Illustrator CC 2014 extremely choppy. Please help.

[bozogubu]

I just bought an iMac 5k Retina Base model with Yosemite installed. All other CC applications work like a breeze except illustrator. Illustrator is extremely choppy and almost unworkable. Can someone help me out?

[sKz]

Absolutely, can't wait to make good use of all them pixels with illustrator. Here's hoping they manage to resolve it soon.

[jdotpak]

at least they acknowledge/working on it.

same problem. 1 year old macbook pro. high spec. cc 2014.1

all applications seem to be fine. illustrator sluggish to the point it is unusable.

designer next to me on a slower machine has no such problem.

both on yosemite (this started happening to me right after installing yosemite. just updated with lastest version. no change in illustrator).

------ update -->

i use a triple monitor set up. i turned off the 2 extra monitors (only using one .. a cinema display). works (ALMOST) fine now. definitely usable. sometimes sluggish with certain functions (ie. start up, etc)

everyone who is having illustrator specific issues, are you using multiple monitors? try turning them off and see what happens.

--- > previous attempts in fixing with no change in illustrator problem

- reinstall illustrator

- install 2014 (not 2014.1)

- uninstall all extra fonts

- downgrade AND update java

- updated yosemite to newest patch (out today)

[pacifique1234]

Hey folks,

Just wanted to report that I am having the same issue with Illustrator CC.

My specs are: Retina iMac 27" 4GHz i7 /  32 GB ram  /  Radeon R9 4095mb Card

I'd venture to say Illustrator is about 60% slower than it was on my mid-2010 27" iMac.

Also for clarification, I am not using additional monitors nor does it look like Adobe is using any excessive memory.

[sKz]

Wonder if we can get an update on this.

Could really use a fix.

[nattarbox2]

Just want to echo everything said in this thread so far. Received a 5k iMac yesterday with 32GB of RAM, SSD, and 2GB ATI card. Illustrator is unusable in the sense that zooming and panning/scrolling around a page are extremely lagged out. This was on a clean install. Photoshop appears fine, have not explored other apps.

Would be great to hear an update from Adobe on the issue, as it stands my new computer is mostly unusable.

[danzigner]

I can also echo the issues in this thread.

Currently sitting on 8 new 5k iMacs ready to upgrade our shop from machines born in 2008. Have also spent months attempting to get my corporation onto Enterprise Creative Cloud and have finally successfully done so. Pretty bummed to learn that my enormous investment of time, money, and resources has ended up a detriment to our business, which depends so much on the use of Illustrator.

[Basvgestel]

I just received my iMac 5K today (8GB Ram - 4 GHz Intel Core i7 - AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB - 512 Flash Drive) and I'm experiencing the exact same problems as mentioned above. Every Adobe CC app works perfectly and runs butter smooth, except Illustrator CC. It's basically unusable. When zooming or moving the art board around, it's extremely choppy and it lags behind, very annoying. I open the same document on my 2010 13" MBP with a flash drive and it works perfectly, no lag at all. Any updates from Adobe? It's really frustrating to use Illustrator like this and I need to use it every single day!

[Crowe About It]

I am also experiencing this problem. I have a new iMac 5k with 4GHz Intel Core i7 Processor, 16GB Memory, Graphics AMD Radeon R9 M290X, 256Gb SSD and Adobe CC. Everything works fine apart from Illustrator where I experience sluggish movements even on an empty document. Hopefully Adobe can sort out a fix soon!

[bozogubu]

There's one of two things that Adobe Is doing. One, they're working really hard on this problem and are just not able to fighre this out. Or, two, they simply don't care and realise people with high end systems don't deserve due consideration.

I mainly use premiere and illustrator. While premiere is smooth as butter, illustrator simply is unworkable. Adobe for its part has stolen my money. I've paid for their product and have received a buggy faulty product. But we're all suckers. And we keep praying that they fix it. I'm sorry for my rant. But I earn my living with these things. And in the last few months, life has become hell. My speed has reduced to 20% of what I used to deliver. And clients are losing faith.

Dear adobe, if you're listening, please for the love of your most loyal customers, fix this. Before someone decides enough is enough and sues you.

[nattarbox2]

FWIW, if you have a Creative Cloud subscription you can also access previous versions of Illustrator. I just installed Illustrator CC (v17.0.0) and it seems to work pretty well. Under the "Find New Apps" section set the filter to Previous Version.

Edit: after playing around with more complex files it isn't that much better.

[bozogubu]

I installed it as well. There is a slight performance improvement. Very slight indeed. But it isn't any better. 😞

[nattarbox2]

I have one more impractical workaround. If you plug a Thunderbolt display in as a second monitor (or presumably any other non-Retina second monitor) Illustrator runs at close to the performance you would expect if you keep it on the second screen.

[petersch73]

Same here! Scrolling and panning is stuttering. (My mac Air is MUCH better!)

I´ve tested it also in dual Monitor Setup(Full HD Dell 2311). On the 2nd Monitor there was nearly no stuttering. The other CC Apps are without problems.

Base Configuration imac retina i5. Next Days  i will get 16BG more....

[Surf_Shack_Interactive]

This actually did the trick for us as long as the navigator window was closed. Anytime the navigator preview window was open it started to get sluggish. 

Horrible Solution though to have such a beautiful display only used for the panels.

Running illustrator on a 2nd monitor did the trick and now the performance is way better.

Thanks Peter!

[sltplz]

Hey,

I just bought a MBP Retina 15" high-end (i7, 16GB RAM, SSD 512, GeForce GT 750M 2GB) perfectly clean install with Photoshop and Illustrator CC updated. This is terribly choppy (scrolling / navigation / zoom / unzoom), even when creating a new document. Everywhere else, the computer is a real bomb.

With Photoshop, everything is perfectly smooth. I also have a 27 "iMac non retina and no particular concern in Illustrator.

The problem appears when we enlarge the size of the artboard. By using a small artboard, it's almost fluid. More we enlarge it, the more it chop. The solid gray artboard takes all the resources.

I downloaded a demo of SwitchResX that can display resolutions other than those of the system and I put my 15" Retina in 3840x2400px non-HiDPI and Illustrator retrieve its fluidity. So HiDPI is not optimized on Illustrator. Great job Adobe.

[Crowe About It]

It would appear they have just updated Illustrator CC which includes, amongst new features, 'bug fixes and improvements to core Illustrator functionality'. I have since tried Illustrator and it does not seem to have affected it at all. Has anyone else had improvements?

[sKz]

Nope, same issues. Pretty much still impossible to use for work.

Doesn't seem they tried to fix the problem in this update.

[bozogubu]

Nada. It's the same. Really hoped this would fix it though.

[pacifique1234]

I can confirm that the recent December 11th update did not fix the lag issue with Illustrator.

[jdotpak]

just updated. opened a relatively small file. still waiting for it to open (mac. rainbow wheel spinning).

also confirming, it seems to be resolution (video card?) related. performance increases when i turn off side monitors. still not perfect though. but significantly better.

[Crowe About It]

I also get some lag in Indesign, does anyone else experience this? I have a 5MB document, when scrolling between pages it's a bit jittery. The document contains photos I have placed and also vector imagery I have copy and pasted in (rather than placing the ai document).

I would also like to add that when scrolling around in Illustrator, on the Activity Monitor Illustrator goes beyond 100% of CPU usage.

[sltplz]

You don't need a small file to see if it's choppy, just a blank page is enough to take illustrator down.

Adobe PLEASE open your eyes and give us a REAL UPDATE for retina optimisation!!

[font9a]

It's awful on a 2013 Retina MacBook Pro with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1GB, too. Panning, zooming, smart guides performance is so miserable in Ai I've reluctantly switched to OmniGraffle for much of my work 😞

[radiatedesign]

I was going to update my ageing MacPro with a Retina iMac but these reports are worrying and are putting me off ordering one.

Can the issue be fixed temporally by reducing the iMacs screen resolution?

Adobe it would be nice to know whether you are looking into this?

[bozogubu]

Not really.

So far, there seems to be only workaround. Reduce the window size to what it would look like on a 13 inch screen. But then again, what's the point of having a 27 inch screen and have to reduce your illustrator window to what it would look like on a Laptop.