Participant

Question

Brand New Mac Studio M2 Ultra (maxed out stats)... Illustrator 27.7 is laggy and slow.

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
August 10, 2023
12 replies
7207 views

Help? (though... I'm not sure what you can do).

I just received my brand new Mac Studio M2 Ultra (maxed out memory and highest processor) running Ventura 13.5. I have installed all my Adobe programs and when using Illustrator 27.7 it's roughly the same speed, beach ball appearance, pausing that I had when i used my old Mac (late 2013 iMac maxed).

This has been tough for me to stomach for many reasons. I expected 'some' kind of speed boost here (especially coming from an old 2013 iMac) or even just a more fluid program use. Now (with a brand new machine) im constantly having to shut everything down and restart to then open up my Illustrator for a smoother workflow until it becomes laggy again .... rinse repeat.

Now, for perspective, I am working on a file with multiple artboards and a few placed images... but nothing that should tax a brand new juiced Mac Studio.

I'm frustrated to say the least. Any help would be appreciated... I literally have nothing else running but Illustrator and Mail.

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

R

rogerc50858633

Participant

Hi, I found this thread after looking for help wondering why illustrator performance on my new m2 studio is so poor. I thought I must have the optimisation settings wrong, really disappointed to discover that it's not me, it appears that illustrator does not run well on this machine. I have to keep toggling between view with CPU / view with GPU - GPU is smoother but very buggy with the screen flashing and drawings disappearing when I click the menus, objects disappearing when I move them, delays when I select / deselect. CPU view is more reliable but then there is no preview when I drag. I have come from a first generation iMac pro which is about 6 years old and wearing out, performance on that was much, much better. I was expecting a step up, not back. I have a M2 macbook air and performance seems better on that TBH - I've certainly not had any problems, however obvs the screen on that is smaller.

So if you happen to find this thread after buying a new Mac Studio - I'd recommend sending it back if you use a lot of illustrator. Too late for me.

J

Joan245963815j15

Participant

Hi Rogerch, I'm on Mac Studio M2 max and I my Illustrator performance totally changed after:
Go to yourMac's System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Check "Displays have separate spaces"
Secondarily disable all the fonts you are not using, just in case. Tell me if that worked to you.

R

rogerc50858633

Participant

Hi Joan,

Many thanks for this - yes this does help, performance is much better with 'Displays have separate spaces' enabled. This is a MacOS feature I don't want as I have three screens, I don't want three menu bars, but I have found if I also choose 'Auto Show/ Hide' menu bar, I only get one, although it does hide it and it would be better for me if it didn't. But the hidden menu bar is less of a pain than the issues I had with illustrator. I will live with this a little bit and see how I get on.

Thanks again for your help.

V

vitorioap

Participant

I use a MBP 14 M1 Pro with 16gb of RAM and illustrator works pretty smoothly. It only lags a bit when there are a lot of high def photos or pretty complex vectors. I was thinking about getting a mac studio m2 max 64gb ram and was expecting to have and even faster performance then the M1 pro, now I'm not so sure. I'm a bit surprised because while researching about the mac studio, there has never been a mention that this problem exists.(I'm assuming none of you that bought it came across any bad reviews regarding illustrator either) Could this an issue with the M2 processors? Has this been fixed?

D

defaultpmiki1msampk

Participant

oh dear, I was about to spend £2600 on a M2 Studio, thinking I'd be getting an amazing performance boost over my 2019 iMac using Adobe CC, but now I'm completely unsure what to do!

D

d0nut247

Inspiring

Send that thing back to Apple before your 30 days runs out and get yourself an excellent bargain of an iMac Pro intel off eBay. Unless you are doing video editing/ youtube for a living the Mac silicon is not worth the cash yet. enjoy the thousands of £ you recoup. If you truly want speedy vector workflow on apple silicone you might have to try affinity or bail out and go to PC. But honestly some amazing intel Mac deals around to tide you over until everyone gets their act together at Apple / Adobe. Battery life is all that Apple silicone is bringing to the party for anyone but video editors.

M

MonicaMP

Known Participant

I've been having tons of issues with Illustrator and M2 MBP.

See this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/multiple-illustrator-issues-on-m2-macbook-pro/td-p/13894853

It's just unbelievable how Adobe has dropped the ball on Apple Silicon users.

FlyingSaucy

Inspiring

I'm hoping this thread is still being monitored by Adobe. I have just taken delivery of a mac with M2 Ultra processor and working in illustrator has become a total nigtmare. Specifically, moving objects around is completely hit and miss - they jerk around all over the place - sometimes just freezing in place too - and it's almost impossible to position them accurately - with 'snap to' not realy helping.

There's also issues with trying to click on a type anchor (so i can position it exactly where I want) - sometimes it'll pick up other times I'm clicking around having to resort to grabing it elsewhere and then enduring the jerky hit-n-miss positioning again.

The huge issue here is that I no longer have an intel mac to switch back to and as this is my livelyhood, it's a 9-5 faff of frustration at the moment.

I really would like less bells and whistles (AI feature pop ups are not helping) and more stability with these workhorse tools please.

I'm having similar performance issues with Photoshop and InDesign.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

@FlyingSaucy schrieb:

I'm hoping this thread is still being monitored by Adobe.

If you want to make sure that people notice your question, then please create a new thread instead of digging up the old ones.

If you want quick help, then the best solution would be to contact Customer Care and heve them take a look into your system: https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html

The software runs smmothly and absolutely snappy on my M1.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

@Non condescending user schrieb:

NO it doesn't run smoothly on M1,

Yes, it does on mine. I never commented about yours.

So please go ahead and contact Customer Care. This needs to be solved on your system.

In the forum we have little clues as to what needs to be changed in order for it to work. One aspect is the system. Basically all the people with issues have Sonoma. I do not.

Also the apps Magnet, Rectangle and Proofpoint slow down Illustrator.

I you do not have of that, then in the forum we cannot help you. And calling anyone condescening will not help you get your problem solved.

J

JPD45

Participant

Same issue here, except with Premiere. Mac Studio Max. 96 gigs of ram. My 2017 iMac runs more smoothly than the Studio. Abobe, please adapt your software to the new Studio chips. Out of the box, the Studio was laggy with Premiere. Truly, this reflects poorly on Adobe and I can barely accomplish my work.

nikb58062351

Participant

I've been using Illustrator on a MBP M2 Max with 64GB RAM and 1Tb of disk since January 2023. Prior to this I had an iMac 2014. I was expecting to experience a MASSIVE improvement in performance from old to new instead, I was left overall disappointed. I reasoned that the reason might have been down to Illustrator using single CPU processes in a world that uses multi-core for almost everything. Using Photoshop shows that when going multi-core for applying effects the speed boost compared to my old iMac is there. Using Illustrator, however, is not the same. I often work with heavy files of around 200Mb and my old iMac could hardly cope with it. I had to disable loads of things and work in keyline mode. I refuse to believe that I should do the same using my new MBP. Recently I began to feel that the same app running on Windows might actually run smoother. I have no way to test this and I might be wrong in the end. Should this be the case then I would say that in a world of Audio, Video, Rendering, AI... Apple decided that multi-core performance should be dedicated to those endeavours, while designers using InDesign and Illustrator cannot take advantage of these improvements. As I said, I might be wrong, but I've been doing this for a very long time, going through several cycles of new software and new hardware and I've always experienced speed improvements along the way. This is the first time that (albeit many features are light years ahead of what was happening 10 years ago) I feel like the speed is not there.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @nikb58062351,

Sorry to hear about this experience. Illustrator does use multi-cores in many operations but not all operations, and the product team is prioritizing the ones that are slower. Would you mind trying to run Illustrator under a different administrator account (Windows / macOS) and checking if it helps?

If the problem persists, kindly share some more details, like the exact version of the OS/Illustrator, system config (CPU/GPU/Memory), a sample file (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/share-your-files-in-6-simple-steps/td-p/12967531), details about the workflow when you encounter this slowdown and a screen recording of the problem (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/screen-record-an-issue-on-windows-amp-macos-for-sharing/td-p/12967727), so we can investigate this further?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

V

Victor3245830334f2

Participant

Hey, has this been solved ? I was considering getting a Mac Studio M2 Max with 64Gb. I am working mainly and heavily with Illustrator...my old iMac 2015 is lagging behind and I avoid updating Illustrator for that reason...

How is going now for you with your M2 Ultra with Illustrator ?

thanks

D

defaultpmg5occbvek8

Participant

I found this thread because I'm having the same experience with a brand new Mac Studio (Apple M2 Max, 32 GB) running Ventura 13.5. It's truly unacceptable for Adobe Creative Cloud to be running so slowly on the latest and greatest Mac OS. Is this because Adobe CC isn't compatible with Apple silicon?

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @defaultpmg5occbvek8,

We understand how frustrating it can be to experience performance issues while working in Illustrator. Illustrator is natively supported on Apple Silicon (https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/apple-silicon-m1-chip.html). Would you mind trying to manually reset Illustrator's preferences and checking if it helps:

• Close all Adobe applications.

• Go to the following locations

• ~/Library/Caches

• ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe

• ~/Library/Preferences

• Rename Adobe Illustrator, com.adobe.illustrator and Adobe Illustrator 27 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old, com.adobe.illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator 27 Settings.old

• Launch Illustrator from the Creative Cloud.

Note: Location starting with this "~" sign indicates the User Library, which is hidden. So, you need to copy & paste the exact path in spotlight search or from Finder Menu > Go > Go to Folder > Paste the location in the dialog box like this:

Disclaimer: Please note that renaming preferences folders will remove all the custom settings, and Illustrator will launch with default settings. You can also save a backup of the folders in case you want to. The location is mentioned above.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav

D

Daniel34318535ibrm

Participating Frequently

All of these symptoms continue, and are present on a brand new install of both the OS, and Adobe sofware.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @Seth Sirbaugh, @davids82967484, @TheRealDavePenny,

We understand how frustrating it can be to experience performance issues in Illustrator. Would you mind trying the suggestions shared in this help article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/optimize-illustrator-performance.html) and checking if it helps?

Also, try resetting Illustrator's preferences by following the steps shared in this article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/troubleshoot-preference-issues.html) and sharing your observations.
Disclaimer: Please note that resetting preferences will remove all custom settings, and Illustrator will launch with the defaults. You may save a backup of these settings from the location mentioned in the article.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Anubhav

S

Seth SirbaughAuthor

Participant

I've actually already gone down this list. I have very few fonts loaded. And reset and reinstalled. Nothing helped...

Also the only other program that is/was open was Mac Mail... closing it and running illustrator without it open does nothing to change performance. My machine also has 192 GIGs of memory with an M2 ULTRA chip... this shouldn't be happening guys. I mean ... literally it's the only app running on the fastest Mac Studio Apple offers. Help?

S

Seth SirbaughAuthor

Participant

Also to add to this issue—there seems to also be some be a some major buginess with typography... im having issues with type on a path from older files... and even having a hard time just selecting some pieces of text (this is happening in multiple files).... so now intead of working on my new blazing M2 Ultra ... im sitting in front of my 2013 iMac because the Illustrator is more stable and while uber slow... its at least functional. Guys—I'm a professional designer and illustrator and have been using this program since the days of Power PCs.... this is unacceptable and now its really starting to effect my ability to work. Please. Help. This needs some kind of update ASAP.

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