Participating Frequently

Answered

Illustrator CC 2014 extremely choppy. Please help.

Forum|Forum|11 years ago
November 4, 2014
82 replies
68760 views

I just bought an iMac 5k Retina Base model with Yosemite installed. All other CC applications work like a breeze except illustrator. Illustrator is extremely choppy and almost unworkable. Can someone help me out?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer jackson-LYD

SeanJM,

I just updated to CC 2015 and Illustrator is back to being snappy, responsive, and smooth on a 5k Retina iMac!

After installation, a pop-up of "Compatible GPU detected" auto-enabled the new Mac GPU settings.

If this didn't automatically happen for you, go to:

Illustrator CC > Preferences > GPU Performance - and check the box labeled "GPU Performance".

Thank you to the Adobe team for getting the engine updated!

I can safely recommend Creative Cloud to 5K Retina iMac users now.

Edit: This was using the AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB graphics card.

Show previous replies

N

Neeraj Nandkeolyar

Adobe Employee

Hello.

The Ai team is experimenting with faster rendering using the GPU. If you would like to try this prototype (under NDA) and give your feedback to the team, do fill up this form.

We'll reach out to you through our Pre-release program.

Thanks!

Crowe About It

Participating Frequently

This is good news. Are you able to give us an estimated time frame of when we will be able to test this out?

F

Fergus Raphael

Participant

Thanks for suggestions. I can work on second monitor today and try that. I have this setup, I just often work portably. Will also try low res mode and a resolution switching program (SwitchResX)that was suggested. Crazy to me that these thousands of dollars of hardware and software upgrades have degraded performance so much. Yesterday I went to work on my 2010 Macbook Air, and it was SO much faster than my 2014 MBP. Crazy to think.

M

Maximumblast

Participating Frequently

yes, switched to lo rez as well here. works better, at least i am getting some work done!

Crowe About It

Participating Frequently

The fix posted works fairly well. But man is it horrible to look at. Going from retina crisp text and artwork to low resolution is truely dreadful.

SeanJM

Participant

What we are asking for is basically a rewrite of the core. It is not a simple fix, to support high resolutions with good performance and clean code. There is in all likelyhood a lot of refactoring going on everywhere in the application. I'm upset that this world class company, who could be an example of best practices -- has basically given up on progressing towards higher levels of effeciency. I am disapointed that you've been patching this application over the years instead of fixing the core underlying issues underpinning it. This issue we're experiencing was predictable and foreseeable since Illustrator's inception. Now, we're left with this mess. Your paying customers. How many thousands of dollars have I paid you over the years?

So what are we to do? Lower our resolutions? Compromise on performance? Lower our expectations? Look elsewhere? I don't want to give up on you. I believe in the power of refactoring. That you can solve this problem and deliver something which will cause other programmers to wonder "How did they get such amazing performance out of this?" -- the solution should present a riddle equal to the problem it solved. You should feel satisfaction for a job well done. For doing the right thing, and for rightfully holding onto your position as the #1 design suite in history. You once liberated us from the dark days of desktop publishing and showed us a new world of possibilities, then when you had us, you slowly grew to view us as a mass instead of each unique person who counts on you. Each one of us has a story as unique as yours.

Tell us your story and how you are struggling with this problem. You aren't perfect, neither am I. I undestand it's a tall order to fix code that has 20 years of patching keeping it together. I want to know how hard it is, what clever solutions you've come up with. Wow us again. This time deliver us from apathy and antipathy and show us you care. You can change how we see you, you can be our friend.

N

Neeraj Nandkeolyar

Adobe Employee

Thank you so much for understanding the gravity of the problem. And we completely understand your pain. I can assure you that we're working towards providing a solution at the earlier. If you would like to partner with us on this, please fill up the form: https://adobeformscentral.com/?f=xUjEhZUGXxCvf-Kvy4Jkuw

Thanks!

Neeraj Nandkeolyar

M

Maximumblast

Participating Frequently

i have the same problem here. got a completely maxed out retina iMac and illustrator is very slow. dragging artboards around, zooming and panning. just really bad. another symptom is the color picker. the little circle that indicates the desired color always lags like half a second behind my cursor. what a joke.

F

Fergus Raphael

Participant

Bumping this post - as I have the identical issue.

I have a totally maxed out MBP 13" 2014. The apps don't crash and are stable, but are so slow and choppy as to be unusable. I can open a file that works beautifully on an old 2GB RAM Core Duo running CS3, and in CC I can't zoom in our out without the screen juddering and stalling down to about 1FPS. It's so bad I actually returned/exchanged by beautiful new machine because I thought it was broken. New computer has same issues on clean install. What are my options? I am spending a ton of money just to get worse performance.

Brand new CC user also. Longtime CS user, having bough CS2/3/5/6. I finally updated to CC to resolve another unrelated compatibility/performance issue. Unfortunately I can't even achieve simple file zooming or panning, let alone work in multi-layer files. This is on a clean install of everything on a maxed out 2014 MBP. I spent days going through troubleshooting purgatory. Apple support, reformat, roll back OS, even had the machine exchanged by Apple because I thought there were hardware issues. Now my replacement machine has arrived and CC has the exact same issues. I'm fuming. I've spent thousands of dollars on upgrades, and I now can't even work on files on this new machine. My CC subscription is being billed to my VISA, but honestly it's not much good having apps like Fireworks or Edge-Reflow if I can't earn my daily wage in Photoshop. This is a work machine and I face deadlines. There are real costs associated with a tool just stopping.

Beyond this thread, has Adobe acknowledged this crippling performance issue? On the Q&A on the support page around Illustrator it says there are no known issues. I think that's dishonest. I would like to request their support department suspend billing on my subscription until such time as the apps, you know, ... work.

S

Silver Jade

Participating Frequently

Fergus,

If you have a retina mac, please see my above note about a workaround. As far as getting a billing hiatus, good luck. Whilst it would be nice, it's the same as saying you want a billing hiatus because you can't get it to work on a 10yr old mac. It works, just slowly and clearly wasn't design for retina devices. Disable HiDPI and you should get the applications to perform at a decent frame-rate again.

Another thread has made mention that the problem has been acknowledged and there is a fix in the works from Adobe, and that they are hoping to release it early in 2015. You may be looking at March/April release date. The problem is that Adobe apps generally don't support GPU (crazy, I know), and that Adobe need to strip and rebuild their rendering engine to cater for the extra processing demand that comes with 5k devices. Then they have to do quality assurance testing to make sure it holds up to whatever standards they use. It takes time.

As much as I hate Adobe for screwing us around on this, patience is required. Making demands and threats are just going to get ignored. If you aren't happy, talk with your wallet and cancel your subscription and get some other software that does the trick for you.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Daniel

S

Silver Jade

Participating Frequently

sltplz has a great work around for the time being until Adobe get their act together:

Open up your mac's application folder where illustrator is found
Go into the Adobe Illustrator folder
Select the Illustrator app file and press COMMAND + I ... OR ... Right click it, and select GET INFO (Not SHOW INFO)
In the info panel that pops up, under the General section, expand it
Click OPEN IN LOW RESOLUTION
Close info panel
Run Illustrator

This disables the Retina HiDPI. You will notice the pixels, but Illustrator will run as though it was on a standard 2560x1440 Mac screen. I assume you can apply this same process to any app (correct me if I'm wrong). I know I'll be doing it to Lightroom, which sucks major ass.

I hope this helps everyone in the interim.

Still angry at you Adobe. You deserve a spanking for this screw up. You should have seen this one coming. Particularly since we are forking out top dollar each month for you to sit on your thumbs.

J

jdotpak

Participating Frequently

Photoshop is now extremely choppy as well (but still usable, even though extremely aggravating). It is definitely a resolution issue. I think it is a Yosemite issue really but Adobe and apple have the responsibility to work this out As a high priority BUG.

im wondering if ANYone on this thread is NOT on Yosemite?

S

Silver Jade

Participating Frequently

I still have no problems with Photoshop. Photoshop is one of the Adobe apps that utilise GPU across the board. Are you sure it's not your computer/settings or the complexity of your document?

Crowe About It

Participating Frequently

Adobe Indesign has pretty much the same issues as Illustrator. So hopefully a fix for both will surface.

A

alexharris

Participant

Adobe, thanks for replying with info for this. Just fanning these flames a bit more. My work computer has been updated to retina, and Illustrator is fatally slow, killing my workflow. Agreed with poster above, this is a critical problem. Please fix.