Photoshop CS6 running slow...

[Dawelio]

Hello everyone,

So a family member of mine has ran into some isses for some time now and this is a bit out of my own area of knowledge.

We have an old version of Photoshop, CS6 Extended, which we are still using due to it's already paid for, it's enough for our needs and the newer version requires an subscription which is too expensive for 2 computers.

Their computer is also rather outdated by todays standards, it's an old i7 2600K and an ASUS ITX motherboard (can't remember the name of it, if it's required, I'll dig this information up) and 16GB RAM.

Now the issue at hand is that the program is lagging at times. Whenever they are trying to use the eraser and erase something in the project, it takes a few seconds before the action is actually taking place. Which is rather annoying, as you can even select another layer during this, as you need to wait for it to finish and then do it. It's like it's freezing up momentarily.

They are on an older mSATA SSD still. I'm not sure how much it would help to maybe upgrade in a few months time to my current 3700X, an M.2 SSD and potentially an RTX 2080?... They are using an MSI GTX 980 as well. Yes, I'm aware, totally overkill for their needs. But this PC is my former one, that I gave to them when I got a new one.

I have tried Googling this a bit, although it feels like a dead end to me. Since I have literally no idea what it is I'm actually searching for/after and hence feeling like I'm searching after a needle in a haystack, blindfolded. Hence turning to the community now for some assistance.

Does anyone know why this is happening and how to potentially fix it? Could an 2080 help out, hardware wise? As in being kinda like a GPU accelerator and take some of the workload on it's own?

Any and all help is much appreciated!

Thanks,
Dawelio

 

[AlienALX]

A GPU won't help.

How much space is on the hard drive, and do you have a scratch disk set up?

 

[looz]

Is reinstalling windows feasible? Hardware is completely fine for Photoshop, as long as it's functional. So I'd attempt to rule out software issues first.

 

[Dawelio]

A GPU won't help.

How much space is on the hard drive, and do you have a scratch disk set up?

I'm not entirely sure on that one, but don't think it's full though. But would need to double check that and get back to you.

A scratch disk set up? How do you mean exactly by this?...

Is reinstalling windows feasible? Hardware is completely fine for Photoshop, as long as it's functional. So I'd attempt to rule out software issues first.

Umm, it is an option - if it's the last resort. Due to the amount of hassle to actually reinstall windows and everything else. Not to mention the colossal amount of brushes etc that they have installed on their Photoshop.

 

[Kei]

Open the edit menu and go to preferences at the bottom. Scratch disks and cache settings are under performance. This is how mine has been set for years and I've had no trouble. (also CS6) It runs great on my old 4820K with 16GB of ram and an old HD6850.

 

[looz]

Umm, it is an option - if it's the last resort. Due to the amount of hassle to actually reinstall windows and everything else. Not to mention the colossal amount of brushes etc that they have installed on their Photoshop.

Could it be a plugin acting up? Do other software demonstrate strange slowness?

 

[AlienALX]

The only time I have ever seen Photoshop lag was when the hard drive was nearly full or the memory was running out.

It's not a hard to run app. I have used it quite happily with a 2ghz CPU and 16gb RAM very recently. In fact I was heavy multi tasking too, as I was going straight from it to Illustrator, then back to Photoshop (with it all running) and then into my plotter software. All whilst listening to music and browsing the web.

6 always seemed a bit laggy to me which is why I use 5.

However I suspect something else may be happening here. Have you just installed that latest Windows update which basically knacks it and leaves you needing to reinstall?

It's happened to several people I know now. One of my LAN guys literally had his rig crash out the other night whilst we were playing PUBG. He tried everything, but the game wouldn't run. Had to reinstall.

Me? it destroyed my TR rig. To the point I was getting a black screen at boot saying "Can not find boot device". After wasting several hours I just reinstalled the latest version of Windows which fixed it.

This is the problem when they stick to just one OS (Win 10) and at times basically rewrite a whole ton of it. Some updates will not work as updates, so you have to reinstall. I've had this happen about four times in Win 10 now. Usually when they do a big update like that "creators" update they did that time. Before that my version was lacking several features they had added, yet the update did not add them.

However before you resort to that run a memory test in Windows (well, it will reboot into a DOS shell) and see if your memory has any errors.