Adobe Community: CS5 gets slower and slower, is there a memory leak?

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CS5 gets slower and slower, is there a memory leak?

Jun 23, 2010 11:52 PM

Ugh, What is up with CS5 and why can't Adobe release a product that works? As far as I can tell this program should still be in beta. I have been working on a couple large files for a 2 hours and it is to the point where I am going to have to quit and restart again. I have to do this 4-5 times a day. When I first open CS5 and start working it is fast as hell but within a couple hours it slows to a crawl. I never had this issue like this w/ CS4. Anyone else having this issue.

2.66 quad

16 gigs ram (12 for CS5)

300gig raptor drive as dedicated scratch

10.6.4

Fresh install of OS and CS5

Other fun issues with photoshop.

-The eraser tool locks on and the only way to get rid of it is to restart.

-I had to istall a 300g scratch disk because with the 150 g drive I was getting too many "scratch disk full errors"

7800 Views 111 Replies Latest reply: ryder_s, Sep 22, 2010 11:17 PM

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1. c.pfaffenbichler,

Jun 24, 2010 12:19 AM in reply to rod mclean

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Ugh, What is up with CS5 and why can't Adobe release a product that works?
Are you sure you have done everything as recommended? Like repaired permissions prior and after install and verified that all your fonts are »good«.

I have no CS5-experience yet, but from experience with older versions a possible culprit might be your History-settings – what are they?

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2. Chris Cox,

Jun 24, 2010 8:58 AM in reply to rod mclean

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We don't know of any serious memory leaks in Photoshop CS5. The few leaks we do know about are in OS code that we can't avoid.

There are some OS level font problems that can cause slowdowns, and we're working on workarounds and fixes with Apple.

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3. Reynolds (Mark),

Jun 24, 2010 1:54 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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I have experienced a similar issue to this. After much use (maybe more than a days work sometimes) Photoshop CS5 on Snow Leopard seems to slow down. Requiring restart, or a system restart.

Chris, are there any OS level fonts that can be disabled in Font Book to help the issue?

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4. Chris Cox,

Jun 24, 2010 2:34 PM in reply to Reynolds (Mark)

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The fonts that we know cause problems are all third party fonts.
The worst of them will cause errors in FontBook.

But most of it will require Apple to fix their code.

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5. Adam Jerugim,

Jun 25, 2010 10:33 AM in reply to Chris Cox

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Rod,

I'd like more information about what you're seeing.

1. What video card are you using?
2. Have you changed the the default performance settings, and if so, what are they? (I'm mainly curious about cache levels and tile size)
3. Do you have any 3rd party plug-ins installed or use any flash panels in PS?

thanks,
-Adam

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6. rod mclean,

Jun 25, 2010 11:24 AM in reply to Adam Jerugim

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Thanks for your help.

1. What video card are you using?
Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT

2. Have you changed the the default performance settings, and if so, what are they? (I'm mainly curious about cache levels and tile size)

General
-Turned off flick paneling

Memory
-11.5 g for ps (16g total)
-300g dedicated scratch disk 10k rpm

History and Cache
-history states 7
-cache levels 2
-cache tile size 128k

GPU settings
-turned off (unchecked) enable openGL drawing

No additional plugins and unchecked all options in extension panels

Type unchecked font preview size

3. Do you have any 3rd party plug-ins installed or use any flash panels in PS?
no. This was a complete new install for the os(10.6.4) and cs5 (new hard drive). The only other programs installed on this machine besides the basic OS programs and CS5 are yousendit, MS word, silverfast(a scanning program), and a wacom tablet

All software is up to date, I have trashed ps preferences a couple times and always repair disk permissions before and after updated.
Thanks

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7. Adam Jerugim,

Jun 25, 2010 1:37 PM in reply to rod mclean

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I'm not sure why things are slowing down on your system with PS, but I have a couple of ideas. There's a known performance issue with 10.6.4 and nVidia GPUs - this may be causing some problems on your system (even if OGL is disabled in PS). Also, if you work with large files, you may want to try changing the tile size to 1024K. If you don't work with large files, are you opening and closing many document windows as you work in PS?

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8. rod mclean,

Jun 28, 2010 8:17 AM in reply to Adam Jerugim

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I reinstalled the OS back to 10.6.3 and tried to reinstall CS4 as I had given up on CS5 working properly. Strange thing, CS4 does not work with 10.6.2 or 10.6.3, for me it crashes with in 3-5 minutes. So I uninstalled CS4 and am trying to change my workflow to still be able to use CS5. I save all files and restart every couple hours. The issue that I am still having is that when dragging a smart object or layer to another document there is a very long lag time. When cutting and pasting a large image to another document it is even worse. When I do copy large images to paste in a another document the scratch disk fills up and seems to keep that disk space occupied, purging does not release that space Not to repeat myself but this was never an issue w/ CS4. Dragging layers, smart objects, curves, etc from one document to another was always seamless and instant, my scratch disk never became full and unworkable. What is causing this an has anyone else having the same problems?

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9. Adam Jerugim,

Jun 28, 2010 10:15 AM in reply to rod mclean

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Rod,

If you aren't using it, try the attached Disable VM Buffering plug-in. It may be the key to clearing up the performance issues you describe.

Just un-zip the archive and copy the plug-in into your plug-ins folder.

-Adam

Attachments:

DisableVMBuffering.plugin.zip (50.0 K)

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10. Drew Pickard,

Jun 28, 2010 10:34 AM in reply to rod mclean

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I have similar issues with relatively small files (though sometimes with a lot of layers/folders/type layers)

Photoshop keeps grabbing memory up to the max I set it at . . . and never goes below that. Never releases the RAM back until I quit the app.

Isn't this anti-thetical to how modern memory management is supposed to work?
Shouldn't it release both 'real' memory and virtual memory once I close all documents?

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11. Chris Cox,

Jun 28, 2010 11:22 AM in reply to Drew Pickard

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Photoshop keeps grabbing memory up to the max I set it at . . . and never goes below that. Never releases the RAM back until I quit the app.
Yes, that is normal.

Isn't this anti-thetical to how modern memory management is supposed to work?
Shouldn't it release both 'real' memory and virtual memory once I close all documents?
No. Otherwise it would be much slower, and in 32 bits address space fragmentation would make it worse still.
Photoshop will get slower when you hit the limit on RAM usage you set in preferences - as it hits the scratch disk more often. But, again, that's normal and been the behavior since Photoshop 1.0.

If the system starts paging, Photoshop will recognize that and release some memory.
Also Photoshop will release memory for plugins that request more memory.

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12. rod mclean,

Jun 28, 2010 11:32 AM in reply to Adam Jerugim

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Adam,
Thanks I am willing to try it but can you explain to me how you think this might help. I work on very large files, have 16gigs of ram(12g for CS5), and have never experienced a pause while painting. From what I understand about VM buffering the reason why I would want to disable it is if I do not have a lot of ram, work on smaller files, and experience pauses while painting.

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13. Drew Pickard,

Jun 28, 2010 11:42 AM in reply to Chris Cox

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So this is by design that Photoshop never releases RAM even when all documents are closed, is in the background and not doing anything?

I open or switch to other apps and they are incredibly sluggish - but Photoshop never gives up a single kilobyte of memory unless I close it.

I did not have performance problems like this with CS4.

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14. Chris Cox,

Jun 28, 2010 12:42 PM in reply to Drew Pickard

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So this is by design that Photoshop never releases RAM even when all documents are closed, is in the background and not doing anything?
Yes. Photoshop assumes you have work to do and don't want to wait too long to get that work done.
(the OS memory allocation is SLOW, and in 32 bit address space fragmentation makes things much worse)

I did not have performance problems like this with CS4.
Well, then they're not related to not releasing memory -- because that has been the same since Photoshop 1.0.

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15. Drew Pickard,

Jun 28, 2010 12:49 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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Well, I guess I'll refrain from making conjecture as to what is causing the issue . . .

All I know is that my computer slows to a crawl when Photoshop CS5 has been open for a fair amount of time.
As soon as I quit, it quickly speeds up.

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16. Chris Cox,

Jun 28, 2010 12:59 PM in reply to Drew Pickard

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Well, we need enough information to reproduce the problem (because we're not seeing it), or a profile of the app when it's in the slow state (using Shark, preferably) to figure out where the time is being spent.

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17. Drew Pickard,

Jun 28, 2010 1:02 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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Sure.
I don't know what Shark is, though.
Post a link and I'll try and do that.

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18. Chris Cox,

Jun 28, 2010 1:25 PM in reply to Drew Pickard

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Shark is a profiling application, part of Apple's Developer tools (free).
But if you don't know how to use it, the app can be a bit daunting.

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19. Xpxw,

Jul 26, 2010 1:09 AM in reply to rod mclean

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I have the exact same issue - same machine - never a problem with CS4 - the application should install on a standard spec machine without modification - and work normally.

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20. Chris Cox,

Jul 26, 2010 11:10 AM in reply to Xpxw

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A few people did give us details on similar slowdowns - and all of them were due to bugs in third party plugins (most of which have updates available).

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21. tzmmtz,

Jul 27, 2010 11:54 AM in reply to rod mclean

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I have the same problem on two computers as Rod with smart objects. Also, multiple users are complaining about how slow CS5 is compared to CS4. All the computers are running 10.6.4. They are mostly Mac Pro's with at least 10Gigs of ram and scratch drives.

Tried using FontAgent Pro and FontExplorer Pro but problems continue.

I may do a test by going back to 10.6.3 but this isn't a good solution for companies with lots of Macs.

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22. Chris Cox,

Jul 27, 2010 12:56 PM in reply to tzmmtz

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Update your FontAgentPro plugins (or disable them) - those were the #1 cause of slowdowns.

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23. tzmmtz,

Jul 27, 2010 1:24 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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They were removed last week and replaced with the new update to FontExplorer Pro.

Any problems with FontExplorer Pro 2.5.1?

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24. Chris Cox,

Jul 27, 2010 2:21 PM in reply to tzmmtz

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I haven't heard of any, but also haven't tested it myself, so can't say for sure.

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25. rod mclean,

Jul 28, 2010 8:22 AM in reply to tzmmtz

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I went back to 10.6.3, installed the plugin that Adam recommended in an earlier post (disable vm buffering), installed 16 gigs of ram, turned off fonts, no 3rd party plugins, added two raptor drives on raid 0 for scratch, I try to keep no more than 5 windows open at a time, and restart the machine before I open a new file. I can say that it finally works w/o all the issues of past but have not noticed any performance increase. I updated to 12.0.1 after I did all of this so no idea if that fixed any of the earlier issues and not ready to trust it enough to uninstall the disable VM plugin and upgrade to 10.6.4. CS5 is great and has some useful new features but I think if I had it to do all over again I would have gone back to CS4 rather than all of these work arounds, hardware upgrades, and going back to 10.6.3. as there seem to be stability issues w/ 10.6.3.

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26. tzmmtz,

Jul 29, 2010 1:07 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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Twice in the past couple of days a user was working in a CS5 PhotoShop file and out of nowhere partially transparent white rectangles will pop up all over a layer. "No matter what I do they won't go away deeming the file useless and I have to start over. Even if I delete that layer it will pop up on another".

Has anyone heard of anything like this?

Thanks.

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27. Drew Pickard,

Jul 29, 2010 1:14 PM in reply to tzmmtz

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Sounds like a display issue.
Try turning off Open GL in Performance and see if that doesn't fix it.

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28. Andre Schneider,

Jul 29, 2010 1:49 PM in reply to tzmmtz

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tzmmzt,

Is what you are experiencing something like what I described on this post?

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/686236

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29. rod mclean,

Jul 29, 2010 2:11 PM in reply to tzmmtz

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Have you tried deleting the preferences and restarting the machine. I have had a lot of strange things happen w/ CS5 and deleting the preferences works occasionally. If you are committed to using CS5 you may want to try and delete preference, go back to 10.6.3, and install the disable VM buffering plugin as a test. There are definite issues with the nvidia graphics card, 10.6.4 and CS5.

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30. Chris ILines,

Jul 29, 2010 9:36 PM in reply to rod mclean

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We are having all these issues and more. It continues to slow down, and all tools become sluggish. Touching the transform window starts the beach ball. The transform window can only be moved a small distance and has to be accepted and applied again. When it starts the slow down, anything brings up the ball. Trying to grab a point in curves, and it won't move. File size growth is bizarre. We can save a file that is 13 gigs open, and open it on another box, (similar configuration) and the open file size has grown to 28 gigs. Saving to the server has become almost impossible and is critical for workgroup production of large complex files. Problems with saving after the first save, "disc version has changed" errors. It happens with both PSB and PSD files but seems to be a bigger problem with PSB. Every save needs to be a "SaveAs" This is on top of issues like the type tool crashing when you look at it and the many other well documented bugs. Has there just been so much effort put into the "Auto" features that the tools for serious image creation have been compromised for people working on large files? Not that the type tool should be considered serious.
10.5.11 or 10.6.4
dual 3.2 quad
32 gigs ram

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31. Chris Cox,

Jul 29, 2010 9:45 PM in reply to Chris ILines

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The only people seeing anything even close to that have corrupt fonts, or a buggy third party plugin (mostly FontAgentPro).
There is something about your system that causes this, something that differs from millions of other users not seeing a slowdown.

We need you to help figure out what that difference is.

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32. Andre Schneider,

Jul 29, 2010 9:50 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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We're having these issues at my work also. Computer is nice and happy in the morning, but throughout the day it gets slower and slower and slower the more we work on it. A restart would make it go back to normal, but when you are working with 8-10 Gb files and it takes 10 minutes to save and 10 minutes to open it again, we can't restart the computer every hour or so.

I'd be happy to help however I can to find what the problem is.

Andre

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33. Chris ILines,

Jul 29, 2010 9:50 PM in reply to tzmmtz

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We see these same problems across the board. We are using MacBook Pros, iMacs on up to 2x3.2 quads with 32 gig of ram. Files sizes from 300 mb PSDs to 20 gb PSBs. The problems are all similar, the problems are consistent across various computers and operating systems. We have no common denominator like font plug ins. The machines are in various configurations and the bugs are the same. Time to stop chasing the configuration tail and get this fixed. At this point I want the 20 grand back the company spent on upgrades.

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34. Chris ILines,

Jul 29, 2010 9:55 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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Well then we are breaking your trend. We are running boxes with nothing more than the OS and CS5. The are stripped down dedicated workstations. I think the known font issue is becoming an excuse for what seems to be a growing list of problems.

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35. Chris ILines,

Jul 29, 2010 10:01 PM in reply to Chris Cox

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One insight to where there is an issue is in the performance preferences. There is the option for small files with many layers "Tall and Thin" or big files with few layers "Big and Flat" since there is no option for a large file with many layers, it seems a quiet nod to the fact focus has been moved away from large complex files.

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36. Chris Cox,

Jul 30, 2010 1:18 AM in reply to Chris ILines

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it seems a quiet nod to the fact focus has been moved away from large complex files.
No, you're just jumping to conclusions.
We put the text in there to explain things as best we could - but the topic is much more complex than we could put in the preferences UI.

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37. Chris Cox,

Jul 30, 2010 1:20 AM in reply to Chris ILines

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I think the known font issue is becoming an excuse for what seems to be a growing list of problems.
Where did you get that? What "growing list of problems"?
After the dot release, there are only a few known problems in the app (and many, many more in the OS) -- and we're still working on those problems.

Just because you have an issue with your system, does not mean that there are widespread problems with the application.
Please stop trying to make it sound worse than it is, and focus on helping us figure out what is different about your systems that is causing this slowdown.

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38. Xpxw,

Jul 30, 2010 3:13 AM in reply to Chris Cox

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I don't have any "font" plugin. I have a standard windows machine.. I was happy with CS4 - I am not happy with CS5. DW slows considerably over time.

If you don't like other peoples views, please provide an answer.

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39. c.pfaffenbichler,

Jul 30, 2010 4:33 AM in reply to Xpxw

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Please don’t take this the wrong way, but when you offer the statement
I have a standard windows machine..
to someone like Mr.Cox you seem to betray some misunderstanding – he might be able to help you, but not unless he is provided with the relevant information.
The term »standard windows machine« appears rather uninformative as it does not make in the least clear what OS-version, processor, video card, etc. you are using, not to mention the upgrade state of your copy of Photoshop.
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/375816?tstart=0

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