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. 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.

Update 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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[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]

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

[Janik_dk]

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]

[Anubhav M]

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

[defaultx7uiv2q46hvw]

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..

[russg22417893]

Hello I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I have been running into an issue since updating to Illustrator 30. After a fair amount of observation, I believe it is coming from this enhancement: "Save complex edits in your artwork faster, as Illustrator now only saves the changes you make, not the entire document each time".

When I edit and save relatively complex vector smart objects that are embedded or linked in Photoshop, the objects have begun to appear incorrectly in Photoshop since this latest update to Illustrator. Elements within the smart object itself will appear out of layer order (or simply disappear), or transparency masks will disappear. I noticed when I was making minor edits, the "save" would take much less time than usual. That is how I discovered this new "performance enhancement" that I believe is the root cause of this. When I "force" Illustrator to save the entire smart object (rather than just the changes I've made) by hitting "Select All" and nudging up one tick and back down one tick, then hitting save — the smart object then updates correctly in Photoshop.

Thank you in advance for your attention on this! Thank you so much for your hard work on the software updates.

- Russ

[Ton Frederiks]

Maybe you should turn off Save in Background if you think your issue is caused by the new faster save feature:

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/desktop/troubleshoot/application-crash-issues/auto-backup-and-re...

[russg22417893]

Not a bad idea; I'll give that a go, thanks! (Hopefully no negative side-effects from that, but here goes). Good work-around in the meantime at least.

[russg22417893]

Just an update, yes, this has worked. So the issue definitely does seem to be connected to that Save feature. Thanks for the advice, and the workaround! Sure liked Save In Background, but I'll sacrifice that for now I suppose!

[Jason Burnett]

Is there any hope that Illustrator will introduce a modern interface any time soon? Is anyone working on things like making sure that Modal Dialog boxes for tool settings are eliminated? All tool settings should be easily modifiable in real time without having a big nasty dialog box obscuring your work and forcing you to click okay or cancel. 

In fact, is there any hope that Illustrrator will release a version that uses standard interface rules in general. Like when you focus an input field the contents are fully selected and typiung relaces the contents. To insert the cursor, you have to click again? And while you are at it, get rid of the senseless units. We know what units were are using, so it's just more opportunity to mess up. Every day, at least 50 times, I have to close the stupid dialog box that says that a field can't remain empty. Quit interrupting me to let me know that your non-standard ways of dealing with input fields has generated an error. If you are going to fix it, fix it. Don't interrupt me to let me know you screwed up and are blaming me. 

Adobe needs to do a complete audit of their interface especially in illustrator. Their goal should be to eliminate modal dialog boxes or interruptions to working. If you want to announce an error, put it in a side panel that we can optionally compress. If you have tool settings, put them in a panel where changing the settings changes the tools operation--no confirm, no guesswork, no hiding the workspace. Any time you feel like you have to reprimand the user, you are wrong. Letting the userr know that something different had to happen and then doing it regardless of user input should be done with an announcement in the announcment panel. Quit using modals. Quit abusing your customers. Find ways to make the customer always right. 

And please modernize the interface. It's so bulky and out of date that it just  is laborious to look at. 

And please quit with the AI garbage. If you want AI in Illustrator make a version for idiots that can use AI because they don't have skills and aren't particularly cautious about quality. It's a slap in the face for professionals to have to constantly work around popups and announcements about AI that we really don't want. 

And maybe comer up with a new name for Adobe Illustrator. It is constantly being referred to as AI and there's artificial Intelligence everywhere right now. Adobe Vector would be betterr or anything less common than AI would help.

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Jason Burnett,

Thanks for reaching out and sharing your insights. Would you mind creating a UserVoice for this request (https://adobe.ly/4s54PcJ) and adding your comments there? Doing this will help us prioritize this request, and you will be notified of any updates.

Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions or require assistance. We'd be happy to help.

Anubhav