save as slow down

Hi I have been experiencing a ptoblem in Photoshop Cs5 relating to Save As.
My workflow is as follows. I import and work on my pictures using Lightroom 3.2, then if I want further editing - I use Photshop.
I have a dual processor Xeon workstation that can cope with bot apps and more no problems and they have both been working together for the last couple of months. I am running 64 bit windows 7 and photoshop with 8gb RAM
However recently when I have editing a picture and go to Save as, the dialog box hangs for ages. The Hard disk goes bananas for a prolonged period of time and then finally the save as dialog opens and I can save, It appears to only do this the first few times I open different files then its ok. There doesnt seem to be a pattern to it. But the wait before the dialogue box opens depends on the file size. The bigger the file size the longer the wait.
Has anyone else experienced this problem and perhaps could offer some advice or guidance.
many thanks
Neil

When saving a file using 'Save As' I can no longer "window" the screen image, it always opens "full-screen" and can't be resized.
Does that mean that it did work, but now does not?
If it used to work, then something has changed. The trick is to find out what it was.
First thing that I check, whenever I have a GUI display issue, is whether there is an update for my video adapter's driver. PS interfaces more closely with the video driver, than some other programs. Simple things, such as OS updates, can render a video driver obsolete, and can cause all sorts of issues. What make/model card do you have? What is the number/date of your installed video driver?
Hope that it is as simple as going to the ATI/AMD, or nVidia Web site, and downloading, then installing a new driver.
Good luck,
Hunt

Photoshop CS5 slow as molasses

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