Enjoy faster, smoother experience with Performance Improvements in Illustrator

[Srishti Bali]

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. Our engineering team has initiated fundamental architectural changes aimed at delivering significant performance improvements in the coming months.

The latest Illustrator releases mark the beginning of a comprehensive performance enhancement initiative, with a strong focus on implementing multithreading capabilities in key areas. While this is just the start, you’ll already experience noticeable improvements in common workflows, particularly when working with menus, linked images, and effects. Our roadmap includes extensive performance upgrades, with regular updates planned throughout 2025 and 2026.

Update the App Try out the latest Features and Enhancements in Illustrator.

Update Illustrator v29.6

Recent Performance Enhancements in Illustrator!

Enhanced Brushes effects and editing operations

• Effects: Calligraphic Brushes and Art Brushes (Window > Brushes) render effects faster.
• Editing: Operations such as move, scale, rotate, and duplication are smoother and faster.

Faster File Import

(Open, Place, Drag-and-Drop): Import PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and Photoshop files more quickly from both local storage and network drives, optimizing your workflow.

Enhanced Effects Processing

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

Optimized Layers Panel

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

Improved Menu Responsiveness

Menus and menu items now open and respond more quickly, allowing you to access tools and complete tasks with greater efficiency.

These updates mark the start of our commitment to making Illustrator faster and more responsive. Stay tuned for more enhancements in the next release by following this page, where we'll continue to share upcoming updates.

We’d love to hear from you!

Try out these new performance enhacements and let us know your thoughts. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions 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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[Jordi Biosca Camps]

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.

[Anubhav M]

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

[Jordi Biosca Camps]

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

[Jordi Biosca Camps · Accepted solution]

Problem solved!

Once I uninstalled and reinstalled the Nvidia Quadro driver and noticed no improvement, I checked the Illustrator preferences menu and, surprisingly, I saw that the GPU performance option was unselected. As silly as that. Please notice that with the last update process, that important option, for some reason, gets unchecked.

Thks

[simongman]

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]

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]

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.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @simongman,

Thanks for confirming those details. Since the issue only appears on-screen and not in exports, it may be related to how Illustrator is rendering the display. Could you try toggling the GPU Performance setting under Preferences > Performance and see if that changes anything? If the issue still shows on the screen, a sample file would be really helpful so I can share it with the product team for further investigation.

Let me know how it goes.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

[Jon Buckley Illustration]

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.

[Anubhav M]

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

[Jon Buckley Illustration]

thanks, did it.

[gillians91716749]

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. 

[Guillermo_D5939]

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]

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