Photoshop slow after time

[swamphox]

I am running photoshop CC and CS6 on a 2012 imac with OSX 10.8. 24gb ram not a solid state drive and I don't have anything else open except a browser window and lightroom but I do have a scratch disc or two at all times. When the machine first starts and for a couple days after it is snappy and and almost flawless but after a couple days, photoshop and lightroom slow down to a crawl. Example, if I take an image I want to print into onone perfect resize under good conditions it may take 1 minute from opening it from a local network drive into PSCC, starting onone, re-sizing and waiting for output file. After a couple days, this process may take 10 mins. If I restart after closing everything down, the machine gets snappy again. I go through this 2-3x per week...any suggestions?

 

[chscag]

Which 2012 iMac do you have and how much memory (vram) does your graphics card have?
And have you taken a look at your Activity Monitor app to see what else might be going on when the slowdown occurs?

 

[swamphox]

If the graphics card is lacking memory wouldn't it lack it all of the time?

 

[swamphox]

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0fe0
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: 3707
Displays:
iMac:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 2560 x 1440
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Built-In: Yes
Connection Type: DisplayPort

 

[chscag]

Thanks for posting your specs.

Your graphics card should be adequate to work with Photoshop and your 27" iMac with 24 GB of system memory should be enough. However, as you continue to edit and work with Photoshop and Lightroom and other apps, memory is going to be depleted.

How often do you restart your machine? You may have to restart more often to get back used memory - both graphics and system. That's why I asked about opening your Activity Monitor when things slow down to see what's going on. Give that a try and if possible, post a screenshot of the Activity Monitor.

 

[MacInWin]

+1 for the occasional reboot, or even the occasional shutdown of Photoshop. If you work with large images and want a lot of "undo" levels, space gets consumed pretty quickly and the process can start to drag. Yes, the undo is on the HD, but I am pretty sure that PS stores at least some levels of undo in memory, if it can, to be more responsive to you.

 

[swamphox]

Unfortunately I have to reboot a few times a week because of this problem. As soon as I reboot the machine is snappy. I did not have this issue with the previous imac 2010 ver. I did decrease the level history states significantly in the past to correct this issue but that did not help at all. The only thing I think that may be different is recovery mode in CS6 and CC. Not sure if it was in CS5 but I don't recall having this problem at all with the last imac.