ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CLONE STAMP TOOL SAMPLING FIX
You won’t believe this! But it worked!!
Ok, so before you format your hard drive and wipe out all your programs - wait! Because what I’m about to share with could save you at least 48 hours of serious butt pain. It’s what worked for me and my PC setup to fix the Adobe Photoshop clone stamp alt+click sampling issue/lag that apparently had no solution - at least none I could find. The one where you alt click and move your cursor over an image and the sampling that is supposed to be copied and shown in real time is super slow and jagged and annoying. Yea, that one.
Now, I’m going go over everything I did in order to make this work. Because I wasted 2 days on trying to find a solution. TWOOO DAAAAYS!!
But if you don’t feel like reading through this whole thing, just go on and skip down to the eighth step and read the solution. But if you decide to stick around and hear about what I had to go through…well, let’s get to it!
And just in case you were curious about my PC specs, I included them below:
Rog Maximux X Formula LGA1151
i7 8086k (Coffelake) CPU @ 4Ghz
Nvidia GTX 1080 Video Card
Ripjaws 64GB DDR4 Ram (@ XMP 3200)
Samsung 950 EVO M.2 (for OS and Apps)
Samsung 860 EVO (Scratch Drive)
Samsung 850 EVO (Active Projects)
2TB x 4 Firecuda 7200rpm (assets/projects/backup)
Logitech MX Performance Mouse
Intuos Wacom Tablet
FIRST
So I have this new computer I built and it’s working seamlessly when all of the sudden… It’s not… And I’m like, waitaminute! What gives!! Right?
So of course I go online and try and google the problem and sift through hundreds of post of people who apparently are having the same issue I’m having…only there’s no solution.
I am jack’s raging bile duct!
Eventually I end up on the official adobe troubleshooting thread and start checking off all the things that don’t apply to my setup. And guess what?
Everything checks off. According to the list of required specs, I should be well off. But I’m not. Why? I try and show my clone stamp tool that we meet the specs, we really do, but it doesn’t give a shit about adobe’s technical IFTTT.
Moving on.
SECOND
I decide to format the hard rive. That means new OS installation. Software. Plugins. And everything else in between you have to save and organize in order to rebuild your initial setup - minus the bug of course. I create a bootable drive and here we go. Tick tock. Tick Tock. Tick tock.
I am Jack’s cold sweat.
THIRD
Finally, the new OS is installed and it’s time to set up photoshop. And if you’re a computer geek, this is totally exciting!
A few hours later…
Now that all the apps are installed I’m ready to test photoshop and see if it’s still behaving strangely. One thing I will say is that the alt+click sampling in photoshop was fixed for me by turning off “Use Graphics Processor” setting and letting the CPU do all the work. However, that’s not what I consider a solution.
And you’ll notice when you turn off the GPU that the zooming in and out is very obviously choppy and blocky when the GPU isn’t enabled.
So I bring in a heavy photomerged image, pick the clone stamp tool and it works! This is incredible!! I go to “Edit”, then “Preferences” because I want to see the default settings for future reference. And funny enough, when I get to the performance tab and click “Advanced” I see this. (pic one the left).
My second PC is the same build only running with an Nvidia GTX 980Ti and its setting was set to “Normal”. So the first thing I did was to change it from Advanced to Normal and was very happy that my time hadn’t been completely wasted.
FOURTH
I change some other settings, the location of the scratch drive, the history states, cache levels, and cache tile size, hit ok and exit Photoshop. And then I remember I forgot to install my Wacom tablet. So I do just that. Restart my computer as per the pop menu and head back into photoshop to start working. With a stupid grin across my face I grab the clone stamp tool, click alt to sample the area and…and nothing! Same thing as before.
I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.
What the hell just happened?! Now I don’t know what caused this. Was it the messing around with the preferences inside Photoshop? Was it the Wacom drivers? I’d just changed a bunch of things and now I have to figure out which one screwed everything up!
FIFTH
I go back to the preferences in Photoshop and manually change the values back to what they were. Click ok and restart Photoshop. And what do you think happens?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
My clone stamp tool is laggy and slow and my computer is sitting right in front of a window. The word defenestrate comes to mind.
I am Jack’s broken heart.
SIXTH
I already know that some people reported issues with the Wacom tablet, its drivers and Photoshop because I read all the threads. So naturally I uninstall the Wacom drivers and run CC Cleaner on the registry and restart my computer.
DAY 2
Awesome! I’m back in Windows 10 (the greatest OS of all time) and I start Photoshop. Again. Apprehensively, I click on the clone stamp tool with a complete lack of aplomb or expectation at this point that anything will ever work - I’m so optimistic right now I could cry. And of course I’m right.
I am Jack’s inflamed sense of rejection.
SEVENTH
I unplug all USB devices from the computer. All except the keyboard and the mouse. Nada. I open the chassis and start taking out the SATA cables from the hard drives one by one to isolate perhaps a hardware related issue.
Please be a faulty drive.
Please be a broken cable.
No such luck.
EIGHTH
I lose all hope and decide to sell all of my equipment. Dissolve my business and retreat somewhere in the mountains. Maybe one of those places where they wear togas and flip flops and chant mantras like “If photoshop just worked. If photoshop just worked.” I know, it’s spelled with a lower case “p” because in imaginary Tibet the monks don’t know or care about Adobe like I do.
Ok. Enough talking. Are you ready for “my solution”? Here it is.
Keep all your drivers (GPU, Wacom, whatever else you got) just make sure they’re up to date. Next, open up Photoshop.
Go to Edit > Preferences > General and locate the box that says “Reset Preferences On Quit” and click it.
Close out Photoshop. Restart Photoshop. And now, if you’re PC build was similar to mine, you should be ok.
Now, I know that you’re probably thinking “Am I crazy? This isn’t a solution!” And you’re right. It’s not. But that’s because there’s a bug within the Adobe software causing this.
How I came to this conclusion was by going into the Adobe Photoshop preferences and changing the GPU setting from the default “Advanced” back to “Normal”. And what I found was that it would get all messed up again. And if I go back and “Reset Preferences On Quit” the problem is solved!
I haven’t a clue what is casing this, but I’ve tried everything and this is the only “fix” that worked for me. And hopefully it will help some of you too!
I’d love to hear if this worked for you, so feel free to let me know in the comments :)
p.s. - I am Jack’s smirking revenge
p.s.s. - check out the video below to see what was causing the problem (just stumbled on it!)