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Participant
August 12, 2026
Question

Illustrator + Photoshop Computer Memory Overload

  • August 12, 2026
  • 6 replies
  • 20 views

In previous versions of the Adobe apps, I became accustomed to running Photoshop and Illustrator in parallel and being able to copy and paste vectors I made in Illustrator directly into my Photoshop documents. Now, whenever I try to run both concurrently on my new Mac Mini, I get a message that my computer is out of memory and it freezes up. I’m wondering if this is due to some new clunky AI features that I could disable, or if the issue has some other solution. I can work around it, but it’s much less convenient.

    6 replies

    creative explorer
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 12, 2026

    @theodored64442807 On the older Adobe apps, 16 GB of RAM was plenty for our computers. But with technology changes, the newer releases include generative‑AI features, the apps use more memory. Can you remove the AI entirely? Not really. BUT you can turn off certain AI‑related features in each app’s preferences, which helps reduce memory usage and keeps things running smoother. Go through both Illustrator and Photoshop and turn off things such as Real‑Time Drawing & Editing, Disable GPU Performance, etc

    m
    Ton Frederiks
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 12, 2026

    How much memory do you have in your computer?

    Participant
    August 12, 2026

    I have 16gb of RAM, and Photoshop + Illustrator take about 30gb combined. I used to run both on my laptop with the same amount of RAM with no issues though. I have 150gb of free space on my hard drive as well.

    Dave Creamer of IDEAS
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 12, 2026

    What is your Activity Monitor showing?

    How much RAM do you have?

    How much free space on your SSD?

    David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)
    Participant
    August 12, 2026

    I have 16gb of RAM, with about 150GB free on my SSD. Illustrator runs at about 20gb, Photoshop 10gb. I know that’s about twice my system’s memory on paper, but on my old laptop with the same memory capacity I used to run both parallel with no issues, hence my question.

    Dave Creamer of IDEAS
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 12, 2026

    You might want to downgrade to the previous version (through the Creative Cloud app) for now until you can figure this out. 

    David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)