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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?

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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.

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Crowe About It

Participating Frequently

If anyone contacts Adobe or Apple relating to this issue, please can you post they response. I think we could do with putting together what feedback, if any, we get. Do Adobe even have a technical department we can contact?

sltplz

Participating Frequently

Just go here and make things change everyone!

https://twitter.com/AdobeCare

Crowe About It

Participating Frequently

Tweeted. Will be interesting to see if they respond. I pointed them to this thread.

R

rezengine

Inspiring

Has anybody actually submitted a bug for this in the Adobe BugBase? If so can I please have the reference?

EDIT: I have submitted a bug at: Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form

Jake Givens

Participating Frequently

Just wanted to add to the number of frustrated users waiting for a fix. I've been following this forum for close to 3 weeks now (since getting my retina iMac) and am baffled that there hasn't been more than just the few responses from Adobe that provide no insight into a fix. This is incredibly frustrating! Please provide all of us that are waiting with some kind of update...

OwenSlik

Participant

Just switched to an iMac Retina i5 16Gb with Illustrator CC. I'm experiencing the same problems. Very slow and lots of lag when zooming and using the hand tool to pan around. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement and it makes it pretty much unusable for someone who works quickly.

Please can someone from Adobe confirm that they are aware of this issue and are working to fix it?

Otherwise I'll have no option but to return this iMac and cancel my Adobe subscription. I just can't believe that my 4 year old Windows 7 laptop running CS5 performs better.

sltplz

Participating Frequently

Do not make the mistake of returning your iMac because Adobe sucks! Your iMac is not the problem, Adobe just collect $ every months and drop useless updates. Think more about switching to newer graphic soft like Sketch/Affinity.

OwenSlik

Participant

When you have been using a certain program for your entire working career (and supporting the company that makes it) it becomes very hard to make the change. Affinity may be newer but I don't think it is a true rival for Illustrator yet.

The iMac is a great piece of kit, no doubt, but if the program I use every day doesn't work on it, then it is of no use to me. There must be thousands of people who have upgraded to an iMac Retina, expecting Adobe Illustrator to work perfectly. I was looking forward to the experience of using that stunning Retina display and boosting my productivity.

Apple should recognise that this is their problem too, because people will hold off buying iMac Retinas if Illustrator doesn't function properly. Apple should be working with Adobe or putting pressure on them to fix it. Maybe they already are...can anyone from Adobe comment on this?

D

dpines1003

Participating Frequently

Glad to see I'm not alone on this issue, same problem here. New Retina iMac, 16gig Ram, updated graphics card, running illustrator CC and it's just terrible. Choppy and slow to response with only a single element on the page.

I think I saw a thread here saying Adobe is addressing the issue?

P

pacifique1234

Participating Frequently

Can you link to the thread?

Also, has anyone tried calling Adobe technical support?

sltplz

Participating Frequently

I just describe the problem via the adobe support contact form. Still no answer after 3 weeks...

L

LienekeKoenen

Participant

At our studio we have a iMac Retina, and a Macbook Pro Retina, both high-end models. Both have the same problems with illustrator, only fix is to add a second screen that is NOT retina. Problem is clearly related to the retina screen. We work in a design studio, and we are heavily dependent on Adobe products.

We would be very happy to see a fix for this issue asap! - Studio Naam (The Netherlands)

A

alexharris

Participant

Hi there - just came across this after have another session on google trying to fix this stuttering, choppy, lagging illustrator issue. I have a beefed up iMac 5k, no external monitor, or anything else too out of the norm. I am fairly certain this is a hardware acceleration issue, or lack there of. There is a sharp threshold for how many pixels the document window can display before losing responsiveness. Adobe has developed hardware acceleration for Illustrator on Windows, but not Mac. I understand it's a hefty bit of code to implement something like this, however, it does surprise me that this has been an issue for a few years now on the Mac side.

The work around for me - which I have learned from this thread - is to scale down the app window to about 33% of the display. Kind of a silly thing to do on such a large and gorgeous monitor, but it's making Illustrator usable again.

Adobe - count me in on this issue, please address a fix.

sltplz

Participating Frequently

When you reduce the art board window to almost the minimum, it's smooth. The more you enlarge the art board, the more it chop! It's REALLY annoying and for a company this big, it's REALLY an issue!

When I open the same document in Affinity Designer, it's just ridiculously smooth. Just try it. I believe so hard in AD, just give it some time to grow up a little more (especially bleeds)...

L

Luca Farina

Participant

Even to me the same serious problem.

Illustrator and Indesign with unnerving performance ...

On new iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), 4 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB DDR3 1600 MHz, AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB ...

It seems clear that a management problem of vector (Photoshop ve fine).

Unfortunately we work with Illustrator, and I'm really worried.

My old CS4 runs better on my old Mac Pro of 2008!

I think I just threw 4.000 Euros between new iMac and Adobe CC.

I feel like crying ...

B

bozogubuAuthor

Participating Frequently

Luca,

Trust me, we all feel and understand your pain. buying this system was a big leap for me and Adobe just plain failed me. I depend on illustrator to earn a living. Now because of how choppy it is, I have to outsource my work to people and lose almost 80% of the project cost on them. It's ridicolous. I'm a freelancer who hires freelancers to do exactly what I do.

I Repeat, I can't but feel cheated. I pay Adobe money and theyv given me a crappy product. I'm sorry but I'm at my wits end on this.

sltplz

Participating Frequently

No moderator can take a look at this problem and report this to the super great adobe dev team?? I'm sure they are too busy counting their $$ thanks to cc subscriptions. (I have already send a feedback to adobe 3 weeks ago, no answer of course...)

Please guys, continue to post here and give some importance to this topic! Maybe someone'll look at it.

L

LeBay

Participant

My problem sounds a little different than those mentioned above, so maybe I will post this on another thread.

------------------------------------------------------------------

SYSTEM:

Adobe Illustrator CC and CC2014 running on Windows 8.1 (x64) (system: Intel Core i5-4570 @ 3.20GHz w 8GB RAM )

PROBLEM:

Every 5-10 seconds Illustrator pauses for 3 seconds - "not responding" and sometimes the screen even goes black.

BACKGROUND:

A couple years ago I had a similar symptoms that were caused by Illustrator auto-updating linked files that were located on our server. I turned off the auto-updating and the problem went away.

MORE INFO:

I open and use the same files on my MacBook Pro ( 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5 - 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 - running Yosemite 10.10.1) and the performance is fine. Also, oddly and perhaps related, I can not open Illustrator files located on the server using my MacBook Pro. I get an error message stating that the file is an unknown format. I need to download the file to my local drive before I can open it.

sltplz

Participating Frequently

Yes it's a little bit different. Our problem concern Retina (HiDPI) version of Illustrator.

About your problem, I think it's simply a corrupted file in Illustrator file system. Have you the same problem when you create a new document? I advise you to delete properly all illustrator files (even preferences files) and try to make a fresh install. Illustrator usually works fine (besides HiDPI version...), so if the problem occur only in illustrator, then illustrator is the problem. If not, it's certainly a hard drive issue.

Hope I helped you.

(Sorry for my english!)

T

tomjohn36

Participant

Add me to the list. I'm having SERIOUS issues with lag in Illustrator. The problem seems to be accentuated when I use an external mouse. Not sure if anyone else has had a similar experience with that.

I love Illustrator, been using it for years and years, but I am just about ready to advise a switch to Sketch for 5+ licenses at my workplace. There needs to be more of an active reply from forum moderators to this issue.

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