Illustrator CS5 + Mac El Capitan = Crashing!

[rickmartin_art]

I am having an issue ever since installing El Capitan. When using Adobe Illustrator CS5, any time I attempt to use the Eyedropper tool, the program will crash as soon as I click on the object I'm trying to copy the color of.

I have noticed that I am able to use the eyedropper successfully ONLY when copying the color of a SOLID color object. If I attempt to copy the color of an object with a gradient-fill, or copy a color from an embedded image/photo, the crash is immediate.

The issue is happening on both my Macbook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011) and my iMac (24-inch, Early 2008).

PLEASE help. I am very reliant on using Adobe Illustrator for my job.

Any advice will help, or if you are experiencing the same (or similar) issue let me know so I can avoid anything that will cause the crash!

[bici]

I was going to wait until they had a page layout component. but after your comments about it. i am pulling the trigger and purchasing it  this weekend.

PS that i was finally able to stabilize my CS5 and no longer have  crashes ..... it should be trivial to provide an update with a fix

[Moscool]

They won't have an InDesign replacement until the end of the year but the Illustrator competitor is very stable. I have purchased but not yet really used the Photoshop competitor. In that space of course there's also Pixelmator, but it's not a suite.

By and large I was happy to purchase CS and skip every other upgrade: even if I didn't use the whole suite, I could always go back to an old version to open the odd file. I started to get annoyed with the incompatibility of InDesign file formats (like between CS5 and CS5.5  Really???) and then the CC. I tried out Lightroom CC and my machine immediately became polluted with the most incredible amount of bloatware. Leave me alone guys! I know who I want my cloud supplier to be! (hint, not you). Anyway, ended up purchasing Lightroom 6. Much more 'peaceful' now...

[Guest]

There's a new petition at change.org put up by Capital Mac Service in Upstate New York to force Adobe to issue a patch to fix these El Capitan issues instead of forcing us to purchase a Creative Cloud subscription with perfectly and previously working software. Feel free to sign it and share it by clicking here.

[bici]

Thank-you. signed it.

after all the fixes i did i am convinced that this crashing issue is solely on Adobe to fix.

[John T Smith]

I don't work for Adobe, but I read a LOT of messages

CS6 and earlier are End of Life (just as Microsoft said that Windows 8.0 is no longer supported) so I do not believe that Adobe will EVER go back and do anything to make CS6 and earlier run on new Mac OR Windows operating systems

[bici]

Respectfully: the two issues are like comparing apples and oranges 😉

CS5 has a perfectly easy fix to make it continue to work . i have managed to fix the crashes, because I am a stubborn thrifty old codger.

I did the same THREE years ago to make my HP Scanner continue to work after three os upgrades ago! It is still working even though HP said it was "END OF LIFE".

[wpbpatfl]

If you have a way to make Illustrator CS4 stop crashing on save or export, I would sure like to know it.  I am stuck using the Creative Suite also, and I really need to find a way to get Illustrator CS4 working.  It's odd, for, so far, InDesign CS4, and Photoshop CS4 are able to save and export.  It doesn't make sense that Illustrator can't.

If worse comes to worst, and I had to go to the subscription Illustrator Cloud subscription, would it work with the other CS4 components that are working fine?

[rcraighead]

It is sad I am forced to continue using CS5 because it performs RINGS around any later version of Illustrator. I would have to rethink how I create vector art without it.

[Guest]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post.

1st I consider that telling users not to upgrade their system to keep a single app (or a single suite) working is nonsense. As someone pointed out, OS upgrades fix important things and except if you want to run old software on a dedicated machine that does not connect to the network (and doesn't connect to any external drive or dongle) you need OS and security upgrades. However, this is another topic...

Now here is my questions:

- Could I upgrade to El Capitan and then run CS5 on a virtual machine (inside El Capitan) running Yosemite or whatever?

- How inconvenient would that be? What would be the limitations?

- What software would be the most convenient to setup such a virtual machine in my mac?

Thank you very much in advance for your help and advice.

Best,

-a-

[Moscool]

I guess you could partition your drive and install two separate OSs (like the Windows/Mac dual boot machines) but this would be likely to be quite painful to use!

Better get Adobe to act or vote with your feet...

[Guest]

Yes dual boot would be lame...

I was thinking of using Virtualbox or Parralel (for instance) to run OSX Yosemite from within El Capitan and then run CS5 in the virtual machine (in Yosemite then) to avoid the bugs related to El Cap'....

I don't know how this would work performance-wise, though. Does anyone ever tried anything like that?

Best,

-a-

[wpbpatfl]

I still say that it should be up to Adobe to keep its older software working with a new operating system such as Mac El Capitan.  The Creative Suite, even a older one, is expensive for people who don't have workplaces to pay for it.  Since InDesign and Photoshop can do saves without crashing, Illustrator CS4 should be able to do it also.

[bici]

i totally agree. i have a six year old MS Office suite. I get 2-3 updates annually.  The latest just yesterday. IMO CS5 is not that old that it can't be fixed via updates.

[Moscool]

Well time to sign and share this petition then ! (already listed above, but it needs a bit of a boost)

[Guest]

asheenlevrai wrote:

Yes dual boot would be lame...

I was thinking of using Virtualbox or Parralel (for instance) to run OSX Yosemite from within El Capitan and then run CS5 in the virtual machine (in Yosemite then) to avoid the bugs related to El Cap'....

I don't know how this would work performance-wise, though. Does anyone ever tried anything like that?

Best,

-a-

Did anyone tried?

-a-

[Mykill G]

First, before I go into the response to the Virtual Machine question, I found out how to avoid the Crash-on-Save bug on my machine. When I was attempting to save, the small, default save dialog was popping up. When I would click the dropdown, it would crash instantly. BUT… once I clicked the small button next to the name field, the one with the down arrow that expands the save dialog box, if I used the left side of Finder to pick my save location, it allowed me to save wherever I want. As soon as I clicked the dropdown menu below the name filed…. crash. So, at least I found a work-around for my and hopefully a few others….

VIRTUAL MACHINES

Using Virtual Box v5.0.10, I got Snow Leopard to work on my 2015 5K iMac, but it was a lot of work.

I tried a LOT of different ways to get it working, and I finally got it to work by following the steps and choosing the correct settings in these 2 tutorials:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/17/install-run-mac-os-x-10-6-snow-leopard-in-virtual-machine-on-lion/

https://stephenmonro.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/running-mac-os-snow-leopard-in-virtual-box-on-a-mac-no...

If certain settings are not set to specific numbers, it will fail. In the Stephen Monro tutorial, the settings in red text are the most critical.

If Snow Leopard will work, Yosemite SHOULD, but then again, AI SHOULD work normally without going through all of this. Also, I did not instal CS5 in the virtual machine, so I can’t say for sure that works either, although I did successfully instal cdXtract in it, which uses Rosetta. So, I can’t give you a definite “yes”, but there is hope.

There are quite a few obstacles though, even if you get the virtual machine working…

1) SIZE. If you’re using a 5K iMac, the virtualized Snow Leopard is small and ugly. Very pixelated, and no settings I found solved the issue. It just looks bad.

2) CLIPBOARD - the clipboard for copy/paste doesn’t work in EITHER direction. At leas for me, and I’ve tried every setting possible

3) USB. AFAIK, the USB issue between Virtual Box and Mac is still not fixed. My virtual machine will not recognize, read to or write to any USB device. And yes, i have the extensions installed.

4) SHARED FOLDER. I and many others can not get the Shared Folder feature to work between the Host Mac and the Guest Mac. Some people were able to get the “Connect to Server” path to work, but others including myself, could not. Here is the link of one of the discussions:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=58170

5) COPYING FILES. So, if USB and Shared folder doesn’t work, how do you copy files between the 2? Well you basically have 3 options:

a - CD/DVD - the virtual machine will recognize physical CDs and DVDs in drives. Apple, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided we no longer need CD drives (unless you want to pay MORE money for an external). So, you can, with an external drive, read and write from a CD/DVD. So, you could get a re-writable disc and write to and from it to move the files. This sucks.

b - CLOUD - you should be able to connect to the internet from the virtual machine (I can), so you can save the file to your Adobe Cloud storage, Dropbox, etc. But, if you have large files, this takes forever, and it just makes you angry that you are having to go through this process while you’re siting there waiting on the upload and download. This also sucks.

c - dmg2iso

http://dmg2iso.sourceforge.net/Home.html

THIS IS ONE WAY ONLY; from the Host to the Virtual Machine.

From that link, I got a folder that had an App and a Service. The app would not work, but the service did. You basically have a dmg, put stuff in it, then run the dmg2iso service which creates an iso disc, then open that disc in the Virtual Machine since it can open ios’s.

Of course there are caveats - the dmg MUST be made in Snow Leopard… If I make a blank DMG using El Capitan, it will not work in the VM. However, if I use Snow Leopard to create a blank DMG, then save it to a CD or Cloud (since remember - this process doesn’t not work in reverse), I can open it in ElCap, save tome files to it, UNMOUNT, run the dmg2iso service, then open the iso in the Snow Leopard VM and save the files. But AGAIN, you still have to use a CD/DVD or Cloud service to get the files OUT of the VM. This also sucks.

It should be noted that ever since the El Capitan 10.11.3 update, when I open Virtual Box, the Snow Leopard VM will open, but then the VB Dock icon bounces in the Dock and says “Not Responding”. If you Force Quit it, it kills the running VM, but if you ignore it, the VM works fine. Thanks AppHoles.

So, of anyone figures out a way to get ANY of the things I discussed to work properly, please let me know.

[wpbpatfl]

I tried your fix, start at the beginning and to move directory by directory to the one in which I want to save the item, and it worked a couple of times.  I hope that continues to do so.

But I'm wondering.  Do you have the new fusion drive?  I'm wondering if Adobe older applications aren't ready for that.

[Mykill G]

‌Yes, I have a 3 TB Fusion drive

[wpbpatfl]

That makes me think that, for some reason, older versions of Illustrator cannot read the new fusion drive directory structure.  I just don't know what we can do to get that fixed.  I would think that Adobe would help, but it appears that it will not.  It is odd that InDesign and Photoshop can do it.

[Horsti007]

I have exactly the same problem and Adobe as a series and very expensive provider of software should fix this problem.

[wpbpatfl]

I agree, Horsti007.  I've made quite an investment in the Creative Suite, first with CS2, then the CS4 upgrade, and finally the CS4 Master Collection for Mac.  It's wrong of Adobe not to help us out with the Illustrator problem. 

It seems that Adobe is trying to force its users to the subscription service.  That's fine for people whose businesses are paying for the software, but it isn't fine for loyal Adobe users with a limited budget.

[Moscool]

And also probably worth mentioning that it's not just Illustrator. My copy of Acrobat Pro X is also problematic (mostly around file management, save as and creating optimised files). Same absence of fix from Adobe.

[Plumlytics]

Very good news for all - You will be happy to know that in the OS X El Captain 10.11.4 Beta version the eyedropper does not cause Illustrator to crash!!!

[wpbpatfl]

Does Illustrator still crash on a file place or save when when you use the short cut to get to the proper directory/folder?

[Plumlytics]

No it does not crash at all. I am so relieved as this was a very imp feature for me which I have not been able to use since I upgraded to El C.