Participating Frequently

Question

InDesign CS5 lag slow on Snow Leopard 10.6

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
September 20, 2010
13 replies
28428 views

I am reaching the end of patience with this one and starting to wish i'd not paid for a CS5 upgrade.

I installed under Mac OS 10.5 originally, did all updates and had font and other deathly slow issues in Photoshop.

In the end, I enacted a TOTAL system maintenance routine and upgraded to System 10.6 in order to try and get round probs with CS5.

I since have ditched all prefs, reset all caches, cleared all logs, done total font checks and removed a couple of corrupt ones, repaired disk permissions etc etc etc.... Photoshop 'appears' to work ok, although saving and saving to web can be sluggish (pizza wheel waiting for it....)

InDesign CS5 is now taxing my productivity. I thought it was my Wacom Intuous 3 tablet, but find the issue (at the mo as I've not noticed anything significant yet in Illustrator or Photoshop) only occurs with InDesign CS5.

The issue is the glitchy interface - stepped or delayed movements of objects across the page, selecting menu dialogue boxes can take a second when i click on a value, slightly steppy movements make selecting the tiny up and down arrows on some menus very tricky to be accurate. PLUS saving and saving PDFs in particular as well as PLACE images CMD-D can be deathly slow. It used to be almost instaneous, slowed only by the hard drive firing up. Now i try to do things and have to wait on many actions. It's doing my head in! This is NOT PRODUCTIVE.

In InDesign i have tried turning off Live Redraw, dropping display quality to fast (makes working almost impossible as i need to see what i'm doing), and disabled the Preflight option that is on by default, and i'm sure other options too i've seen on forums. But no better.

I have a Quad Core 3Ghz Intel Mac with 14Gb RAM, and an NIVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT graphics card.

IS this APPLE or ADOBE issue? How on earth can i get my speedy productivity back so i can move around the screen smoothly, save and place quickly, and select menu dialogues without waiting for it to react..... HELP!

This topic has been closed for replies.

A

Alex Furness

Participant

Hi all - Until a fix is provided I found that selecting 'View / Display Performance / Typical Display' rather than 'High Quality' removed the lag when working with InDesign and the Wacom Intuos tablet. This is of course like going back to Quark with the different preview resolutions. But at least it is moving and not lagging and can then switch back to High Quality when finishing off the design. Hope that helps to those still struggling with this issue.

A

Anonymous

If your CS5 files are stored in a network drive, has anyone looked at that? Are you connecting/accessing your CS5 files on a shared network drive using SMB on Snow Leopard (not Leopard)?

If so, that may be the issue. SMB definitly works differently in Snow Leopard. We had this issue for awhile when we upgraded to newer Macs with Snow Leopard, and kept the same file sharing protocols during the transfer. Accessing files was awful. It was very slow. After investigating, we switched from SMB to AFP (Apple File Sharing). Talk to your network admin to see if the shard drives support it.

That seemed to fix the issue and now everyone is happy.

Let me know if this helps.

E

enzoconti

Participating Frequently

I have downloaded files straight to my desktop, no difference.

wilmarboer

Inspiring

I'm having the same problem.

My Indesign version is 7.0.3.

I'm working on a Mac Pro (2.8 Ghz Quad-Core Xeon) with 12gb memory.

I've switched of Live Screen Drawing.

But still ID CS5 is very slow, especially when moving object. When I move an object it takes about a second to redraw the object. ID CS3 is a much faster experience. Especially with Overprint Preview on. Any tips wil be highly appreciated!

E

enzoconti

Participating Frequently

Sorry Wilmar, I have no good news. I've been searching for an answer to this problem for months, it's just something you'll have to learn to live with. My only advice is to hope that either Mac or Adobe recognise the issue go about fixing it. I don't think there is anything you can do to achieve ID3 speed and efficiency.

wilmarboer

Inspiring

@Enzoconti, thanks for the reply.

@Cre8thenew, I'm not working on a network, but on an (external) eSata disk.

What's even more strange is that my late 2008 Macbook Pro (4gb ram, 2.54Ghz DuoCore) is running ID CS5 more smoothly. Still slower that CS3, but better than CS5 on the Mac Pro!! I really think it's an issue with the ATI gfx card in the Mac Pro. Sometimes when scrolling on de Mac Pro the whole document turns white. Scrolling again get's the screen redraw.

A

Anonymous

Try this guys:

The reason that you are experiencing lag in InDesign5 is because the 'Live Screen Drawing" is set to 'Immediate'. Set it to 'Delayed' and it should minimize your drag lag. The same setting is default (Delayed) in CS4.

Also, please make sure you have the latest patch for inDesign.

Please let me know if this helps.

Jeremy AB

Known Participant

I already have that setting at "Delayed", I pretty much changed it on day one. The lag described in this thread goes beyond what this setting affects.

For instance, simply locking and unlocking layers is slow. When I click to lock or unlock it should be instant but there's a bout a 1 second lag.

I also have the latest patch.

E

enzoconti

Participating Frequently

Just had an interesting experience with ID5. I had 2 24 page documents open at the same time to cut and paste one article from the other and the spinning beach ball came up, after about 15 seconds a dialogue box came up with "Out of memory"???? Anyone here know what that means?

T

Treasures_Trinkets

Participant

Installed CS5 in June on a brand new mac running snow leopard, 3.06 GHz intel core2 duo, 4GB 1067 MHz. Started to run poorly in October, as well as Illustrator. Slow to open, save and occasional crashes. I found that removing com.adobe.mediabrowser.plist worked for Illustrator.

Today I read about the 7_0_3 patch for InDesign. It's working much better! Thanks for your advice.

T

tramadius

Participant

Excruciatingly slow here. Running InDesign 7.0.3 on a Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon with Mac OS X 10.6.4 — 10 GB of RAM. 132 page annual magazine divided into 6 book docs. Recently upgraded from ID CS3 and Tiger (not a clean install). Never had any slow-down issues previously with identical network setup.

All typical display settings (nothing set to high-quality). Even lags when set to fast settings. Using all Open Type fonts.

Any ideas anyone?

Photoshop CS5 has been working perfectly (faster than ever).

E

enzoconti

Participating Frequently

Hi Tramadius, my only suggestion is to firstly, forget about CS3. 5 just doesn't work as fast or efficiently. I migrated the same way and was very disappointed by the comparison. Secondly, try trashing your Indesign preference file in Libraries (not something you want to do everyday but it helped me, just keep your workspaces folder and then reload it). Lastly, just persist the new features in 5 are great and perhaps we have to accept the trade off.

A

Anonymous

Just letting people know installing the 7.0.3 update has greatly improved performance for me. Previously (7.0.2) page thumbnails seemed to be the culprit of my laggy performance — I could switch the thumbnails on and off and see immediate benefits. With 7.0.3 installed, lag has *almost* gone.

It even works with:

Prefs > Interface > Options > Hand Tool = Higher Quality

Prefs > Interface > Options > Live Screen Drawing = Immediate

Prefs > Display Performance > Default View = High Quality (although I don't normally use this option)

I'm running an original Mac Pro tower, 14GB RAM, and have clean installed everything before installing CS5.

Thank god it's made an improvement (for me at least).

E

enzoconti

Participating Frequently

Must Agree! I've just spent the last day and a half using ID5 pretty heavily and have noticed very few probs, it seems a lot better!

A

Anonymous

Everything being said on this and other forums is true. CS5 and or 10.6 is the problem. Both Adobe and Apple Are tyring to pass the buck meanwhile we are losing productivity and money. Money we use to buy new or upgrade both Apple and Adobe products. I can not stress how much these issues need to be fixed, My Patience is wearing thin as I am sure others hear are. ADOBE PLEASE HELP YOUR CUSTOMERS NOW!

BobLevine

Community Expert

There's obviously an issue, but adding a me, too here will only go so far to get sympathy from other users.

Please use the bug report form to report it directly to Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

You might also consider reporting it to Apple. I have no idea who's responsibility it is but it can't hurt to report it to both.

Bob

E

enzoconti

Participating Frequently

Hi Markmld, So glad to hear I'm not the only one. This issue has driven me half crazy since first install. I was on CS3 for about 3-4yrs on a Mac Book Pro and was completely satisfied with it's efficiency, absolutely no lags, instant re-draw on High Quality Display wether using Tiff's, EPS's, Jpegs whatever.

I have since up-graded to brand new iMac i7, 8gig Ram and booting up in 64bit mode and new CS5. All this has been installed from "fresh out of the box" I couldn't be more pissed off! Instantly noticed the lagging and shitty performance with ordinary PSD pics, but as soon as I imported a fairly complex illustrator file I was thrown back to the Stone Age! I have had one on one discussions with Adobe several times to no avail.

My best guess is it's the processors, Adobe products are just not utilising all their power.

P.S. We have an 3-4 yr old G5 with a dual core intel processor and it handles ID5 much better than the iMac. I'm afraid we're stuck with the problem 'til Adobe releases a "FIX" or we go back to QUARK!!! (att: Adobe)

A

Anonymous

P.S. We have an 3-4 yr old G5 with a dual core intel processor and it handles ID5 much better than the iMac.

This actually what some of us believe may be true.

Although as we don't have any consistent script testing InDesign CS5, we only get reports based on individual & relative perception.

Just a formal question to script guys. Would be possible to make some stress test for Indy CS5 (some scene and then object movement / transformations) that could be run on several machines to compare their efficiency?

Joel Cherney

Community Expert

Just a formal question to script guys. Would be possible to make some stress test for Indy CS5 (some scene and then object movement / transformations) that could be run on several machines to compare their efficiency?

This is the best idea I've seen in all of the threads about CS5 performance. If I weren't completely slammed (with CS3 work, natch) I would be working on this right now.

A

Anonymous

Hi guys,

has anyone of you smooth working CS5 on a brand new Mac PRO or I-Core 7 Imac with Snow 10.6.4 ? Anyone? Please report. We have to find the reason.

I start to believe that there is some kind of problem with multi-threading on powerful MACs multi core machines. Fast ICore 7 Imacs - 8 threads, 16 threads Macs PRO.

We work on PCs. We have one "brand new" Mac Mini Core 2 DUO 2.53 Ghz, 4 GB of RAM as the support for files exchange. CS5 works on it perfectly. Even if we have the screen mode set to Immediate. I can open 350 pages catalogue full of texts and photos and work on it with no delays at all.

Lets do some statistic to narrow the potential source of problems. Please add your machines:

1. Mac Mini, Core 2 DUO 2.53 GHz, 4 GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400, Snow Leopard 10.6.4 - OK!

A

Anonymous

Phorna,

I have everything from 2 27" i7 imacs, the newest 8 core, 2 one year old 8 cores, a 2.4 ghz imac 24 " 4 original quad core towers

all have at least 6 gigs ram some have up to 16 gigs ram and snow leopard cs5 is unresponsive slow and clumsy, The mouse tracking is awful, everything is just running slow. My 24" 2.4g i-mac at home running leopard and cs3 runs faster then my tower... This needs to be fixed

A

Anonymous

Well, these all are 4-core and 8-core machines. Any 2-core users?

Ideas to check so far:

1. For experienced MAC users. Are you able to disable 2 cores from 4 core machine (EFI settings or something?) and check if ID will not work faster?

2. Are you able to limit the memory to 4 GB and check if ID works faster?

3. "About this MAC" shows, by my 4GB Mac Mini, following info: 64-bit core and extensions - NO. What is status of that info on your machines?

M

MMentors

Participant

Just to add to this thread-

My agency has been running CS3 since its release. One of the machines it has been running on was a now 5 year old PPC G5 2ghz tower with only 2gb of ram, and though it ran smooth and flawless, we felt that we were falling behind the times, so just last month we spent a gut wrenching sum of money to upgrade not only our Creative Suite to CS5 design premium on all workstations, but also a brand new loaded Mac Pro tower to replace that PPC machine- and I too can assure you all that we've lost productivity.

We took the machine out of the box, brand new from Apple, and installed CS5 onto a blank slate. Opened it up and immediately started "working" with ID on a deadline driven project and right away noticed the lag. After that project was out the door, I then installed my tablet hoping it would run smoother than the mouse, and there is literally no difference.

So based on running a clean install on a brand new Mac with no font management tools, extra drivers, wacom tablet or anything else at all on the system- I can assure you all that its an Adobe issue, and it needs a fix- FAST.

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