Illustrator is slow whne using high res images.

[Petr Holusa]

Hi there.

I am flustrated more and more when using Ai. I am very often preparing stuff for printing like this: 

it's 980x4450 mm artboard and using for cutting. It has some graphics. I don't mind that final file is 400 MB long but why is is saving 15 mins??? 

I know I can link files and pdf but is it excuse for luck of performace of the Ai?

[Ton Frederiks]

I see that you have a lot of repeating elements. You could try to make a Static Symbol out of it and repeat the symbol.

Static symbols are only described once in the file and can be referenced many times.

[Petr Holusa]

What is static symbol?

[Petr Holusa]

I tried to put graphics into pdf file, link it and saved it into 4 MB ai file but it's still terrible to work with Ai. 

[Ton Frederiks]

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/symbols.html

[Ton Frederiks]

Drag the repeating element in the Symbols panel and check Static Symbol.

[Petr Holusa]

I appreciate your help but this is nonsense. Clearly Ai can't handle some big files or huge graphics. What you have sent me is just giving me more work. 

[Ton Frederiks]

It is up to you to try it or not. Repeating a symbol looks as much work as repeating what you normally seem to do.

[Ton Frederiks]

An example; a file with 88 images takes 1 min 10 secs to save locally and becomes 740 mb.

The same file using symbols saves instantly and becomes 18,1 mb.

[Monika Gause]

How much RAM is installed?

Where do you save the document?

How much free space is on the volume?

[Petr Holusa]

16 core ryzen 5950x, 1280 GB ram 3200 Mhz, 2x rtx 2080ti. 

Saved on SSD drive. I am working with heavy stuff like 3d. Maxon cinema 4d handles scene files 1.5 GB and saving in a few seconds. Here in Ai I am saving file 10 MB like something crazy. 

I am constantly having issues with Ai like 4 years in row. I have worked on macbook pro. It won't be possible to open this file above on a macbook 2018. Performance of this app is trully rubbish. 

Here is the screen record how glitchy the document is. https://www.dropbox.com/s/6xosgspedu5k462/Z%C3%A1znam%202023-07-18%20145104.mp4?dl=0

[Monika Gause]

What happens when you turn off "Save in background" in the preferences? It has been causing issues for some people.

Is that an external disk? What happens when you save to the internal disk?

There are linked images in the file. Where are they located? If on a network, then that can unfortunately cause issues.

Do you have a printer properly installed? Illustrator looking for a printer can also impact saving times.

Are all the fonts 150% OK? Illustrator can get upset when your fonts aren't.

What else is running on that computer? It might be clogging up things in the background. The browser Chrome is an example.