Problems with Photoshop CS6 lag

[Moxham-]

I keep coming across lag problems while painting in photoshop, of which shouldn't be happening. I have 32 gig ram of which 24 gig are set aside for photoshop, yet it never goes past the 20% mark for usage (in task manager), the same goes for the CPU, it never goes past 30% usage. Is there any way to increase the usage for photoshop? I've set the priority to real time in task manager and it bumps it up 5% or so, but thats about it.

The system i have is:
Gigabyte radeon r9 290 - 4GB
Corsair Venegeance 1600 ddr3 32GB
AMD Fx 8320 8 core

 

[gedstar]

You could have a look here

http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/2012/10/how-to-tune-photoshop-cs6-for-peak-performance.html

And this

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1066285?start=0&tstart=0

 

[Moxham-]

Thanks for the reply. I've done all of these before and it hasn't helped out with the hardware usage or the lag. It's still set to use 17-20 gig RAM but only ever uses about 6 at most

 

[Steve]

Any other lagging issues on the computer?

I've never seen this issue before but some solutions to common PS issued that may or maynot be in the links gedstar posted include resetting your Preferences file.
Start Photoshop and immediately hold down Ctrl+Alt+Shift (Windows)
or Command+Option+Shift (Mac OS X).
Then, click Yes to the message, "Delete the Adobe Photoshop Settings file?"

Make sure your video driver is up to date.

Turn off Edit|Preferences|Performance|Use Graphics Processor
Good luck

 

[Moxham-]

Nope, the only other problem with the computer is that i can't get into UEFI bios, whether that could be causing issues?

I'll give that a go and see if it helps!
Wouldn't turning off the GPU make it run slower?

 

[inkpad.t]

what size canvas are painting on? i find Photoshop lags if the canvas i use is over 4000 px's... in any canvas size after that... Also what do have loaded in ... like how many brushes ?, how much history levels have you allowed, how many styles, plugins, actions ... so on and so on..are loaded in to Photoshop. I personally found having a lot of any above or all the above slowed Photoshop down quite dramatically.. I now have saved brush sets so i can load them as I need them for a specific work.. say a brush set for sci fi scenes... one for landscapes... one for creatures .. so on and so on... the same applies to any actions i would need .

after doing this and only loading in what i needed it stop the lagging even on large size pixel canvases.. not totally on large canvases but much much more not. Also layers, the more layers the more it will slow, at least that i found until I started to merge them as I went.

 

[Moxham-]

The normal canvas size i use is 3000x3000 px, I think there are roughly 40 brushes, because i removed all the presets and put the ones i use most on. I've allowed 30 history levels, and haven't added anything else than that. I've also found that for mine it doesn't matter on the amount of layers for some reason, if i have 1 layer, or 40 layers it reacts the same while painting or saving.

 

[MrToM]

It's still set to use 17-20 gig RAM but only ever uses about 6 at most

So....why set aside 24GB to PS?
You may actually be slowing your PC down by doing this.

With only 8GB of RAM left, (32-24), all the other tasks that constantly run in the background are all fighting to use that RAM. When that RAM runs out they then have to fight for pagefile space, writing and reading to and from the HD.
This is considerably slower than using RAM but with no other alternative this is what happens, and slows your PC down in the process.

PS, OTOH, just sits there using very little RAM and no more than 6GB when you push it hard, but has a further 18GB allocated to it which is basically sat there doing nothing, and the PC won't use it because it's allocated to PS.

As daft as it sounds, I'd try REDUCING the allocation to PS to speed up the background tasks / apps / services that the PC needs to run, removing the probability of using the pagefile.

Also PS will ONLY use what RAM it needs, regardless of how much is allocated to it, and if you know it uses no more than 6GB then why waste that other 18GB?

If PS does need more RAM than it has allocated to it then it will use the scratch discs, slower yes, but its what they are for...as a temporary buffer. This should be quicker than slowing the whole PC down, and to be honest I doubt you'll even notice a speed decrease.

Try allocating just 6GB to PS and see if that makes a difference. You can always increase it if you find yourself working on larger files with many layers.

There's no guarantee any of that will actually make a difference but re-allocating unused RAM back to the PC has to be a good move...doesn't it?

Regards.
MrTom.

 

[Steve]

Wouldn't turning off the GPU make it run slower?

A bit but you're talking about a major slowdown.
I'm suggesting turning things off that have been known to mess with PS.
I think MrTom has a good idea, try cutting PS down to 16 or even 12 GB for now to see if it helps.

Also try purging the cache Edit|Purge|All

​

 

[Moxham-]

So far i've turned it back down from 20+gig to about 13, and it seems to have sped up a little bit, still to try turning the gpu off, just been too busy from work to experiment with it as of yet, so i'll try it this weekend and let you know how it goes, thanks again

 

[Tom Mann]

I also have a very capable computer (ie, 64 G of RAM, multiple SSDs, top end processor, fast separate GPU, etc.), and one thing that will slow it to a crawl is if PS decides that it's time to do an automatic timed backup. Even using a separate, very fast SSD as my working data drive, the automatic timed backup of a large, multiple layer, 16 bit per channel can take tens of seconds (or more), which can seem like an eternity.

Also, try this: Temporarily disconnect yourself from the internet, and temporarily turn off all virus and malware checking software that usually start with your computer. Reboot, and see if this helps speed things up.

HTH,

Tom M

 

[Mat Dingwall]

Does the lag only happen when you paint with a brush? Could it be that you've got the brush spacing set to the lowest value? That can cause lagging on my system. Try opening up the brush properties and changing the spacing to 10.