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Srishti Bali
Community Manager
Srishti BaliCommunity Manager
Community Manager
March 31, 2025

Enjoy faster, smoother experience with Performance Improvements in Illustrator

  • March 31, 2025
  • 7 replies
  • 77327 views

Hey everyone!

We know that performance is essential to your creative workflow in Adobe Illustrator, and we’re excited to share our ongoing efforts to enhance the application's speed and responsiveness. You will experience noticeable improvements in common workflows, particularly when working with menus, linked images, effects, app launch times, file saving and more. Our roadmap includes extensive performance upgrades, with regular updates planned throughout 2025 and 2026.


Update the App

Try out the latest Performance enhancements in Illustrator.

Enhancements in Illustrator 30.0

Faster saving: Illustrator now saves only the changes made, not the entire document, allowing quicker saves for complex artwork.

Improved crash recovery: Quickly and reliably restore your work after unexpected crashes.

Seamless editing: Enjoy real-time, lag-free on-canvas operations like moving, scaling, rotating, and duplicating.

Enhancements in Illustrator 29.8.1

With Illustrator 29.8.1, enjoy faster launch times, a smoother, more responsive experience, and quicker access to your files and design workflows.

Enhancements in Illustrator 29.6

Effects: Calligraphic Brushes and Art Brushes (Window > Brushes) render effects faster.

Editing: Operations such as move, scale, rotate, and duplication are smoother and faster.

Enhancements in Illustrator 29.5

Menus:

  • Top-level menus and context menus open and respond more quickly.
  • Navigation in Type > Font and the context Font menu is smoother and faster.

Links panel:

  • The panel offers a faster scrolling experience.
  • The panel updates in real time when you modify embedded and linked assets—including those from network drives.

Effects:

  • Transform (Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform), Warp (Effect > Warp), and Blend (Object > Blend) apply faster.
  • Effects render faster on objects with multiple fills and strokes.

 

smoother and faster.

Enhancements in Illustrator 29.4

Menus and menu items open and respond more quickly and smoothly, helping you access features and complete workflows more efficiently.

Enhancements in Illustrator 29.3

Faster File Import: Import PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and Photoshop files more quickly from both local storage and network drives, optimizing your workflow.

Enjoy improved rendering speeds for frequently used effects such as Drop Shadow, Blur, Inner Glow, Outer Glow, and Rasterize, ensuring a seamless design experience.

Manage layers more efficiently with smoother hide/unhide actions, faster expand/collapse operations, and improved panel scrolling.

Enhancements in Illustrator 29.2

Image import, export, and embedding:

  • Faster File > Open, File > Place, and drag-and-drop operations for JPEG and PNG files.
  • Faster export to JPEG and PNG file formats.
  • Faster conversion of linked images to embedded images.

Effects processing:

  • Improved performance for all Photoshop effects on images.
  • Faster object rasterization when using Object > Rasterize.

Layers panel:

  • Smoother and faster layer management, including hide/unhide and expand/collapse operations, panel scrolling, and layer navigation.

We’d love to hear from you!

Explore these performance improvements in Illustrator and let us know your thoughts in the comments. Feel free to create a new post if you have any issues related to the release or need more tips!



If this was helpful, please click the Upvote icon in the top left corner of this post. Your feedback helps us improve the experience. Thank you!


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      7 replies

      D
      defaultx7uiv2q46hvw
      Participating Frequently
      November 18, 2025

      I woke up to adobe illustrator being completely unusable that 2024 was more reliable than this. My laptop is Mac 2022 , M2 , 16 GB, MacOS 15.6.1 

      Illustrator cant even let me deselect an object..

      J
      Janik_dk
      Participating Frequently
      November 1, 2025

      Seriously - every SINGLE time Illustrator is getting a new update, the performance is worse.
      Is it impossible for Adobe to release a  new version of Illustrator, that is actually performing better than the previous one.
      Looking forward for an incredible ai-generated answer containing a lot 🙂 

       

      [Abuse removed by moderator]

      A
      Community Manager
      Anubhav MCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      November 12, 2025

      Hello @Janik_dk,

      I'm sorry to learn about the trouble you're having with Illustrator. Could you please provide more information, including the OS version installed, system specifications (CPU/GPU/Memory), and whether Illustrator exhibits this issue when using a specific tool or feature? Additionally, please include a short screen recording of the issue, so we can assist you more effectively.

      Also, please try the recommendations found in this help article (https://adobe.ly/4hWOF07) and let us know if they are helpful.

      I look forward to your response.

      Anubhav

      G
      Guillermo_D5939
      Participant
      August 21, 2025

      Estoy trabajando y me cambiaron el menú de herramientas. Todavía no logro saber cómo funciona una simple flecha. 

      • Editing: Operations such as move, scale, rotate, and duplication are smoother and faster.

        Es imposible de usar. y no piuensan en el usuario para hacer esos cambios al parecer. 
      HARSHIKA_VERMA
      Community Manager
      HARSHIKA_VERMACommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      August 26, 2025

      Hi Guillermo_D5939,

       

      We are sorry for the bad experience. Would you mind confirming if you're experiencing the issue mentioned in this post? If yes, this is a known issue and the team is working on it.

       

      Please stay tuned to the dedicated post for future updates.

       

      Thanks,

      Harshika

      G
      gillians91716749
      Participant
      August 19, 2025

      I really thing you should focus on the actual performance and speed of the application, I hate the new illustrator, its sticky and glitchy, takes ages to move anythnig around. And before anyone says it I am up to date, I have un istalled and re installed. Pay so much a month for something that generally is not very good. 

        J
        Jon Buckley Illustration
        Known Participant
        July 2, 2025

        You know what would really be great? Take a page from Photoshop so that when I select multiple layers and want to merge them, instead of going up to the hanburger menu in the layers panel, I could simply right click and the option to merge layers would just pop up. So much quicker and more efficient.

        A
        Community Manager
        Anubhav MCommunity Manager
        Community Manager
        July 2, 2025

        Hello @Jon Buckley Illustration,

        That's a great suggestion. Would you mind creating a UserVoice for this feature request (https://adobe.ly/4nsN1FU) and adding your comments there? Doing this will help us prioritize this request, and you will be notified of any updates.
         
        Feel free to reach out if you have more questions or need assistance. We'd be happy to help.

        Anubhav

        J
        Jon Buckley Illustration
        Known Participant
        July 2, 2025

        thanks, did it.

        simongman
        simongman
        Participant
        June 20, 2025

        I now have  boxes round transparent clipping mask on a file I was working on before this update.  Works fine with previous version 29.5 and 28.7.

        Abhishek Rao
        Community Manager
        Abhishek RaoCommunity Manager
        Community Manager
        June 20, 2025

        Hi @simongman,

         

        Thanks for flagging this. That definitely sounds unexpected, especially since the same file worked fine in previous versions. Could you confirm your Illustrator version (if it is 29.6) and system details? Also, let me know if the boxes appear only on screen or also show up in exports. If possible, please share a short screen recording or sample file where this happens, so I can check this with the team.

         

        Looking forward to your update.

        Abhishek 

        simongman
        simongman
        Participant
        June 20, 2025

        Mac OS 15.1.1

        Illustrator 29.6

         

        When I export as one of the following files at 300dpi png the boxes are not visible, so ok.

        png, jpeg, tiff and svg

         

        Boxes only appear on screen it seems.

         

         

         

          J
          Jordi Biosca Camps
          Participant
          May 13, 2025

          No. Al contrario. El rendimiento de Illustrator ha caido de forma muy importante. He buscado en los foros si a alguien más le ha ocurrido pero no he encontrado nada. Es exasperante. El resto de programas de Creative Cloud funcionan correctamente. Intuyo que puede tener a ver con el driver de video de NVIDIA RTX versión 573.06.

            A
            Community Manager
            Anubhav MCommunity Manager
            Community Manager
            May 13, 2025

            Hello @Jordi Biosca Camps,

            Could you share more details, like if Illustrator behaves this way when using a particular tool/feature, when working with specific files or files from a particular folder location, along with a small screen recording of the problem (if possible), so I can better assist you?

            Looking forward to hearing from you.
            Anubhav

            J
            Jordi Biosca Camps
            Participant
            May 14, 2025
            Hello,
            There is no particular situation that cause the malfunctioning. The program runs very slow compared to earlier versions. Particulary on the creation of new files and when zooms in and out. Dragging it's also not fluent. I've attached a video recording where you will see the lag. The document configuration screen doesn't appear on the screen capture, but you know the necessary time to create an empty A4.
            I hope you can help me.
            Best regards
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