Custom shape tool selection panel lags and is almost unusable.

[ryanr21319135]

I'm a concept artist, and thus, while sketching, I like to use custom shapes to speed up my process. Recently, though, I've been encountering issues with the custom shape tool running very slowly as I try to select the shape I want to use. Once I have the shape selected and use it on the canvas, though, it runs smoothly. Has anyone else encountered this issue and/or know of a way to fix it? It's quite frustrating and slows down my process quite a bit.

Thanks in advance,

Ryan

[JJMack]

I find I have that problem after I do some Photoshop vector Path editing.  The only way I found to correct the problem is to reset my Photoshop preferences. At least one of  Photoshop preferences files has been ccorrupted. I believe though more than one preference file may have been corrupted

[ryanr21319135]

Thanks for the reply. I gave it a shot, but it didn't fix my situation, unfortunately.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Ryan

Can you tell us a bit about your hardware so we can put it into context?   Also what version of Photoshop and what operating system you are using?

As a concept artist, do you use a lot of layers, and do you use a lot of Smart Objects?  I find the latter can slow things down even with a half reasonable computer.  Also look at your cache levels in Preferences > Performance.  That can make a lot of difference.

How many history states do you have set, and what are your Scratch disk arrangements?  What size Photoshop temp files do you see on the root directory of your primary Scratch drive, and what sort of drive is it and how much free space does it have?  I have just started using a new system with a 7900X and 64Gb RAM, and even with huge documents, Photoshop has not so far used scratch space, and it is speeding things up nicely.  The same applies to Smart objects.

Look to see if you have any orphaned Photoshop temp files in your Scratch drive?  Anything without today's date, or still there when you close Photoshop, can be deleted.  I often find this happening, even when I don't remember Photoshop having any problems.

[ryanr21319135]

Hi Trevor, thanks for the response.

Here are my specs and current Photoshop preferences:

I do tend to use a lot of layers and smart objects, but this issue persists even on a blank canvas after a full system reboot. Possibly an increase in RAM would help alleviate the issue, but even so, I just don't understand why the custom shapes panel runs so slow. Unless it's grabbing the information from each custom shape upon opening it and each shape happens to have a very large root file (I'm unsure if that's the case or not). I wasn't able to find any large temp files. I have done Edit>Purge>All, which doesn't speed it up any either. If you need any other information that might be helpful, let me know.

[Trevor.Dennis]

There's no problem with your system specs.  Goodness that should easily cope with most of what Photoshop can ask of it.

Your primary Scratch has to be an HDD with that much free space, and even with 32Gb RAM you could easily see 5Gb and beyong Photoshop temp files, and Smart Objects also need to be read from the drive — I am not entirely sure of where SOs are stored, but I am convinced that using a lot of them puts a significant overhead on performance.

However, you say this issue persists with a new document?  Do you use a lot of downloaded or new shapes that you have made?  And do you have them all available in the Custom Shapes panel like so?  

I'm thinking that shapes you make yourself will go in the App Data folder hierarchy of your boot drive, which from the rest of your system specs, I am guessing is at least an SSD and probably an NVMe M.2 drive considering the recent age of your CPU?  So that shouldn't be an issue. 

I'd be inclined to change your cache setting to Web / UI Design, but here again, it shouldn't make a difference until well into the process when you have a lot of layers. 

Are there any issues with Ryzen and Photoshop? I am struggling to think of anything else and leaning in that direction, as I know there have been issues with some of the new very high core count CPUs and Adobe apps.  I'm 'assuming' that you are using Windows 10.  What do you see in Resource Monitor when this is going on? I can't make my 7900X system work hard no matter what I do with shape layers and Smart Objects :-(.  We have a test we do where we create 30K square pixel image, and paint from corner to corner with a 5000 pixel fully hard brush.  That gets my system up to 4.4GHz and takes 11 seconds

[JJMack]

Lets test to see if its you workflow.  Simple open a new document 1920x1080 300DPI.  Add a complex shape layer is it fast or slow.  When my machine is having problems adding this Shape takes several minutes.  When working correctly CC 2018 19.1.1 takes 5 to 7 seconds to render the shape layer.  Its a very complex shape.

Other take or 2 seconds

[Yep]

Sept 2022 - must still be the program.  Everything works smoothly on my Imac, when when using the shape tool, rectangle or other, is just impossible to use.  Like rendering a 20 minute video! Adobe!!  It is not the cache settings or the graphics card, it is something with photoshop.  My work around for some situations is to create a blank layer and fill with whatever color, then use a mask to create shapes.  This works as any other layer without issues.  Should not have to do this, but it is a solution in some cases.