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Your version of Photoshop is outdated.Adobe Photoshop can be a bit fickle, and one of the best ways you can keep it running smoothly is to make sure that you are running the most current version of Adobe Photoshop. The easiest way to do that is to utilize the Adobe Creative Cloud app, which you likely have used to install Adobe Photoshop.

• Close Photoshop
• Open Adobe Creative Cloud
• In the sidebar, click All Apps
• Verify that Photoshop is up to date
• If it isn't, click Update
• Restart your Mac

Disabling the Generator

The Generator plugin allows users to create image assets in real-time as you work, avoiding the need to copy, slice, and export each layer manually. Unfortunately, sometimes the Generator can cause Photoshop to behave erratically, especially on systems with older GPUs.

How to disable the Photoshop Generator plugin

• Open Photoshop
• In the top menu bar, click Photoshop
• Click Preferences
• Click Plug-Ins
• Uncheck Enable Generator
• Click OK
• Restart Photoshop

Properly set your Cache Levels

If you've changed your Cache levels in Photoshop, you may have put undue strain on your graphics processor — most notably if your Cache is set to 1. Resetting them to the default can help eliminate issues.

How to reset your Cache Levels to default in Photoshop

• Open Photoshop
• Click Photoshop in the top menu bar
• Click Preferences
• Click Performance
• Set Cache Levels to 4
• Click OK
• Restart Photoshop

Disable GPU acceleration

GPU acceleration can make Photoshop run better on newer systems, but when enabled on older systems can cause instability, preventing the program from creating or opening new files.

How to turn off GPU acceleration in Photoshop

• Open Photoshop
• Click Photoshop in the top menu bar
• Click Preferences
• Click Performance
• Uncheck Use Graphics Processor
• Click OK

Restart Photoshop

If this fixes the problem, you may be able to re-enable GPU acceleration and use a less intense drawing mode, which allows you to take advantage of GPU acceleration but is not as physically demanding on your system.

How to change your Drawing Mode in Photoshop

• Open Photoshop
• In the top menu bar, click Photoshop
• Click Preferences
• Click Performance
• Check Use Graphics Processor
• Click Advanced Settings
• In the dropbox that appears, select Basic or Normal, and then click OK
• Click OK
• Restart Photoshop

Resetting Photoshop's Preferences

The easiest and most effective way to reset Photoshop's preferences is to remove the user preference folders and force Photoshop to recreate them upon the next launch. This will reset your preferences, which may be annoying, but is likely to fix any user-error-caused issues.

How to reset all user preferences to default in Photoshop

• Quit Photoshop
• Open Finder
• In the top menu bar, click Go
• Click Library
• Navigate and enter the folder named Preferences
• Locate all labeled Photoshop [Version] Settings
• Drag these folders to your Desktop, if you wish to back them up, or the Trash if you decide not to
• Restart your Mac
• Open Photoshop

Uncommon situations

There are a couple of uncommon situations that we'd like to address in this tip as well. This includes those who have kept the same install across the 32-bit to 64-bit change introduced with macOS Catalina and those running pre-Creative Suite versions of Adobe Photoshop.