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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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radiatedesign

Participating Frequently

I was going to update my ageing MacPro with a Retina iMac but these reports are worrying and are putting me off ordering one.

Can the issue be fixed temporally by reducing the iMacs screen resolution?

Adobe it would be nice to know whether you are looking into this?

B

bozogubuAuthor

Participating Frequently

Not really.

So far, there seems to be only workaround. Reduce the window size to what it would look like on a 13 inch screen. But then again, what's the point of having a 27 inch screen and have to reduce your illustrator window to what it would look like on a Laptop.

Crowe About It

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Exactly. I bought the new iMac Retina display to take full advantage of what it can do. Adobe is not allowing me to do that. I shouldn't have to find work arounds.

F

font9a

Participating Frequently

It's awful on a 2013 Retina MacBook Pro with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1GB, too. Panning, zooming, smart guides performance is so miserable in Ai I've reluctantly switched to OmniGraffle for much of my work :-(

sltplz

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You don't need a small file to see if it's choppy, just a blank page is enough to take illustrator down.

Adobe PLEASE open your eyes and give us a REAL UPDATE for retina optimisation!!

Crowe About It

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I also get some lag in Indesign, does anyone else experience this? I have a 5MB document, when scrolling between pages it's a bit jittery. The document contains photos I have placed and also vector imagery I have copy and pasted in (rather than placing the ai document).

I would also like to add that when scrolling around in Illustrator, on the Activity Monitor Illustrator goes beyond 100% of CPU usage.

J

jdotpak

Participating Frequently

just updated. opened a relatively small file. still waiting for it to open (mac. rainbow wheel spinning).

also confirming, it seems to be resolution (video card?) related. performance increases when i turn off side monitors. still not perfect though. but significantly better.

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pacifique1234

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I can confirm that the recent December 11th update did not fix the lag issue with Illustrator.

Crowe About It

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It would appear they have just updated Illustrator CC which includes, amongst new features, 'bug fixes and improvements to core Illustrator functionality'. I have since tried Illustrator and it does not seem to have affected it at all. Has anyone else had improvements?

S

sKz

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Nope, same issues. Pretty much still impossible to use for work.

Doesn't seem they tried to fix the problem in this update.

sltplz

Participating Frequently

Hey,

I just bought a MBP Retina 15" high-end (i7, 16GB RAM, SSD 512, GeForce GT 750M 2GB) perfectly clean install with Photoshop and Illustrator CC updated. This is terribly choppy (scrolling / navigation / zoom / unzoom), even when creating a new document. Everywhere else, the computer is a real bomb.

With Photoshop, everything is perfectly smooth. I also have a 27 "iMac non retina and no particular concern in Illustrator.

The problem appears when we enlarge the size of the artboard. By using a small artboard, it's almost fluid. More we enlarge it, the more it chop. The solid gray artboard takes all the resources.

I downloaded a demo of SwitchResX that can display resolutions other than those of the system and I put my 15" Retina in 3840x2400px non-HiDPI and Illustrator retrieve its fluidity. So HiDPI is not optimized on Illustrator. Great job Adobe.

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nattarbox2

Participant

I have one more impractical workaround. If you plug a Thunderbolt display in as a second monitor (or presumably any other non-Retina second monitor) Illustrator runs at close to the performance you would expect if you keep it on the second screen.

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petersch73

Participant

Same here! Scrolling and panning is stuttering. (My mac Air is MUCH better!)

I´ve tested it also in dual Monitor Setup(Full HD Dell 2311). On the 2nd Monitor there was nearly no stuttering. The other CC Apps are without problems.

Base Configuration imac retina i5. Next Days i will get 16BG more....

S

Surf Shack Interactive

Participant

This actually did the trick for us as long as the navigator window was closed. Anytime the navigator preview window was open it started to get sluggish.

Horrible Solution though to have such a beautiful display only used for the panels.

Running illustrator on a 2nd monitor did the trick and now the performance is way better.

Thanks Peter!

B

bozogubuAuthor

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I installed it as well. There is a slight performance improvement. Very slight indeed. But it isn't any better. :-(

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