Photoshop 2018 (ver 19.0) Slow, Laggy Performance

[DavePinMinn]

Windows 10 Pro, 64 bit.  5820 running at 4.5 GHz, 32GB of fast memory, nVidia 970 GTX, O/S, scratch, temps and all that on a 1TB SSD.  Images on a 4TB Raid 0 with 7200 rpm drives.

There's been NO new hardware.  No REMOVED hardware.  No reconfigured hardware.  No KNOWN major O/S updates since prior to the Photoshop upgrade.

Nothing has changed in the workflow...  Using PS on exactly the same type of images I was previously - Nikon D500, D810, and now also D850.  The ONLY things running when I'm editing are Outlook, Lightroom (NOT upgraded yet because of some of the horror stories) and Photoshop.

Let Adobe CC do the upgrade to Adobe Raw, Bridge and Photoshop to the current version from the previous version.  In previous version Photoshop ran adequately.  Not blinding fast (sub-second) doing anything significant, but reasonably well.  Using a simple tool like the crop tool, movements were smooth and quick, with no perceptible lag time.  Same for the Free Transform tool.  Even rolling the mouse wheel to resize was pretty good.

NOW, (without going into the other things that no longer work well, the crop tool has a significant lag between moving the cursor and having the crop change, and the movement, when it DOES occur, is choppy.  Exactly the same thing with the Free Transform.  And, of course for the mouse wheel resizing.  And I suspect for a lot of other things I haven't hit yet, having just upgraded.

I've SEEN the "Optimize Performance Photoshop CC" stuff, and DID THAT in the past.  It ran FINE.......  Went through it AGAIN today to see if there was anything I'd missed.  I don't see anything to REASONABLY change:

General, Interface: I don't see anything to change there

Workspace:  Auto-show hidden panels, Open as tabs, Enable docking, nothing new there

Tools:  Nothing I can see that should cause a problem - Enable flick panning, zoom with scroll wheel, animated zoom, zoom resizes windows

History Log, File Handling, Export - all nothing

Performance:  Of the 32GB of ram, of which it SAYS there's about 24 GB available I'm giving it 18.  It recommended 15.7, so I started there, but nothing between there and 18 has made any difference.

Optimize cache and tile size is set for "huge pixel dimensions" since I'm shooting D810 and D850.  100 history states (this is DOWN from the normal 150 'cause I sometimes need to go back A LONG WAY in history.  Making it smaller did NOTHING.), 6 cache levels, 1024 tile size

In the Graphics Processor it recognizes the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970/SSE2, has it turned on, and it WAS set to Advanced, "Use Graphics Process to Accelerate" and "Anti-alias Guides and Paths".  Since the optimization document recommended that if performance sucked in Advanced, turn it down to "Normal".  I DID.  NO CHANGE.  Again, this has been working PERFECTLY in Advanced for umpteen versions......

I don't see ANYTHING in performance that should be a problem...  Is there SOMETHING I'm not seeing?

Scratch Disks:  It's got 2.  1 is the internal SSD where there's about 100GB available for scratch.  2 is an internal hard drive that IS NOT USED DURING ANY OF THE PHOTO EDITING where there is approximately 400GB of free space.  The SSD has the O/S and other software on it, but I've ALSO TRIED a USB3 SSD with 125GB available, and NONE of the above have made any difference.

Cursors, Transparency, Units, Guides - I don't see anything there that should be having this effect

Plug-Ins:  Enable Generator OFF.  Enable remote connections OFF, Allow extension to connect OFF, Load extension panels OFF.  Don't see anything there.

Type:  nothing I can see...

3D:  I'm not doing 3D so I'm not sure how this would affect anything but if there's something bizarre that needs to be set in there, let me know.

Technology Previews:  Everything is turned off....

I don't recall EVER seeing the Efficiency indicator go below 100%, but I'm guessing MUST have at times 'cause prior to the update it wasn't unusual to have a half dozen D810 images open depending on what I was doing.  But, in any case, IT WORKED, now IT DOESN'T.  Only known change IS THE UPDATE.

What do now?  I can go back, but does PS need to know anything to work with D850 images?  As long as Bridge and ACR are current will it work?  Is there something I can reconfigure?  Or is this version of PS just a pig and we're back to the kind of slow, choppy, laggy performance we sometimes got with new versions back in the CS? days?  I can't imagine that or there'd be a HUGE outcry, complete with tar and pitchforks, and I'm not seeing that.  SO, what do now?

[Terri_Stevens]

Hi Dave,

I'm not clear if you are using the update released yesterday or not? Some of the lag issues have been addressed in the fix.

[DavePinMinn]

Yes, it's the yesterday release.  I was seeing the same thing with the previous release 19.0, but I checked yesterday BEFORE complaining (something I sometimes forget to do and then feel stupid)...

To provide ANOTHER example.....

Open a plain, ordinary image from a Nikon D810.  Do a lens blur: Filter/Blur/Lens Blur.  Popup opens.  It STARTS TO PAINT THE IMAGE IN THE POPUP.  And sits.  And sits.  At just over FOUR MINUTES (yes, MINUTES), it looked like this:

I have NO idea how long it will take to actually open this image, but the tool is totally unusable.  Efficiency sits at 100% and NEVER STOPS BEING 100%.

From the Windows 10 Task Manager I have: CPU: 14%, MEMORY USAGE: 18.7/23.9 gb  which as near as I can tell means it's using every bit of memory I gave Photoshop in the preferences.  There's NO ACTIVITY ON ANY DISK, SCRATCH OR OTHERWISE.

Unfortunately, this ISN'T WHERE I NEED THIS IMAGE.  It's supposed to provide a cloud for the REAL image.  So, I killed all this, opened the ACTUAL image, created the layer mask in the real image, copied the sky/cloud image over it as a new layer, and tried again....

It was bad.  It's now RIDICULOUS.  It doesn't even TRY to display the cloud image in the Lens Blur window.

I haven't done an extensive search for whatever excuse there is for abysmal performance on lens blur, but this is an example, on top of the ones in the original post, of what I'm seeing with the current version.....

Do I have some MASSIVE screwup in the preferences?  'Cause there are tools in PS that may not have been great in the past, but they're unusable at this point.  And the problems I reported yesterday are still there.

[Chuck Uebele]

I'm not sure if this will help, but sometimes some files in the application manger get messed up and causes extreme slowness. I'm not sure where these files are on a Mac, but on Win you want to delete the AAMUpdater folder and the OOBE folder that are here on Wind:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Adobe\

You will not be able to delete all the files in the AAMUpdater folder. After you do that try reinstalling the Adobe Application Manager. It should give you an option to repair, since all the files could not be deleted. Choose that option.

[Sufferincats]

I am having the same problem with PS CC 2018 running incredibly slow. I use PS for drawing and it has become unusable. I tried the usual fixes, some of those mentioned above without any improvement. Using a macbook pro with Sierra (caution do not upgrade to High Sierra, some favorite shortcuts like right clicking on files to get the file drop down menu are missing). I have two almost identical Macbook Pro's, one with PS CC 2017 and that one works fine. What is the problem with 2018? It's unusable, doesn't see Camera Raw either.

[Sufferincats]

I uninstalled PS CC 2018 and installed PS CC 2017 and it runs normally. It still does not see camera raw. But at least it is usable for drawing, Bridge does not see camera raw either.

[DavePinMinn]

Chuck, thanks for your reply.......

Blew away everything to do with AAMupdate and OOBE.  In all the places they were.  Started application manager and it did a re-install...

Opened Photoshop, opened plain, ordinary D810 raw file......  Hit Filter/Blur/Lens blur.....

THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE AFTER 90 SECONDS - yes, it's been sitting there for a MINUTE AND A HALF.

And HERE it is after FOUR MINUTES....

and FINALLY, here it is after ELEVEN MINUTES..  ELEVEN MINUTES AND IT STILL HASN'T EVEN FINISHED OPENING THE *&^%$#@! IMAGE...  This is RIDICULOUS...

[ivanleegee]

I'm having the same lag issues. No changes in hardware either. But after the latest 2018 updates I can't even drag layers without it lagging, making it impossible to do anything accurately.

It is to the point of being unusable which means I can't work.

Adobe ​please​ fix this