Keltoid, I sympathize with your situation, but you should know it's not like that for everyone.  I know you may be hoping your problems are everyone's problems, but the problems you're seeing are most likely system integration issues having to do with the system you're running the software on and/or the other things on that system.

Probably the best thing you can do is to describe each of the specific issues you're having in new threads.  Chances are someone else has experienced the same problems and will be able to tell you things to do to fix or work around them.

Once you've gotten things working you'll find the new features provided by Photoshop CS6 allow you to do things and go places with your images that you've been unable to do before.

Best of luck.

-Noel

Exactly, Paul.

I agree, I think the 32/64 bit  "bit" may be the issue. 

paul campagna wrote:

 

Talk about the machine booging down. It's useless.

I don't think some people would consider it faster than its predecessors, while others would say it's so slow as to be "useless" unless there are very specific problems some have that others don't.

I understand that you might not have the time to get to the bottom of them.  Unfortunately, given that the problems are not being seen by everyone, it seems likely you'll have to put yourself in the role of system integrator.

I do sense, by forum activity, that Photoshop CS6 may be worse for more Mac users than PC users though.  I'm not sure what's up with that.  Maybe it's no more than a case of many of the existing Mac display drivers being insufficient for Photoshop's needs, and driver updates are not so easily applied as on PC.

-Noel

Out of curiosity, vikki_w, Mac or PC?

-Noel

JJMack wrote:

 

CS6 is a mess Mac and PC.....

We'll have to agree to disagree on that. 

Anyone familiar with web forums knows that almost everything reported is a problem.  People don't often go online to exclaim "amazingly, it works as advertised".

Whenever people tell me things that differ greatly from my own experience I look for the reasons.

Photoshop CS6 - for ME on MY PC WORKSTATION - works better than Photoshop CS5, and is as fast or faster than all its predecessors at everything I do with it.  I'm making better images than I ever did before.

Is it without bugs?  No, I've found a few bugs and made it crash a few times, but less than its predecessors and I have never even considered dropping back to a prior version because it's simply BETTER than they were. 

In short, my own experience with Photoshop CS6 has been about as far from the terms "EPIC FAIL" as I can imagine.

Is it because I have a special, magic PC workstation that who knows, maybe happens to be just like the ones used by the Photoshop engineers?  Or is just particularly good?  I have chosen my hardware, software, and settings with an eye toward getting the best possible computing experience, though my system is by no means new.

Am I just lucky in that all the things I do with Photoshop don't happen upon the bugs others are seeing?  My use of Photoshop is fairly sophisticated, though I tend to do more still photo editing than create web designs, videos, etc.  But from what I'm hearing described, the things that some others are seeing go wrong are pretty basic, and aren't going wrong here.

I don't know why there should be such a wide range of experiences being reported.  But I'd like to.

-Noel

Yet I work with big images on occasion - for example astroimage mosaics - and I'm not seeing slowdowns.  Why?

My PC system happens to be of similar power to the one described at that link.  I also have 16 GB and SSD storage.

I just opened a 9909 x 6501 pixel astroimage I happen to have on hand with over 40 layers.  It's a mosaic of Hubble images.

• Display update when I move a curve on an adjustment layer is immediate, while I'm moving the point on the curve, whether a global adjustment layer or one clipped to a layer below.

• Panning works smoothly.  Even the flick panning nicely slows down and settles pleasingly when I let up the mouse button.

• I can move layers and groups around perfectly interactively.

I just duplicated almost all the layers, so now I have 81 layers.

• No difference in performance.  Still perfectly interactive. 
• I saved the file with the extra layers and it's a 5 GB PSB file.  The save took 21 seconds to complete.

All the while I'm playing an internet radio station and have a bunch of other apps open.

If I had Camtasia installed I'd capture a video for you; as it is you'll have to trust me - you know I tell it like it is when I find a bug.

I ask again:  Where's the mess?

-Noel

Note that my response was specific to JJMack's pointing out a particular "bug" he claims is on PCs as well.

I'm willing to accept that my system, which I run as a tight ship and have well tuned, is the reason things work well for me, but it's not really anything special.  The Dell Precision T5400 was a new design in 2007 - which is an eternity by computing standards. 

Things may be more screwed up in general for Mac users.  I don't know; I have no Mac here, so I can't compare results.

But my point is this:  If on just one system it can be shown to work well, then that proves that it CAN work well.  Why not try to find the specific reasons why it's NOT working well on other systems?

-Noel

Noel Carboni wrote:

 

Note that my response was specific to JJMack's pointing out a particular "bug" he claims is on PCs as well.

 

Noel

I pointed you to that bug report where both MAC and PC user have performance problems and Adobe states they are working on the problem. I have pointed you to the Adobe's Problem report site for the Photoshop Family where there are thousands of posted problem reports many are about Photoshop CS6 many are not bugs however I have verified that many are real Photoshop CS6 bugs. A major one make editing  not in tab unusable if you wish to use automation Adobe Own Scripts Load Files into Stack and Save layers to file fail if you do not open document in tabs many user Action and scripts fail as well.  Some new features added to Photoshop were not done well and broke things like Scripting,  Bugs reported in the Action player in CS5 were not fixed and Adobe introduced additional Action player bugs in CS6, Also a bug was introduced into the Action Recorder.  A new feature that can record tool operations like brush strokes was not done well and is even disabled when Adobe Scriptlistener plugin is installed,  Bugs are still being discovered.  Yes some casual CS6 users have not seen any problems some casual CS6 may have seen a problem and not realize it was a problem maybe they though it was just a change in behavior.  I would love to use ACR 7 and there are some other nice changes that were made to CS6. The basic video editing added to Standard CS6 is nice and easy to use. Yes Device drivers and support hardware make using more complex and a chalange to configure.  But the one reason why advance use stop using Photoshop CS6 is there are just too many BUGS.  CS6 is a mess.

It does sound to me that my problem is a lot of people's problem.

I notice that you don't do any large areas of text in your astrospace layers example.  And maybe there is just something changed enough in CS6 that the Mac display drivers can't choke down all the time.

I will just say I have spent a lot of time at work (time I don't have, honestly!)  going through preferences, going through options, trying this, trying that - yet I STILL have my icons for DW and PS for CS5 available and have had to close down the CS6 apps all the way and pull things into the older versions so I can actually get my work done on time and get the heck out of Dodge at the end of the day in a timely manner, which...  lol -- isn't that what most of us just want at the end of the day?  Just go home?   I'm not futzing around with this at home playing w/ the program (and not saying anyone here is, not that there's anything wrong with that, I certainly have done that many years) -- I'm at a corporation and pumping out product that must be finished at X time. 

This messes with my ability to do that, get out at a respectable hour to get home to my family and enjoy my life -- and above all, keep my cool while I'm here.  Another very important aspect.  Not wanting to punch everything and everybody and swear like sailors at work.  Important.

I have made a few suggested changes and will be immersing myself in high and lo res multi layered images with lots of text today as every day -- I will report if things seem to be smoother.  From my fingertips to God's ears.   : )

I am so frustrated, I am a Graphic Design Teacher at a Vocational School and I have installed CS6 on all of the Macs in the room, ready for the Fall Semester. I am trying to work on my lessons before school starts, and Photoshop CS6 keeps freezing on my imac at home, the famous wheel  going round forever. It quits so often I can't get anything done. I really want to teach CS6, but I may have to go to CS5. Help! This is a real drag because I want to teach the most up to date software and we purchased a site license for our school.

Karen

Thank you, I will try that and let you know. I have not tried it at school, I hope it will be okay.

This shows how to reset preferences via manipulation of files...

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4209421

-Noel

Where do I find the library? I can't believe I forgot.

Please re-read the instructions at the link I gave you more carefully.  The information is all there.

-Noel

re: 72 @erickbrian

"Selecting a new brush or opening the brush panel sometimes locks up the software, and I have to switch back and forth from one program to another and come back to Adobe.

This is hte reason I am scanning these forums - this is the problem I am experiencing. Usually just after starting up photoshop this freeze occurs - and my resource manager tells me photoshop is using 100%+ CPU. I finally learned switching out of Photoshop and back to photoshop cleared this up. But the lock-ups are very frustrating.

I have a 2x2.8 Ghz Quadcore Intel Xeon Mac wiht 14GB of memory and a NVIVIA GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB video card running Lion 10.7.4 and set up with Adobe via Creative Cloud - so it is the current version of Adobe software. Those are my specs.

I am working on average with 800MB to 1GB + f16 bit files but only up to 6 layers as these are for large prints and near the end of production. I watch as my memory resources slowly get consumed often with anywhere from 2 to 4 GB of inactive memory which I can free and reclaim as "free ram" but I have always suspected this mac as having memory issues... I watch it consume memory most when I have open Photoshop and Bridge. Bridge is a ridiculously heavy software constantly caching it seems and building thumbnails... granted I keep them high rez for comparisons and descision making - I rely on that visual so I accept whatever is happening. I have watched my RAM be completely consumed especially when NIK color efex pro 4 is used on 16bit images at 30x20 inches 300dpi with 3-4 stacked effects....I realize this is intensive. I have seen teh effect renderring take as long as 8 minutes and th ememory be completely consumed going to any one of four swap discs - but also witnessing that dredded "inactive memory blocks" which I use memory freer to free up after the computations are complete.

The freeze up on brush selection in particular (and it only happens once per PS launch it seems...) is very curious. I was wonderring if anyone else was experiencing this and if they found a solution yet?

Sure - a fine solution is to buy one of the last Mac Pros that Apple will produce and stack it full of 32 or 64GB ram and have a 1GB vid card etc.... but damn - I am saving up for new cameras..... the money drain has to stop somewhere... doesn't it?

Anyone have the lock-up syndrome and or found a solution that is practical?

Jeff

Thank you, I could not even open it. I uninstalled and reinstalled now at least I can open it. I have been working in 5.

Well I want to add my couple of dimes into this discussion.

MacBookPro 2011: MacOSX 10.7.4, 2GHz Intel i7, 8Gb DDR3, AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256 MB

Yes, Photoshop CS6 seemed to work much slower than CS5.

Even in the beginning of work with a particular document - dragging multiple layers was a pain. What we call here a "TBS" mod. Dragging layers from one document into another seemed to be a nearly impossible operation. Thus, in a short time it starts to affect other operations. In 10-15 minutes Photoshop consumes all available memory, freezes, and sometimes - crashes.

I don't have any antiviruses or any special software running in the background.

Purging history and cache didn't help. I have similar performance settings for my CS5.1 and CS6 applications. (~70% of ram available, thin&tall cache level options, disabled GP).

However, after turning off thumbnail preview in layers palette things seem to become normal.

Maybe these details will help somehow to understand the problem. As a UX VD I just love new features of CS6, (especially video driver bug workarounds for macs ), but I had to postpone the upgrade purchase to make sure I won't run into those types of problems.

I think it's clear PS 6 is slower than PS 5.5.

For reference, system specs

dual XEON 3.33 ghz

Quadro FX 4800

48 GB MEM

SWAP DRIVE REVO DRIVE 240GB SSD PCIe 4x SATA 6gb

MAIN DRIVE SATA 6b PATRIOT 120gb SSD

WIN 7

My machine will run photoshop blazing fast and just about anything you throw at it. AE, 3D MAX, Motion Builder, Z-Brush, anything, blistering fast.

AS for PS 6, it's slower, its buggy.  I use 5.5 when i can't take it anymore.

It's not my system. My swap drive (it's really a sas/ssd raid on a PCIe card) a Revodrive 3x2 is really fast. Faster than thunderbolt, faster then SATA 6gb because of the onboard raid.

I have 48 GB of memory for PS to do with what it pleases. It eats it up and doesn't release it. I notice frequently when i have had one file open and it will use 25gb of memory after hours of it being open. I have it set to 20 undos. That's not a lot.

Transform is slower, liquify is slower, dragging layers between files is slower, dragging layers within files is slower, everything is slower. Maybe appling filters are the same or faster.

My video card has the current drivers. I'm up to date on my system. I built the system, i know what i doing. It's slower.

My take, there's a memory leak in the software.

I really appreciate that it's a state of the art piece of software. That's why I've spent over $10,000 on it over the past 17 years. If I didn't appreciate it I'd use paintshop pro for 40 bucks.

We all appreciate the software, we just want it to work as advertized.

I remember when I would only use version 7 for years because every upgrade was buggy. CS 1 and 2 were terrible.   5.5 came along and was it beautiful, smooth sailing. I thought they'd have it figured out in 6. But they're trying to upgrade every year like clockwork to keep investors happy but they should worry about their users more than their shareholders.

I make a living with this software like most of the people posting here. I know photoshop better than I know anything in life,  that includes everything, my family, my friends, everything.

It's slower, they need to fix it.

Thanks Joey!

Anyone else watching their RAM get consumed? I must also note that when I close Photoshop and Bridge -  my RAM is released (obviously) but it suggests that PS and Bridge are consumers. They will be the only above system programs running (not counting all the resources running behind the scenes with the OS - but they are not consuming resources like the CS6 PS and Bridge - which I can watch as they slowly consume the RAM - I can visually watch it on the pie chart of Activity Monitor and on the Free Ram software. The odd thing is the increase of "Inactive Ram" - a blue patch on my pie charts.... sometimes as much as 8GB of RAM becomes inactive and has to be freed so Photoshop can aquire it. I have lowered my Photoshop Memory use to 70% - I keep 40 memory states for history.... but like others in the group - I did not experience such slowdowns or memory hogging on previous CS releases - I have been a Photoshop user since PS4 - and the last one was CS5 - I skipped CS5.5.

I agreee with so many - I want stability and speed over bells and whistles - I do like CS6 - don't get me wrong... don't need 3D or video editing... isn't that what Premier is for? It is hard to go back to using CS5 since it does not render my Raw files or keep my nested layers the same as the work done in CS6... so I move forward as we all do. I don't think the issues being expressed in frustration on these forums are because we are not all using equipment especially designed for running Photoshop, but it is that we would like to have stable and quick software that works with most machines.

I spend a lot of time troubleshootong. I particularly did not update the Mac OS to Mountain Lion because I read of issues with it and CS6 - I am already having issues with CS6 as stated - I do not need to throw in another variable. Obviously I spend a lot of valuable time on software management, repair, and troubleshooting - it is frustrating to say the least. The truth is, many of us just want to create and make our art...or do our business. if Photoshop wasn't a necessity - and obsoletion wasn't an issue ... (when I bought my 5DmkII Adobe would not release a raw update for it on CS4 - I had to go to CS5 so I could develope my RAW 5D2 files... but it would not run on Tiger or a G5 Mac, so I had to buy a MacPro Intel and CS5 and Leopard - that was not that long ago - three and a half years?). We all are spending money to keep competitive in our businesses - we just want to have the software work with the hardware.... I would like to keep the little money I make, and I would like to not spend time troubleshooting.

I am curious to the memory usage issue (my stats have already been posted in this forum) - will Adobe develop a better memory handling update for CS6 (I like others write on this forum hoping Adobe caringly pays attention to what we are complaining about... calling India for help has most often proven futile). I think we would all like to see our concerns addressed.

Jeff

LOL - I suppose what I mean to say, is anyone else noting the problem as a memory leak or memory release issue (and not just slow performance due to thumbnails being on or off, or bad video card drivers, or apropriate settings....) The thread is mostly about PS CS6 slower performance with out pinpointing what may actually be the culprit. I apreciate your humor Alex!