Adobe Photoshop freezing on Macs after 23.2 update, issue acknowledged (workaround inside)

Photoshop is one of the most popular editing software from Adobe. It focuses on illustration and image editing, both at an amateur level and at a professional level.

However, it appears that the latest update to Adobe Photoshop 23.2 (for macOS) introduced performance issues in certain usage scenarios.

More specifically, Adobe Photoshop 23.2 has freezing issues on Macs when users try to change layers/opacity in a PSB file. It also has similar problems with large PSD files (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

The performance issues reportedly appear in PSB files when users of Adobe Photoshop 23.2 for Macs try to modify layers or opacity.

In those cases, there is a freezing that can be so severe that it could make the software inoperative for between 5 and 10 minutes, according to reports.

Photoshop 23.2 freezes on macOS while changing layer styles/opacity on a PSB file

Using macOS (latest version) on an iMac Pro. Changing the opacity on a PSB freezes up the program for 5 to 10 minutes at a time where you cannot do anything in the program. No spinning beach ball, just stuck on the arrow with no ability to cancel, exit, or do anything. Just started after I updated. Super wierd, but problematic.
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Freezing issues also appear with PSD files. In this case, the problem could appear when the file has a considerable size. Similarly, trying to modify the layers is one of the triggers.

Photoshop 23.2 Freezing on large PSDs

Hi all. While working on a biggish PSD in Photoshop 23.2, I’ve had the app freeze and become unresponsive when trying to add and adjust a new levels layer.

For reference the file is about 28x48cm at 600dpi and has 26 layers, some of which have a lot of applied layer styles. I’m on a 2019 27″ iMac, running Monterey with 40GB RAM.

The odd thing is that the Mac OS doesn’t see the app as unresponsive (ie: ‘is not responding’) no matter how long I leave it.
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The Adobe Support team is aware of performance issues in the latest Photoshop update for Macs. Currently the company is working on a fix, but there is no ETA for it yet.

Hi there, we’re sorry for the freeze issue after the recent update. We’re aware of this issue and working on the fix. In the meanwhile, you can rollback to 23.1.1 version to resolve this problem for now. We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused you. Thanks. ^Mohit.
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In the meantime, as a workaround they recommend users to downgrade the software to 23.1.1 version where everything should work fine.

We will update this story if new events related to the situation arise.

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