Photoshop CS6 3D disabled

Some 3D features require 512mb VRAM on the video card.

If it's any consolation, you're not the first person to be affected by this change in hardware requirement between dot releases.

http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/2012/10/heads-up-photoshop-system-requirement-changes.ht ml

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4937784

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4946088

The blog post (first link) says

"Please note: The system requirements for Photoshop CS6 Extended have always indicated that you need 512 MB of vRAM, but this wasn’t a hard enforcement."

I can only see subtleties like that (then enforcing the requirement in a subsequent dot release so that functionality is suddenly disabled for some customers) creating grief and confusion for customers, as your post indicates.

The engineering effort is to be applauded but the timing and execution of introducing the new requirements is poor.

Time to upgrade the computer, assuming you want to keep up to date with the latest state of the art graphics software.

You're not the first to mention being limited by the more stringent enforcement of minimum system requirements...

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1120661

-Noel

Noel Carboni wrote:

 

Time to upgrade the computer

True but what happens if you're a Cloud member and you've got a working laptop where a feature worked yesterday and is disabled today following a dot release update?

You can uninstall, then reinstall from the original media and only update to the point revision that supported the facilities you needed (e.g., 13.0.1), and ignore further updates.  Certainly not ideal by any means, but you can get there from here.

Adobe should have implemented direct downgrade capability.

And just to be clear, it's a different feature (although admittedly very similar) that's not working today.  The 3D facilities are getting ongoing development.

-Noel

I'd be seriously p*ssed off if I was a new Creative Cloud subscriber who has to choose between

a) buying a new iMac, or

b) 3D and no bug-fixes, or

c) bug-fixes and no 3D

for the remainder of their subscription. I hope that's not 364 days!

I have to agree that caught off guard it would be kind of an irritating discovery, but consider this:

Creative Cloud subscribers signed up to get the "latest and greatest" software technology ASAP - on purpose, right?

Why would a person wanting to keep up to date with the latest and greatest software not expect to have to keep their hardware up to date?  It's not like Adobe Photoshop has ever been known for running well on much less than state-of-the-art hardware.

Does YOUR computer run the latest Photoshop release?  If so, why?

In my case, it's because I researched my needs, read system requirements, and thought about things that would help make the system more future-proof.  I've had video cards with 1 GB of VRAM or more since 2006.

-Noel

Noel Carboni wrote:

 

Does YOUR computer run the latest Photoshop release?  If so, why?

 

All of 13.0.1 Extended is available to me. (Haven't tried the botched 13.0.2 and 13.0.3 which wreck the licencing, but I expect the 3D will still work on my computer.) My computer has only 256 MB VRAM but that doesn't prevent the 3D features from being available and running. The 3D of 13.1.1 would be unavailable to me but maybe it would run if it were available. After all, I've been told the 3D of 13.0.x shouldn't run on my computer but it certainly does.

I don't know whether 13.0.2+ enforces the 512MB VRAM requirement where 13.0.1 did not.  All the blogs, etc. seem to indicate 13.1 is where that happens.  I only mention this because 13.0.2 contained not only bugfixes but some feature development to support Retina displays.  As a PC user I cannot have personal experience with 13.0.2 or 13.0.3 myself, as they (probably thankfully) haven't released those updates to PC users.

You're probably wise to stay on 13.0.1 for now on  your Mac.

Assuming 13.0.2 and beyond (in the 13.0 series) will still allow 3D work on a 256 MB VRAM-equipped system, then your having purchased a "Perpetual" license is right in line with your system's capabilities.  I assume you downloaded the evaluation version, saw that it worked, then ponied up the cash.  Notably you did not opt for a Creative Cloud membership and all the benefits (and other issues) therunto appertaining.

That's key here:  There's no way to "evaluate" 13.1 before accepting it for installation, and there's no easy way back.

-Noel

Noel Carboni wrote:

 

I assume you downloaded the evaluation version, saw that it worked, then ponied up the cash.

 

Yep, exactly. Same as I do with all apps.

There's no way to "evaluate" 13.1 before accepting it for installation, and there's no easy way back.

It could be installed in a clone of the system volume and evaluated without risk to the primary installation. Maintaining bootable clones of the system is a piece of cake with a Mac and provides for almost immediate disaster recover.

Noel Carboni wrote:

 

Time to upgrade the computer, assuming you want to keep up to date with the latest state of the art graphics software.

 

You're not the first to mention being limited by the more stringent enforcement of minimum system requirements...

 

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1120661

 

-Noel

Heres what i'm confused about and your getting back to my point.  If the features still work to our abaility why is adobe forcing the restrictions on us?  No one has been able eto answer this one question for me yet. 

Again is it because adobe was blamed for not doing it in the past and GPU's were frying with people like me and others using min requirments.  I threw this at an adobe person on the phone and he was silent.

yes but back then in 2006 1g of graphic was almost as much as the processor was.  Most people couldnt afford that and the programs after adobe got into the web world, buying out macromedia and scaling up the prices on the software.

13.0 it isnt enforced, but 13.1 is strictened.  people with 350 to 400 mb ram are lucky that 13.1 its working but i was told by adobe if u dont have that 512mb + everyone will be effected in 13.2

I have 1024mb Vram why isn't it working for me either?

With 256mb of Vram, I recently had this problem, and I refused to take "no" (or "get a new video card") for an answer... and low and behold I found a little "hack" that allowed me to trick Photoshop into thinking I have enough vram.  Now, of course, this COULD have unforeseen consequences and I don't actually recommend that anyone do this ... but for me, it allowed me to use the 3D features of Photoshop and so far they have all worked and not caused any problems. On a Windows computer ...

If you want to try this at your own risk, simply fire up Regedit, then navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ SYSTEM \\ CurrentControlSet \\ Control \\ Video
find -> HardwareInformation .MemorySize

Double click to edit the value, then set the "base" as Decimal (using the radio buttons), and change the value to: 536870912

... then restart Photoshop.

Obviously, some feature of 3D could probably NEED that much vram and thus might crash Photoshop, but for me it has not yet been an issue.

Good luck!

Where were you before I spent $6,000 on a new work station?!?!  Heh, just playing..  I had plans to upgrade anyways, but nice trick man.

Hey thanks for the hack, just one question...

Under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ SYSTEM \\ CurrentControlSet \\ Control \\ Video

There are multiple instances of HardwareInformation .MemorySize in multiple sub-folders under Video.

The folders have key names that look like:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{1F69050E-3534-4CDD-9931-BA093C1 7C94E}

etc etc

Half have a TYPE of: REG_BINARY

The other half have a TYPE of: REG_QWORD

Is there any particular one I need to edit, or do they all need editing?

Once navigating to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ SYSTEM \\ CurrentControlSet \\ Control \\ Video

I did a ctrl-f and searched for .MemorySize.

The first one that comes up for me is a type REG_DWORD, which in my case contained the hex value 10000000 which, when you view as "Decimal", was "268435456", representative of my 256mb of ram.  I doubled that number for this registry value only, restarted Photoshop, and had success.  I didn't have to change any of the other entries. 

Good luck!

Excuse me, I should have said "vram" not "ram" there.  Inconsequential, but I don't want to cause any confusion