How to Fix Photoshop Could Not Complete the Request Because of a Program Error

If you are trying to do something in Photoshop but can't because it keeps showing the error “Photoshop could not complete the request because of a program error,". This article will show you how to fix the problem so that you can get back to work without seeing this stupid, vague error message constantly. For whatever reason, this error is annoyingly unhelpful, especially as it can pop up while you're doing a bunch of unrelated things.

How to Fix Photoshop Could Not Complete the Request Because of a Program Error

• First, open Photoshop and wait until the program is fully loaded.
• At the top left of the screen, click on Edit.
• From the dropdown menu, go to Preferences and then click General. This will open the main Photoshop preferences window where you can adjust different settings.
• Once you are inside the Preferences menu, look at the options on the left side of the window and click on Performance.

You will see an option called Use Graphics Processor. This setting allows Photoshop to use your computer’s graphics card to improve performance, but in some cases it can cause errors.

• To fix the program error, simply unselect the Use Graphics Processor option.

• After disabling it, click OK to save your changes.
• The final step is to completely close Photoshop.
• Once the program has closed, open it again and try the action that was causing the error.
• Disabling the graphics processor should resolve the “Photoshop could not complete the request because of a program error” message and allow Photoshop to work normally again.

If the issue continues, you may need to check for Photoshop updates, reset preferences, or troubleshoot other possible causes. However, for many users, turning off the graphics processor is a quick and effective solution.

Annoyingly, how well this works will depend a little on your computer and the hardware that is inside it. Making this change will also have a pretty big effect on performance. If disabling it does work though, I would still try to find the root cause of the issue.

Update Photoshop

Even if the fix above did work, you're still going to want to update Photoshop. Having to disable this option should only be treated as a temporary workaround and not something you should be living with since it is a big loss of performance. So update Photoshop and see if the problem goes away, and make sure you re-enable the Use Graphics Processor option in Settings. There are quite a few issues in Photoshop that can be fixed by disabling Use Graphics Processor.