Adobe Illustrator 2021 Taking Forever to Save on MacBook Pro

[hellofrancis]

I have a newer MacBook Pro (within  2 years) and I just updated to Adobe Illustrator 2021 and it takes excessively long for files to save along with dropping .tmp files on my desktop that don't leave once the save is actually complete. Clearly, this is a bug, so I'm bringing it to Adobe's attention to resolve and fix, please.

[Monika Gause]

Can you try and disable background save in the preferences?

Also: is there a printer connected and turned on?

[dDembicki]

I'm having the same issue. 

Don't want to disable background save because it quits unexpectedly... and I am working on a deadline right now. But I will, just not right this minute.

I do not have a printer connected at all.

Could be my preferences, maybe I don't have them set correctly, but AI2020 was almost as bad.

And I do have the firepower:

MBP 16in 2019, 2.6 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7, 32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4, 

Graphics cards: AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4 GB and Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

Running Mac OS v10.15.7

[Monika Gause]

Start with the printer.

Illustrator likes to find a printer when it searches for one.

It searches for a printer every time it opens or saves a file.

If it doesn't find one, it will throw a tantrum.

[dDembicki]

Ok. Will let you know. I don't actually have a printer. so that will be challenging. 

[Monika Gause]

There are PDF printers.You could install one.

[dDembicki]

I have not been able to find a PDF printer or PPD that is newer than 2017. And what I did find and put in what I thought might be the right place did not work, just hung my app when starting up. (The instructions were for CC2018.)

All the Adobe help pages say to save as PDF. I want to see if my file size will be smaller if I do it the old fashioned way, but it looks like that's not to be. Print to PDF has been disabled for any apps that don't use the Mac print dialog box. Which is all the Adobe apps.

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/using-pdf-printer.html

Other thoughts? 

[Monika Gause]

Don't print to PDF. Really, don't.

If you want to optimize PDF file size, tryAcrobat's native tools. But then: that PDF might not be suitable for professional printing anymore.

[dDembicki]

So sorry to give you a fright!! (but it is the season, haha, with halloween around the corner). I do know better than that. The PDF I'm trying to get smaller is only a concept presentation, not anything that will be commercially printed. I just need it to be email-able (10mg or less) and still look good on screen for a zoom meeting. Right now it's running roughly 50mb. My workaround has been to save my AI artboards as JPGs and put them all together in Acrobat, and then save as smaller.

[dDembicki]

Thanks, Monika, your advice is usually spot on, and I don't thank you enough. 

I mis spoke. I do have an old-ish Epson printer that I installed. It will turn itself off after a certain amount of time, which is why I didn't install it to begin with. Also, I don't intend to use my company supplied computer to print on my personal, crappy, oh-so-that's-why-it-was-so-cheap inkjet printer. Also the driver isn't PS, but I'm not sure that matters anymore.

So far installing a printer isn't making a big difference, but it is slighly better. 

My files for this particular project are HUGE, which doesn't help matters. Its PDFs are huge as well. I was thinking that if I could print to a PS file and then use distiller it might help. But I couldn't find a PS PPD file... Sigh. 

[Srishti Bali]

Hi there,

Sorry about the delay. I am hopeful that the issue was fixed. If not, please try the suggestions shard on this page (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator/resolve-slow-performance-and-unexpected-behaviors-in-illu...) and let us know how it goes. 

Feel free to let us know if you still need assistance. We'd be happy to help.

Regards,

Srishti

[dDembicki · Accepted solution]

Srishti, thanks for the followup. I believe it's much better now that I've installed a printer. Still seems sluggish saving but the files are pretty large.