Photoshop running incredibly slow in Tahoe

A few quick comments after looking at the report

Not a full analysis though

1 - The 512 GB SSD Drive is getting low on Free Space

Size: 499.96 GB

Free: 68.71 GB

Available: 74.73 GB

From another contributor @etresoft regarding Free Space and Available Space 

Free vs available disk space huge differe… - Apple Community

Quote >>  “ The "available" storage is the amount of used storage that the operating system could automatically delete if it felt that it was really necessary. The "free" storage is the amount that you can actually use for something.

There are system processes that run in the background and automatically delete some of the "available" storage and convert it to "free". If you completely run out of storage, then those system processes will try a little harder. When you "delete" files you are just hinting to the operating system that you don't need those files anymore. The operating system will eventually remove them, but on its own schedule.

Certain tools will allow you to force the issue and manually clean up some of this storage and manually delete local snapshots. But that is only temporary. "  << End Quote 

Purgeable Space is controlled by the Operating System and not the user 

Get detailed information about a disk in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support (CA)

2 - The machine is chocking on background processes as evidenced by

Runtime: 11:27

Performance: Poor

3 - Google Chrome is a known Memory and Resource Hog

Short and unpopular suggestion for some

 https://chromeisbad.com

May consider an alternative https://brave.com which is essentially Google Chrome without the Google baggage 

Refer to the Posting by Respected Contributor @ John Galt 

Application memory error on my MacBook Pro - Apple Community

Refer to the Posting by Respected Contributor @ Kurt Lang

etrecheck... Mac running slow - Apple Community

A- - Google Chrome is overly aggressive in Resource and Memory usages.

B - Google Chrome harvests all your personal data unbeknownst to you and sells your personal data,  which intern allows the Third Parties to Target you for their purposes 

Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:

Google Chrome Helper (Renderer) (29) 234.79 % (Google LLC)

Google Chrome Helper (4) 20.66 % (Google LLC)

Top Processes Snapshot by Memory:

Google Chrome Helper (Renderer) (29) 4.98 GB (Google LLC)

Google Chrome 347 MB (Google LLC)

Top Processes Snapshot by Energy Use:

Google Chrome Helper (4) 20 (Google LLC)

Google Chrome He (3) 15 (Not signed)

Google Chrome 11 (Google LLC)

In addition to @Owl-53's excellent quick comments, the Transmission app is a bittorrent app which can easily cause storage & performance issues depending how it is configured.

And the more concerning item is the "update.log" file being in the "/Library/LaunchAgents" folder. Files in this folder should/usually have a .plist format & file extension. Either this is some malware, or someone/something placed this file into this folder which is a great concern either way even if it was intentional. This is definitely very odd.

You also don't have enough memory for your workloads since over 6GB of Swap is being used. If the Compressed Memory & Swap get into the GBs, then the system is working harder than it needs to be because it must move memory around before something else can be done. Plus as noted Google Chrome is using a lot of resources....either because you have a lot of browser windows/tabs open, or because Chrome is not configured to hibernate background tabs/windows. And it may be eating into the SSD storage as well since 60GB is borderline acceptable for Free space and can disappear very quickly.

You can modify the way you work by making sure to have a lot fewer open browser windows/tabs and make sure background tabs are hibernating (Chrome usually pops up a notification about allowing Chrome to do this although it may not say hibernate background tasks specifically). That will definitely help a bit, but you may want to completely Quit Chrome when you are working in Photoshop if these browser suggestions don't help less the CPU utilization & memory associated with Chrome at least when using Photoshop.

I don't use Chrome so I don't know what options may be available to better optimize its use. I know with the Vivaldi browser (also based on the Chromium rendering engine) has lots of extra management options where you can better utilize the browser......such as browser Profiles which can be started & quit, Saving & Restoring browser window sessions, an actual option to hibernate background tabs, etc. All of these things can lessen the number of open browser windows/tabs at any one time thereby lessening the impact to the system resources.

When you purchase your next computer you should definitely make sure to get one with more memory and a larger internal SSD even if optimizing your current system allows Photoshop to run perfectly.

The EtreCheck report shows you have no Time Machine backup which is very concerning. Usually when people are using a third party app for backups, there will be some sign of it in the EtreCheck report. People should always have frequent & regular backups of their computer and ALL external media (including the cloud) which contains important & unique data. There are a lot more new ways to permanently lose access to the data stored on the internal SSD of the recent Macs due to all of the hardware, software, and security changes.

HWTech wrote:

In addition to @Owl-53's excellent quick comments, the Transmission app is a bittorrent app which can easily cause storage & performance issues depending how it is configured.

👍

🦉-53

What version of Photoshop? Did it ask you to install Rosett 2?

If you need to install Rosetta on Mac - Apple Support

Yes, please post the EtreCheck report. What seems insignificant to a new Etrecheck user can speak volumes to those of us who have reviewed thousands of those reports. These instructions help with posting long text files like EtreCheck:

How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

Building on @ HWTech's comment " When you purchase your next computer you should definitely make sure to get one with more memory and a larger internal SSD even if optimizing your current system allows Photoshop to run perfectly. "

If you have plans to stay using Apple Computers and macOS

This Intel Based computer running Tahoe is the last version to support Intel computers

Starting in macOS 27, which normally would be released in the Fall of this year

Intel computers will no longer be supported

So, you may start considering you options now instead of later

About the Rosetta translation environment | Apple Developer Documentation

" macOS Tahoe will be the last release for Intel-based Mac computers. Those systems will continue to receive security updates for 3 years.

Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 – as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps. Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks."

Pursue the methods you find that work for your comfort levels and skill sets

Cheery pick the suggests put form both of us

It may just tide you through until a newer machine is supplied

You are welcome

🦉-63

Are you running on a 2019 16 inch MacBook Pro?

MtD