Adobe programs laggy and unusable

As a nearly 25 year Adobe user,

Make sure you have no other apps running.

Adobe Photoshop, no matter the Mac, no matter the Photoshop version, really likes to be running alone with no other resource hogging apps running.

Trying to run all three Adobe apps at the same time with only 16 GBs of RAM is not going to work.

macOS, by itself, can use up to 8 GBs of RAM, now, and has for quite some time/years!

Leaving ONLY between 8-10 GBs for other apps and Adobe apps.

That is not a lot of RAM to be able to run all 3 Adobe apps, at once.

Adding more RAM would help with this issue considerably. That new iMac can take up to 64 GBs of RAM!

Cheaper priced RAM can be purchased here.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/imac-2019-27-inch

With your new, current, setup, there is just a serious lack of RAM resources.

You maybe able to run InDesign and Illustrator together, side by side, with little issues, but with your current iMac setup and RAM amount, Adobe Photoshop really needs to be run completely alone, by itself, NO other heavy duty apps runnung, for best Photoshop performance.

Best of Luck to You!

Look,

I can't answer/speak to that.

I am a 25 year Mac and Adobe and Corel Painter user and this is the reality.

Does Windows OS use up to 8 GBs of RAM?

Gone are tbe days when the Mac OS used to run on 2-4 GBs of RAM, now.

Mac OS is so sophisticated and lots of new features that work across both macOS and iOS that the OS uses a large chunk of RAM, now.

Most Macs ship with a base amount of RAM of 8 GBs. Apple, typically, never gives you enough RAM to use with hardware intense applications. Apple ships Mac with enough RAM to give the OS enough resources for it to run as well as it can doing/running very modest applications/tasks.

Photoshop is a CPU, GPU, RAM and data space hog as PS makes a lot of swap/scratch files when using Photoshop.

Even on Windows, Photoshop will run a WHOLE lot better running, by itself.

It is what it is.

This scenario has not changed much in all the years I've owned/used Macs and Adobe products.

Purchase more RAM, from the link I provided, if you can.

Adding more RAM will be a big help for all Adobe apps.

FWIW, when I was still on the Adobe Cash Cow (CC), I would run Photoshop and

Lightroom on an iMac with 32GB and those 2 apps would quickly suck up

8-10 GB within the blink of an eye.

Sounds like a question for Adobe. What versions of PS and Illustrator? How old are they?

But how can Windows PC with significantly less memory than my mac run them smoother and without any lag whatsoever?

Yup.

That sounds just about right.