Tool Lag in CS6.

[John 2]

I have recently upgraded from CS5 to CS6 as part of an overall computer upgrade. Unlike CS5, I am finding that some of the major tools in PS CS6 suffer a lag in that there is a delay between the mouse input and the required effect taking place. The brush tool, clone tool and burn and dodge tools are particularly affected but there are others. This seems to be a recognised problem on one or two forums. Has anybody suffered the same problem and found the cause/solution. My system is useable but it's a pain. I thought it worth asking.

[Manfred M]

There can be a lag with these tools and I found that upgrading the RAM on my machine helped immensely. The larger these tools, the greater the lag, I found.

[chauncey]

FYI...my photoshop usage requires my 24 of RAM.

[dje]

Hi John

I'm using CS6 and have no problems of that nature. I did notice an improvement in the performance of CS6 when I changed from 32 bit Windows 7 to 64 bit and upgraded from 4GB to 8GB of RAM although I can't be specific in what areas now. I have a first generation i5 processor.

Presumably you have updated CS6 to the latest version ?

Dave

[John 2]

Thanks fro your replies. I'm using an i7 quad core @ 3.5 Ghz with SATA 3 SSDs for the system and scratch disks plus 16GB of RAM. The MB will take 32 GB of RAM. I might invest in another 8GB to see what happens.

[Manfred M]

John - what operating system are you using? For instance, Windows 7 Home will not address more than 16GB of RAM, so installing more doesn't do anything for you. 16GB seems to work fine for me; your processor is reasonably fast.

[John 2]

I'm using W7 pro 64 bit Manfred. I must admit that I had expected 16Gb to be sufficient. When I started to use layers extensively, my old machine running CS5, 8Gb of RAM with a Raptor System drive (but otherwise essentially the same) began to creek a bit - hence the upgrade. However, I have never experienced tool lag before. Looking at the ADOBE help forum, the problem is not unknown but nobody seems to have found an answer. ADOBE themselves are remaining silent.

[Manfred M]

I'm using W7 pro 64 bit Manfred. I must admit that I had expected 16Gb to be sufficient. When I started to use layers extensively, my old machine running CS5, 8Gb of RAM with a Raptor System drive (but otherwise essentially the same) began to creek a bit - hence the upgrade. However, I have never experienced tool lag before. Looking at the ADOBE help forum, the problem is not unknown but nobody seems to have found an answer. ADOBE themselves are remaining silent.

If you are running Windows 7 Home Pro 64, like I am, then 16GB is still the maximum amount of RAM that your machine can take. The only time I really notice the lag is when I am worked really large files and working on complex composites (some of my files are well over 200MB). I do use layer masks a lot and I find that when I am using a large brush to paint these masks, there can be a lag that can take a few seconds to catch up. I only use this size of brush for some really broad selections, and once I reduce brush size, the response is where I would expect it to be. The erase tool shows the same symptoms.

Photoshop seems to have some memory management problems; it does not seem to free up memory that is not being used any longer. As an example, I was working on an image that showed me using up around 12GB of RAM. When I flattened and saved the image, no change in memory use, but when I shut down Photoshop, restarted it and loaded the flattened file, the memory use was in the order of 4GB. I wonder if this might be one of the contributing factors.

[John 2]

Thanks Manfred. I wasn't aware that the memory limitation applied to W 7 pro x64. I thought it was just W7 home. Saved me some money then. As I said, it is manageable. Perhaps I had better just soldier on.

[Manfred M]

Thanks Manfred. I wasn't aware that the memory limitation applied to W 7 pro x64. I thought it was just W7 home. Saved me some money then. As I said, it is manageable. Perhaps I had better just soldier on.

Sorry John; I got Pro and Premium mixed up. Premium limits you to 16GB, but Pro lets you got to 192GB.\\

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...mits_windows_7

[John 2]

No problem Manfred.

[proseak]

Have you run the update for CS6 yet? The performance improvement is well worth having, especially for anything GPU based.

[John 2]

Thanks Peter. I think that it happened automatically but I will check just in case.

[John 2]

No, I'm bang up to date. Might try some additional memory when funds allow.

[FootLoose]

John, do you have any large files sitting on your desktop? If so, they could be gobbling up your ram.

[John 2]

Thanks Greg. No, I haven't but I the machine isn't dedicated to just photography and although I avoid the "connect on start up" syndrome as much as possible, you never really know what's going on in the background - but thanks for the thought.