For almost the past year, my drive to draw has been massacred by software issues in photoshop that have been a nightmare to troubleshoot.
For a long time, I had an issue where I would sometimes get these lag spikes on each stroke. I found lots of 'fixes', but none of then would work and testing it was a difficult process since it wasn't a consistent issue. Still not sure what the cause is, but I was able to make it stop in PS2021 by removing the config file fix (that's supposed to disable windows ink), as it apparently doesn't work now.
This leads to other issues.
First, I notice that my tablet pen's button will no longer right click (only on the UI, can still right-click on the canvas). The only fix I can find is to turn off windows ink in the wacom settings. But turning off windows ink disables all pen pressure. So it gives me a three pronged issue, of either lag spikes, no right click or no pressure.
Even worse, as I tried to make do with no right click, I found that the laggy feeling was independent of the lag spikes, as while the strokes looked fine, it still felt like I was having to drag my pen through treacle to draw.
So in desperation, I dug out CS6. So far, it works flawlessly with no lag at all. But it lacks some features I've really gotten used to, like mirroring the canvas, brush smoothing and the colour wheel. I did try some alternate art programs along the way too but I can't adjust to their work flow and they lack features I need anyway.
I've never been more demotivated from drawing, it mad it actively frustrating to work on anything, and the quality of the art I did in this time suffered for it. If CS6 continues to have no issues I'll stick with it, but holy fuck I would expect new versions to be an upgrade, not completely unusable.
I have 32gb of ram and a recent processor. My GPU (970) is getting on but I would've expected it to be enough. Am I just with stuck with CS6 forever? Why can't things ever just work like they're supposed to? Fuck sake
