MacBook: Photoshop runs slowly - what to do?
If your MacBook Photoshop or another app from Adobe CC runs slowly, you can adjust the performance settings. We'll show you how to improve Adobe Photoshop performance on your MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or iMac.
Mac: Adjust performance settings in Photoshop
Start Photoshop and click on "Photoshop CC" or "Photoshop CS X" in the upper menu. Then select the "Performance ..." item under the "Preferences".
- Allocate enough memory to Photoshop. If your MacBook or iMac has 6 or more GB of RAM, you should free up at least 5000 MB for Photoshop.
- Then click on "Advanced Settings ..." on the right under "Graphics Settings".
- Under "Drawing mode" choose a lower level than the current one. You can achieve the best performance by clicking on "simple". For example, a MacBook Pro Retina runs much slower under "extended" than under "normal" or "simple".
- Finally, click "OK" and restart Photoshop to apply the settings.
Photoshop runs slowly on the MacBook - expand memory
If you are working with a MacBook Pro, you can expand the RAM. Both the Adobe Creative Suite and Adobe Creative Cloud as well as the operating system OS X are very memory-hungry. If you have a model with two or four GB of RAM, you should consider upgrading to six, eight or 16 GB.
Photoshop loads pictures slowly - SSD hard drive for Mac
If your MacBook has a slow HDD hard drive, you can significantly speed up the loading and saving times of images. To do this, upgrade your device with an SSD hard drive.