Have you updated to Photoshop 13.0.1 yet?  There was a specific bug fixed in that update having to do with moving layers.

I haven't seen a problem with performance of moving layers around myself, but every document is different, and I have a PC, not a Mac, and the latter is where more performance problems seem to be reported lately.

Is your document very large?  Can you be more specific about pixel count, how many layers, how complexly they're nested, how big it is when saved on disk, etc.?

-Noel

It doesn't sound too terribly large, though 300 MB isn't small.  Do you know whether you have information beyond the visible edge of the canvas (e.g., have you used the Crop Tool with [  ] Delete Cropped Pixels unchecked, or placed any large images of which you can see only a portion?

I only have an intuitive feel for this issue, as I frequent this forum and have read a number of other reports of sluggishness, but I don't have a Mac on which to test things myself. 

There have been some reports that 13.0.1 makes things better, but it still seems there is something that pushes people's Mac systems over the edge into being sluggish, and unfortunately Adobe or other users haven't managed to find a magic bullet.

I've heard folks say everything from running Onyx to reinstalling the entire operating system has helped, but that's second hand info as I just don't have the ability to duplicate your environment.

There was a thread where someone posted a document with a huge number of layers to test with, and another where someone suggested documents of a certain composition, and it was pretty easy to demonstrate that some systems could work through them more quickly than others, with the difference being greater than you'd expect based on computer performance alone.

If you have a way to post your PSD file online and would be willing to show it to others, I'll be more than happy to download it and see whether I'm seeing similar performance.  A document that can reproduce a slow-down for others might be very interesting to Adobe as well.

-Noel

I'm not suggesting reinstallation should be your first choice.

Assuming you're not trying to maintain anything out there where you can't see it, try this:

1.  Choose the Crop Tool.

2.  Check the [  ] Delete Cropped Pixels box.

3.  Move an edge in then back out, so that the Crop Tool thinks it has work to do.

4.  Complete the crop.

Does that reduce the document size or increase the speed?

You might want to read over some of the information in the various "slow/sluggish" threads on this forum.  That will give you an idea of what's been tried.

-Noel

Dave, that's what's supposedly been fixed in 13.0.1.  Are you saying it hasn't been fixed?

-Noel

I just tried to nudge a layer in a large, deep test document that was provided by another forum member over on the Photoshop.com site, and it takes 45 seconds to complete.  I have a fairly rompin' stompin' 8 core PC here.   I can drag the very same "white dots" layer group around with the Move Tool with a frame update rate of something like 5 frames per second, with at most 1 second between drag operations.

Chris, I'm sure you have a copy of this file already.

The exact same operation completes in Photoshop CS5 in under 5 seconds repeatably, without a progress bar, even though it's a good bit slower to drag the layer group around in Photoshop CS5 (it drags at something like 2 FPS in Ps CS5).

I don't know how to put this more gently:

You have another bona fide bug here, Chris. 

Don't forget that I once asked you if you needed a software engineer who knows what they're doing on staff.

-Noel

I have been using Photoshop for years on PC and now most recently Mac, and have always found it hellishly slow. No matter the version or platform it has always been slow with layer-laden psds. For years I have just accepted this as the way things are.

I have always used ‘Clip thumbnails to layer bounds’. Having just read this thread I only now realised that if you turn thumbnail previews off or to document bounds that yes, performance is significantly increased. Scrolling and zooming is smoother and moving groups of layers is now the difference of 5 seconds and 1 minute or longer depending on the number of layers.

However turning off ‘Clip thumbnails to layer bound’ may be a fix but I find it leaves you flying blind, unable to navigate efficiently through your thumbnails. Layer bound thumbnails are an extremely productive and essential tool that I personally cannot go without.

I’m using the latest 13.0.1 version with 8gb memory.

I reckon this is something that will not be sorted with an update as it has been present for years.

Is there any progress on this bug?

The conversation stalled at someone mentioning that transforming items helps the performance lag of moving items - however that's not an adequate solution as an avid layer comps user transforming a layer (say) 100px to the right will cause that item to be moved 100px to the right across ALL your layer comps.

I'm a web/interface designer that's been using photoshop every single day for about 15 years & I don't think I've ever been so frustrated with poor performance or Photoshop.

And yes - I use ALOT of layers - because that's how I have always worked.

Only in the last couple of years have I had to start digging around in PS's settings to try & tweak performance - ironically when I've been using top of the line PC's to do my work (currently a core i7 MBP with 16gb of ram & a USB3 SSD scratch disk.) & moving a simple text layer 10 pixels takes about 10 seconds.

Come on Adobe - this is getting ridiculous.

If you like I'll construct a list of features I couldn't give 2 sh1t5 about if you dropped everything & concentrated on optimising performance for the basic use of photoshop (for interface designers)

Guys, Adobe released an update for Photoshop CS6 13.1 that seems to have fixed the nudging problem to a large extent. It still not as fast as earlier versions (Photoshop CS4 fastest, CS5 fast) - but now its less than a second delay (as opposed to being several seconds) in nudging large groups of layers with thumbnails on. With All panels off (Tab shortcut key) its superfast. Also I have set the performance settings to match earlier versions of Photoshop (CS5, CS4) - History & Cache - Tall and Thin - 20,4,128K. Please try the update and let us know your experience.

Most recent update to CS6 is an improvement, but transform tool is still VERY slow for me. 2-3 second delay between each refresh state, even on relatively simple images.

CS5 on the same computer was fine.

I've since moved over to fireworks. So far, I'm not looking back.

With Fireworks, there's no need to rely on the layers panel to find layers, as you can easily select them on the canvas.

The interace and rendering is pixel sensitive and intended for web output. Creating and resizing elements and moving them is never a problem and there is no delay like Photoshop.

Photoshop has always been slow, and I do not expect this problem to be solved. So don't hold your breath.
I reckon that since Photoshop is Adobe's flagship application, they are spending too much time on adding new features to sell newer versions, instead of improving basic functionality.
CS6 promised improvements of their base functionaility, and to a degree they acheived this, but it's not enough. I find in it's current state it is almost unusable. Everything is too slow and frustrating.

There's a yuppie stigma attached that says that designers should use Photoshop for design. I never considered Fireworks, recalling it as being a simple gif animator.

But Fireworks is faster that Photoshop, creates smaller file sizes and is more accurate for interface and web design. The tools are far more intuative.

It's taken a bit of readjustment, but for web and interface design, Fireworks seems to be superior in every way.

It's not perfect and it has it's own quirks as all Adobe products do but I'd recommend anyone having issues with Photoshop to give it a try.

Leave Photoshop for it's intended purpose - photo manipulation.

Cheers

Andrew