Photoshop CC hangs on photomerge

[L1ttl3J1m]

Hi Everybody, I hope someone can shed some light on this...

So, I have a bunch of .RAW images I'm trying to make into a panorama. Photoshop is fine with up to 20 or so layers, but more than that it hangs.

Photoshop is taking about 45% of processor time and about 7 GB of RAM when the align starts. At this point, Photoshop is still responding. ie, I can grab the progress bar and move it around.

After about a minute or so, the CPU usage drops to 8 percent and Photoshop stops responding. The whole window stops responding, and it'll sit there forever, or at least 48 hours, which is the longest I've left it for.

I've followed the steps to disable the Adobe Spaces Helper and CEPHtmlEngine, increased and reduce memory usage, disabled the graphics processor and reset my preferences, disabled all the plugins, run Photoshop as Administrator and started Windows in safe mode and run Photoshop as Administrator in Windows safe mode

CPU: i7-5930k

RAM: 32GB DDR4 3400 MHz

GPU: 2 x nVidia 980Ti

OS: Windows 10 Professional

If it's any help, Resource Monitor->Analyze Wait Chains says that the thread with a stack that looks like this;

State: Wait:WrAlertBythread

ntdll.dll!NtWaitForAlertByThreadId+0x14

ntdll.dll!RtlInitializeCriticalSectionEx+0xe9b

ntdll.dll!RtlInitializeCriticalSectionEx+0xd01

ntdll.dll!RtlEnterCriticalSection+0x121

ntdll.dll!RtlEnterCriticalSection+0x40

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1c4a701

KERNEL32.DLL!BaseThreadInitThunk+0x14

ntdll.dll!RtlUserThreadStart+0x21

is waiting on the thread that looks like this;

State: switches between "Running" and "Ready"

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x60019f

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x5b4a4a

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x5a9d5a

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x5b8c2b

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x57c225

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x577fb9

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x5d6b0f

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x582dab

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x5d2d03

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0xb46e87

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x10ef996

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x10eb3cf

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1120c07

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x102a97f

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1b71c3d

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1bb8c12

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1bb8c8d

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1be63cb

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1bd1597

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1c02e4c

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1bd21bb

USER32.dll!CallWindowProcW+0x4d0

USER32.dll!CallWindowProcW+0x8b

AdobeOwl.dll!OWLWorkspaceBookmarkGetBuffer+0xb590

AdobeOwl.dll!DllMain+0x34d99

AdobeOwl.dll!DllMain+0xaa2a7

AdobeOwl.dll!DllMain+0x34a7a

AdobeOwl.dll!DllMain+0x3e23a

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x61641b

USER32.dll!CallWindowProcW+0x4d0

USER32.dll!CallWindowProcW+0x1cc

USER32.dll!GetTopWindow+0x153

ntdll.dll!KiUserCallbackDispatcher+0x24

win32u.dll!NtUserMessageCall+0x14

USER32.dll!SendMessageW+0x270

USER32.dll!SendMessageW+0xf8

AdobeOwl.dll!DllMain+0xafbe4

AdobeOwl.dll!DllMain+0xae493

AdobeOwl.dll!DllMain+0x34a7a

AdobeOwl.dll!DllMain+0x3e23a

USER32.dll!CallWindowProcW+0x4d0

USER32.dll!DispatchMessageW+0x1af

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1c0d6d6

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1c2ffc7

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x5764d3

Photoshop.exe!boost::serialization::singleton<boost::archive::detail::extra_detail::map<boost::archive::xml_oarchive> >::get_instance+0x1c10a10

Photoshop.exe!boost::archive::detail::pointer_oserializer<boost::archive::xml_oarchive,dbrush_000011011100::Modeler>::save_object_ptr+0x46cf37

KERNEL32.DLL!BaseThreadInitThunk+0x14

ntdll.dll!RtlUserThreadStart+0x21

[Trevor.Dennis]

Are these full res RAW files?  How big are they?  I have a 3930K with 32Gb RAM and GT970, and that started to choke when I got a 50Mp Canon 5DS if I got greedy with photomerge.   But try checking the root of your primary Scratch drive.  I bet it creates quite a Photoshop Temp file with a 20 image photomerge.

[L1ttl3J1m]

The raw files are 10 Mb each. I've also tried exporting them to jpeg and TIFF before I do the photomerge with the same result.

[JJMack]

Photoshop scratch disk also defaults to your boot disk.  Should your Boot disk become full windows will go to pot. When this happen check the free space left on C: do not terminate Photoshop first. Photoshop also uses some temp space on C:

[L1ttl3J1m]

Forgot to specify that: I've got the scratch file on a 3rd disk to both windows and the source files.

All the drives are SSD

Drive info and free space is;

C: (OS and Photoshop) - 137 GB

D: (Source Files) - 228 GB

E: (Scratch Drive) - 397 GB

[davescm]

Longshot - but Photoshop does not play well with multiple GPUs (you say you have two). Have you tried disabling one?

Further info here (in paragraph 7):

Troubleshoot Photoshop graphics processor (GPU) and graphics driver issues

Dave

[L1ttl3J1m]

Through a long and tortuous bunch of circumstances that I won't bore you with (except to mention that eVGA's support department is way better that Asus's), the two 980Tis have currently been replaced by a single 780Ti, with the same result.

[illuxory]

Having exactly the same problem in Photoshop 2018 with macOS 10.12. Plenty of free RAM (>40 GB; 64 GB total), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4095 MB, multiple SSD scratch disks and a rotary just in case with over 300 GB free.

Trying to combine 60 images that are about 5 MB a piece.  File -> Automate -> Photo Merge.  Have tried multiple configurations within Photo Merge, all hang at precisely the same (visual) way as the OP describes.

Also found another person with the same apparent problem, BUT while his worked after killing Photoshop a few times, mine will NOT even after more than 10 kills and reattempts. Link to the other person:

astrophotography - Photoshop stuck at Align Selected Layers Based On Content - Photography Stack Exc...

Just by doing a search on Google or DuckDuckGo.com for "photoshop photomerge hangs" gives a BUNCH of results that all seem very similar and we've been having this problem since at least 2013.