How To Fix Photoshop That Keeps Crashing Every Time When Opening

Adobe Photoshop is the most popular photo editing and manipulation software. It caters to the needs of both casual and professional users.

If your Photoshop keeps crashing, it can waste hours of your work. However, you don’t need to panic. Such issues are usually a result of driver incompatibility or bugs in Photoshop. So, troubleshooting such issues should easily resolve Photoshop crashes.

Table of Contents

Why Does My Photoshop Keeps Crashing

Here are the potential reasons for Adobe Photoshop to keep crashing:

Bugs with Adobe Photoshop.
Outdated or Incompatible Drivers.
Compatibility Issues with OS.
Interference due to other active apps.
Problems with permission settings.
Conflicts due to plugins.

How to Troubleshoot Photoshop Keeps Crashing

First, restart your PC and check if Photoshop keeps crashing. If it does, apply the possible solutions we have mentioned below. You can also check for any known issues on a certain version of the app on the official Adobe platform.

Update to Latest Versions

Older Photoshop versions had many bugs. For instance, using magic selection on a low pixel area would lead to a crash. There were many other issues as well. So, it’s always better to use the latest software version, where the developers have fixed most of such bugs.

If you already have the latest version, you should try reinstalling Adobe Photoshop. Doing so takes care of any installation issues as well.

If crashes start occurring after an update, report the issue to Adobe and wait for bug fixes. You can roll back to the previous version in the meantime.

Update Graphics Driver

Outdated graphics driver is another main cause of Adobe Photoshop crashes. You can check if the driver is responsible by checking the compatibility or disabling GPU.

Go to Help > GPU Compatibility to check for conflicts. You can only do so on Photoshop 23.0 or beyond. If you detected compatibility issues, such as OpenCL not available,

Go to Edit > Preferences > Performance.
Click Advanced Settings under Graphics Processor Settings.
Enable/disable the appropriate options.

If you can’t check compatibility, disable GPU and restart Photoshop. To do so,

Go to Edit > Preferences > Performance.
Uncheck Use Graphics Processor and click Ok.

Restart Photoshop and check if the issue resolves. If it does, you need to update your Graphics Driver. We recommend installing the latest version from the official website to do so. You can also update the driver from Device Manager. Here’s how you can do so on Windows,

Open Run and enter devmgmt.msc.
Expand Display adapters.
Right-click on your GPU device and select Update driver.
Click Search automatically for drivers.

Change Photoshop Permissions

If you messed around with your permission settings, Photoshop might crash while opening or saving a file. You can fix this easily by creating a new account or changing to another account with default permission settings. But it’s also possible to set the Full control permissions for relevant folders and files. Here are the necessary steps to do so:

On Windows

Open File Explorer and navigate to the following locations:
- C:\Program Files\
- C:\Program Files (x86)\
- C:\ProgramData\
- %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\
You have to make the hidden items visible to navigate to the folders.
Right-click on the Adobe folder and select Properties.
Go to the Security tab and click Edit.
Check Allow for Full control after selecting each group or user name.
Click Apply and Ok.

Apply the steps for the Adobe folder at all the locations above.

On Mac

Open Finder.
Press the Option key and click on Go > Library.
Open Application Support.
Select Adobe and press Command + I.
Select your username and set Privilege to Read & Write.
Click the Action pop-up menu (triple-dot) and select Apply to enclosed items.
Change the permissions for the following folders using the same steps:
- /Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/
- /Users/[user name]/Library/Caches/Adobe/
- /Users/[user name]/Documents/Adobe/

Reset Photoshop Preferences

Another possible solution is to reset Photoshop preferences. Sometimes the preferences can become corrupt, and restoring the settings is the only fix. If you rolled back to a previous version, the preferences should reset automatically. Otherwise, follow the instructions below:

First, back up the preferences folder, which is:
- Windows: C:/Users/[user name]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop [version]/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings
- Mac: Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings
Then, on Photoshop menu, go to Edit > Preferences > General.
Click on Reset Preferences on Quit.

Close Photoshop and relaunch it. Then, check if it keeps crashing.

Remove Conflicting Plug-ins

Incompatible plugins are also responsible for various problems with Photoshop, including crashes. One well-known cause is the Adobe Design to Print which can cause crashes while opening Photoshop or a video on the app.

Adobe Photoshop 23.3 has fixed such conflicts. But for the prior versions, you can check if any plugin is causing this issue using the steps below:

Close Photoshop.
Then open Photoshop while pressing and holding the Shift key.
Click Yes on the Skip loading optional and third-party plugins prompt.

If you don’t experience any issues while using Photoshop, the plugins are definitely responsible for the crashes. Here are the necessary steps to remove the problematic plugins:

Close Photoshop and navigate to:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop <version>\Plug-ins.
Move one plugin elsewhere, reopen Photoshop, and check if it crashes.
Do so for all plugins until you narrow down the problematic ones.
Then, you can delete them and restore the functional ones to the folder.

On Mac, you need to remove the plugin from the following locations:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/ or /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/
/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CC 2022/Plug-ins/

Reset Font Cache

Photoshop can also crash due to buggy fonts. You need to reset the font cache to fix this issue. Here’s how you can do so:

Close Adobe Photoshop.
Navigate to the following folders:
- On Windows: C:\\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop [version]
- On Mac: /Users/[user name]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop
Delete the CT Font Cache folder.

End Unnecessary Applications

If you have many active and background applications, they hog a significant portion of your system resources. So if you don’t have enough available storage or RAM, Photoshop can crash while launching it. You need to close all unnecessary apps to free up resources. Here’s how you can do so:

Open the Activity Monitor on Mac or the Task Manager on Windows.
Look for unnecessary processes and select them.
Click Force Quit (cross sign) or End task.
Confirm if you get a prompt.

Change Timeout Detection Recovery

Your system continues checking for Graphics Card’s response for a certain time. If there’s no response, using Photoshop features that require GPU leads to a crash. This only applies if you have enabled using GPU Processor on Photoshop’s performance preferences.

The default value of this time is 2 seconds. So you can try increasing it. Doing so resolves the issue if your GPU response time is low. To do so on Windows,

Enter regedit on Run to open registry editor.
Navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers.
Right-click on an empty area and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
Set its name as TdrDelay.
Double-click on it and set the Value data to 8. (or any value higher than 2)

You don’t need to create the new entry if TdrDelay already exists.

Update Operating System

Using a much older system with the latest software leads to many application issues. So, it’s always better to keep your OS fully updated. Here’s how you can update your system:

On Windows: