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?

[Maximumblast]

i have the same problem here. got a completely maxed out retina iMac and illustrator is very slow. dragging artboards around, zooming and panning. just really bad. another symptom is the color picker. the little circle that indicates the desired color always lags like half a second behind my cursor. what a joke.

[Crowe About It]

The fix posted works fairly well. But man is it horrible to look at. Going from retina crisp text and artwork to low resolution is truely dreadful.

[SeanJM]

What we are asking for is basically a rewrite of the core. It is not a simple fix, to support high resolutions with good performance and clean code. There is in all likelyhood a lot of refactoring going on everywhere in the application. I'm upset that this world class company, who could be an example of best practices -- has basically given up on progressing towards higher levels of effeciency. I am disapointed that you've been patching this application over the years instead of fixing the core underlying issues underpinning it. This issue we're experiencing was predictable and foreseeable since Illustrator's inception. Now, we're left with this mess. Your paying customers. How many thousands of dollars have I paid you over the years?

So what are we to do? Lower our resolutions? Compromise on performance? Lower our expectations? Look elsewhere? I don't want to give up on you. I believe in the power of refactoring. That you can solve this problem and deliver something which will cause other programmers to wonder "How did they get such amazing performance out of this?" -- the solution should present a riddle equal to the problem it solved. You should feel satisfaction for a job well done. For doing the right thing, and for rightfully holding onto your position as the #1 design suite in history. You once liberated us from the dark days of desktop publishing and showed us a new world of possibilities, then when you had us, you slowly grew to view us as a mass instead of each unique person who counts on you. Each one of us has a story as unique as yours.

Tell us your story and how you are struggling with this problem. You aren't perfect, neither am I. I undestand it's a tall order to fix code that has 20 years of patching keeping it together. I want to know how hard it is, what clever solutions you've come up with. Wow us again. This time deliver us from apathy and antipathy and show us you care.  You can change how we see you, you can be our friend.

[Neeraj Nandkeolyar]

Thank you so much for understanding the gravity of the problem. And we completely understand your pain. I can assure you that we're working towards providing a solution at the earlier. If you would like to partner with us on this, please fill up the form: https://adobeformscentral.com/?f=xUjEhZUGXxCvf-Kvy4Jkuw

Thanks!

Neeraj Nandkeolyar

[jackson-LYD]

Neeraj, any idea on when testing will begin on this? I filled out the form and am happy to test.

We bought two 5K iMacs at my work for our migration from CS5.5 to CC and use illustrator in 90% of our work day.

I need to advise if we should finish upgrading our office, or hold on the 5K for the rest of our users.

[PixelEnvision]

Hi Neeraj, I'm also at the exact same position with jackson. I've also filled out the form last week and waiting for an update for our two 5k iMacs. Is the testing continues or it is closer to getting publicly released now? We're appreciate any news...

[Schnurrbernd]

I filled out the form as well and waiting for an update. At last nights Apple keynote they said Illustrator works up to 70% faster on El Capitan. Is that also the case with 5k Macs? If so, that would be great.

I don't really get how programs like Affinity Designer can handle vector graphics and regular pixel graphics just fine on my 5k Mac and Illustrator/Photoshop are just a pain in the ass. Guess Affinity Designer is using a more modern rendering engine. Well... Probably have to wait for El Capitan to be released since you guys give a **** about your Creative Cloud members. I mean, seriously... It's not two or three days since the 5k Mac came out. Those problems exist for quite some time now.

[seankanedesign]

Any news yet?
I updated to a 5k mac (custom, not the base model!) in hope it could speed things up and be more productive than using my 5 year old base model iMac.

I am very disappointed with the performance and shouldn't have to go back to an old machine just to use this one program!

I have filled out the testing form and am still waiting on a response.

[Kevin M. Fitzgerald]

Hi,

Just one more voice to say that this update (or just a rough idea of when it will be coming) is greatly anticipated. Much like Brendon - Burning Flame mentioned above, having the core Adobe applications run smoothly is critical to your professional clients' businesses. I'm glad I knew about Illustrator -- where I do 90% of my work -- being choppy before picking up a Retina iMac, but I'm still waiting on Adobe before being able to replace an old workstation. In the meantime, Affinity Designer is looking more and more interesting.

[Donna White-Ward]

Apple no longer allow custom upgrades to the base iMac only the 5k models.

5k is being pushed to become an industry standard and Illustrator can barely handle this. Affinity Designer is definitely the best option now and so reasonably priced in comparison to what you get for Creative Cloud.

It's nice adobe are working at it but a rough estimation to when this problem might be solved would definitely be appreciated.

[Maximumblast]

yes, switched to lo rez as well here. works better, at least i am getting some work done!

[Fergus Raphael]

Thanks for suggestions.  I can work on second monitor today and try that.  I have this setup, I just often work portably. Will also try low res mode and a resolution switching program (SwitchResX)that was suggested.  Crazy to me that these thousands of dollars of hardware and software upgrades have degraded performance so much.  Yesterday I went to work on my 2010 Macbook Air, and it was SO much faster than my 2014 MBP.  Crazy to think.

[Neeraj Nandkeolyar]

Hello.

The Ai team is experimenting with faster rendering using the GPU. If you would like to try this prototype (under NDA) and give your feedback to the team, do fill up this form.

We'll reach out to you through our Pre-release program.

Thanks!

[Crowe About It]

This is good news. Are you able to give us an estimated time frame of when we will be able to test this out?

[Crowe About It]

I've just received an invitation to the pre-release program. Though calling me Joshua is a little unnerving. Did anyone else get an email?

[Jake Givens]

I just received the email as well and was greeted with a "Dear Alexandra"....my name is Jake.

[sKz]

Dont worry about it dude, my name is now Fergus (my name is Bernardo).

[Fergus Raphael]

sKz must have received my email.  My name is Fergus but I got an email for Jason.  I guess their invitation spreadsheet is off by a row.

[alexharris]

I got the email too. They got my last name right, first name wrong. A bit sketchy feeling for sure - I had to accept a 2012 license agreement... I signed up, using a somewhat sacrificial login.

[studiojelly]

Anyone know what's next? Signed up, no app available yet?

[Neeraj Nandkeolyar]

So sorry for the mix-up. If you've signed up and need assistance, please write to me at <nnandkeo at adobe dot com>

Really sorry about that.

- Neeraj

[Maximumblast]

hey, installed and everything up and running. so we continue discussion on the board within the prerelease program? i started a thread in the general discussions board for us iMac 5k users here... c ya.

[wonderings1111]

Have the same issue with Illustrator and Indesign as well as Acrobat Pro (alllatest updates via CC). I went through 3 iMac 5ks, all maxed out specs. Apple replaced the first, and the second and finally the 3rd as I thought it was a hardware issue (some display glitches in mission control with indesign).

I will be returning the iMac unfortunately. Amazing screen, but if I can't work on it what is the point? Really hoping Adobe gets their act together on this quickly. If there is a beta for indesign that is available I would gladly try it before returning this iMac.

[gavalian]

Well Actually all Adobe Applications work well when u run them under low res mode, even dreamweaver, in hires it is very slow and impossible to work on.

[jdotpak]

is there some sort of functionality built into illustrator (etc) to run in 'low res' mode? or does that mean just to turn down the rez in your OS' settings?

thx in advance.