Is Illustrator CS5 performance better than Illustrator CS6?

[Brent_Blaskievich-SFeqPG]

There is a pretty sharp decline in smoothness of panning, zooming, dragging elements around the screen in Ai CS6.

Using both versions side by side on MacBook Pro i7, 8gb Ram, 10.6.8. Ai v16.0.0. The files are as small as 0-200k.

Ai CS6 is simply jumpy and laggy. Try a new blank artboard of 800x600 in both and drag around view at 100% zoom. The artboard skips around.

It's not unusable, but its there, and for me overshadows the improvements.

Thanks,

Brent

[_scott_]

It's not a general Mac issue. There are many, many Mac users without the issue.

[edgeux]

ok, lets have a little benchmark here.

open up the Natures Journey sample ai file. i'll list some of the issues im having and lets see how it stacks up.

0. open file

     how long does it take to render image completely

1. under the two characters on the left is a swirly tree. with the selection tool, select it.

     how long did it take before it was active after mouse click?

2. click and hold it and move it to the other side of the page.

     how long did it take before it started to move after your action and caught up with the cursor?

3. release the object

     how long does it take to release and redraw the screen in the new position?

4. zoom in to 200%

      how long does it take to redraw the screen in the new level of zoom?

5. undo the move of the tree

     how long does it take to redraw the screen in previous position?

6. select and move the '25years' text then select the background gradient

     how long does it take for illustrator to release the object and select the new one?

0. 250ms

1. immediate

2. 1500ms

3. 2000ms

4. 3000ms

5. 4000ms

6. 4000ms

This is with a 6Gbs ssd disk and 8gb ram i7 mbp. running illustrator on its own.

pretty much all manipulation of the viewing area is delayed considerably. you can imagine that over the course of a working day, this adds up to a staggering loss of time.

have a go at timing these tasks, you should find the sample file in your install somewhere.

mat

[_scott_]

0. open file

     how long does it take to render image completely

1. under the two characters on the left is a swirly tree. with the selection tool, select it.

     how long did it take before it was active after mouse click?

2. click and hold it and move it to the other side of the page.

     how long did it take before it started to move after your action and caught up with the cursor?

3. release the object

     how long does it take to release and redraw the screen in the new position?

4. zoom in to 200%

      how long does it take to redraw the screen in the new level of zoom?

5. undo the move of the tree

     how long does it take to redraw the screen in previous position?

6. select and move the '25years' text then select the background gradient

     how long does it take for illustrator to release the object and select the new one?

0. 6.3sec

1. immediate

2. immediate

3. not immediate but faster than my fingers can click start and stop. Less than 1 sec

4. not immediate but faster than my fingers can click start and stop. Less than 1 sec

5. immediate

6. immediate

6Gbs SSD, 32GB RAM, Mac OS10.6.8 (booted to 64bit), 2010 2.4Ghz 8Core MacPro

Currently with Photoshop, Acrobat, Indesign, Premier Pro, FTP client, Word, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Quicktime, BBEdit, email client, all open and running and the Finder performing a 9GB copy between a third internal drive and a usb thumbdrive.

[DocPixel-BMW]

On an iMac 3.4ghz i7/16gb RAM - SL 10.6.8 here, and there is a definite "drag & scroll" lag... sometimes... and it's not necessarily * all Illustrators fault.

1) Try turning off Smart Guides and/or snapping. Depending on the artwork or background and what your trying to move, everything snaps all over the place.

2) Turn off any web streaming and/or close your browser. I tried listening to a radio stream with Firefox, and the Live stream in Quicktime player; both made Illustrator act up and become slow.

3) Those on a Mac may want to repair their permissions, do a restart of the Mac, and see if that clears up anything. Also, look into something like Onyx (free) that allows you to clean your font caches. Fonts = unbelievable after 20+ years that I find this to be the most common problem re: crashes in design software(!!!)

3) as mentioned earlier in the thread, turning off unnecessary processes may also help... but let's be real here: why should a "designer" need to be a tech-nerd and do that to get a "vector" program to work correctly?!? Freehand = 43mb ---- Ilustrator CS6: 261mb + Plugins 129mb = 390mb. And yet Freehand 11 could do more, better, and far easier "vector work" than Illustrator v.16 (CS6). Makes ya wonder... and shake your head a little.

*  While there does seem to be some good things about CS6, there are still many (many!) areas for improvement, such as:

a) select a stroked path by it's appearance rather than having to first add the "Outline Stroke" effect;

b) a truly "smart" selection arrow with option toggle;

c) a panel and pointer that makes stars and rounded corners truly interactive, even single rounded corners (inDesign even!) and select points on stars and rounded corner boxes to change them. See Freehand's implementation that is over 16 years old... which even allows individual mixed corners, with negative numbers/curves... all starting from a single drawn box. Adobe owns the tech, code and patents, so why is this so difficult?

While I realize this is no place for a rant or program suggestions, I am going to ask why is CS6 even offered as a "suite"? So many overlapping features; so many, MANY completely different dialog boxes that are "supposed" to do the same exact thing.

Just 1 example:

the Scale dialog in inDesign and Illustrator -- in Illustrator hit "s" then return to get to the dialog...no go in ID... when you do get to the Scale dialog in ID... anemic!... no checkbox for scale strokes and effects, it just does it whether you want it or not.

Imagine a "suite" that used the same dialogs, didn't overlap features and functions**, but was module-based that switched toolsets to what you needed to do, or opened that lightweight module/program that did some things more advanced. Imagine Vector, Text, Photo, Film toolsets and modules that actually did the exact same thing in each suite program. That would be a start.

Question(s): can someone give me one good reason why "Photo Effects" belong in a vector program? Any "pro" knows that you are going to have a much finer control in Photoshop by creating your photo stuff there. Why doesn't Photoshop recognize the Illustrator data as vectors/paths, rather than rasterize them when opening the document?

Just on a closing note... I really believe and humbly suggest that Adobe needs to make a really tough choice after ironing out the bugs in CS6, and consider rewriting everything to use common frameworks, before even thinking about a CS7.

as is common.......... /rant.

[edgeux]

Yes i noticed that streaming of any kind significantly slows illy down. im going to sort the font issue out also. tnx

mat

[DocPixel-BMW]

Just opened the file mentioned above and had no problems moving, selecting, zooming, etc. Considering the artwork, it's rather amazing. CS5 is much slower(!)  I saved it out and tested it with and without CS6 running at the same time. CS6 had no problems moving things even with CS5 open. Performance was not improved when closing CS6 either.

A dreaded file in the past, to say the least!!!!

[_scott_]

I have mountains of files that are all slow and delayed while working in v15.1. Every single one of the slow, muddy, working files is blazingly fast in v16 on two separate systems with two different OS versions (10.6.8 and 10.7.4). This is why I really think the delays are very system specific and due to some other non-illustrator issue and Illustrator is merely making the problem more apparent.

[Brent_Blaskievich-SFeqPG]

I don't have a stopwatch, but they are both slow with this file. CS5 more responsive with smaller changes like clicking/dragging/dropping/resizing/zoom, CS6 faster with updating large amounts of textures in the view and opening.

Can you guys post how you have installed Ai CS6? Was it with the full design premium install or the individual Illustrator. I used the individual install which may produce some effect. Shot in the dark but we aren't really getting anywhere.

Another example of slow updating in CS6 for me. Draw a new star shape in blank document. 3D > Extrude & Bevel with preview checked. Drag the cube around and the viewport in CS5 is updated instantly. CS6 is around 500 ms updates. That is the lag apparent in click/drag/scroll/zoom etc.

[DocPixel-BMW]

OK.... just ran across major performance degradation in CS6. I was working on some logos and after about the last 3 hours, a noticable slowness became worse and worse until I shut Illustrator down and restarted it.

Memory leak? Clipboard problems? Where is the "clear clipboard" command if that's the case.

Re: nasty clipboard problems were also with CS5 when copying pictures and/or  vectors with any effects as simple as a drop shadow. In CS6 I was only copying simple vector/no effects... so I don't "think" it could be the clipboard... however...????

PS. zooming, panning, etc. were most effected. Now with a new start of Illy, everything is fast as normal.

Message was edited by: DocPixel-BMW

[Frank Heller]

DocPixel-BMW,

OK.... just ran across major performance degradation in CS6. I was working on some logos and after about the last 3 hours, a noticable slowness became worse and worse until I shut Illustrator down and restarted it.

Memory leak? Clipboard problems?

PS. zooming, panning, etc. were most effected. Now with a new start of Illy, everything is fast as normal.

I'm finding the same exact problems with AI6. Starts out OK and over 2-3 hours zooming, panning, dragging, resizing...etc. all slow down to an intolerable level. Same drawings on AI5...no problems.

Memory leak or memory purging seems to be my first guess as well.

On a 12 Core Westmere w/20gb RAM. This is not good.

[andrew34]

Noticing the same issues on my i7 iMac... panning and zoom isn't great, but worse was object manipulation compared to cs5.5. dragging objects was terribly slow. Was able to fix this object manipulation lag by disabling smart guides (cmd+U). This makes it slightly more tolerable, though it is still disappointing that the UI performance has suffered so much.

[Guest]

Same as me. Compared to CS5.5 everything is just a half a second too slow. Turning layers on and off just take a split second longer than CS5.5 It's not unbearable but just a tad bit annoying. Also clicking on a color in the swatches palette has not been working I have to double click it most of the time to apply a swatch.

Macbook pro i7, osX Lion. I have a feeling most of the people with problems are mac based. It's the only thing I kind of see as common throughout this thread.

[AshutoshChaturvedi]

Create a new user accunt on your mac login using the newly created user and see if it changes things for you. Make sure you also have the latest OS updates installed on your mahine

[shawnssmith]

I was experiencing the same problems - extreme lag on panning, zooming, ect... After turning off the setting "snap to point" and "smart guides" it works like a champ again.

[Mathias17]

And I thought Illy's snaps were problematic (anybody here have experience in AutoCAD or 3D Studio Max? Then you know the difference in snapping functionality quality is massively frustrating). Now it looks like there's some truly wasteful code associated with them. Mere snaps causing display lag?? Come on!

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

If you are seeing this i would say you definitely have a font cache problem and need to one clear font cache and find the font that is causing this problem. It is not smart guides for sure and it is not snap to point either.

[moluapple]

Hi all,

Does anyone with performance issue use Middle East or North African edition? I mean does the problem come with Adobe World-Ready feature?

[GoMariusz]

I use the English version of the test and I have a problem that I see no difference in activity between CS4 32 bit and 64 bit CS6.

  I even prepared a test for others to judge the refresh operation on a single file.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4415348#4415348

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

Well I do see a difference though I agree that CS 6 should im my opinion pan faster at that magnification.

But when panning in CS4 there is a slight;ly bigger lag plus it often has to redraw much more then CS 6 which redarws faster and CS 4 is laggng when it has to redraw the screen and it has tto redraw much more of the screen.

S o if you take the two facvtors into consideration then yes there is a boost in CS 6 because slight boost on the panning and less redraw time.

But I do think it could still be better than it is in CS6 regardless of comparing to previous versions.

Now also keep in mind that performance comparing 64 bit to 32 bit is not just about speed though there will be somethings that are faster in 64 bit. You will be able to do things with 64 bit that are just not possible in 32 bit.

Try this and let me know if you see a difference in the performance of the two.

make an 18x18 inch square

go to Object>Path>Split Into Grid

make the grid 100 rows and 100 columns with a "0" gutter for both rows and columns.

Make sure all the squares remain or are selected

then go to Effect>Stylize>Drop Shadow

Leave he default settings and apply the drop shaows

It should take between a minute or two for CS 6 to do this you will probably not be able to complete this ask in CS 4.

See if you see a performance difference? If you are going to be able to do this it is going to take probably twice the time for CS 4 to do this if it can.

[Andy J R]

Interesting test Wade. You are right ,I managed to create it in CS6, although it took about a minute to save it. I couldn't create it in CS5.

CS6; so far so good!

MacPro1,1

Dual-Core Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz

9GB

[Mathias17]

Gaussian Blurring itself in Illustrator CS6 was re-tooled, so not only is CS6 working with 64-bit processor operations, it's also new code generating the gaussian blurred drop shadows.

Therefore, I think comparing CS5's to CS6's ability to apply drop shadows doesn't provide useful test results if wanting to compare CS5's and CS6's general performance, since CS6 would out-gun CS5 in the drop shadow department even if it wasn't 32-bit.

Is my convoluted way of communicating with other humans makign sense here?

. . .

In other words - using drop shadows alone to test 32-bit VS 64-bit performance can't be conclusive because there are differences between CS5's and CS6's drop shadow effect, beyond 32/64-bit.

[GoMariusz]

And as I like Marcus. Synthetic shadow square test does not translate into my feelings at work. For example, test Zorro. The differences are minimal. Perhaps the fault configuration, a custom video? That is why I asked.

But it still is for me is not the main problem. I do not think I see improvement in working with Illustrator. With few exceptions this is creative work in Illustrtaor, instead of a jet cockpit, I feel I should take part in the Wipeout. Maybe my bitterness and a bit exaggerating, but I have the patience to trace the program. ;(. 

[Mathias17]

whut?

[DocPixel-BMW]

Mathias17 wrote:

whut?

Well you're just asking for a snarky reply, so here goes...

You may have heard(???) of a service called "Google Translate", and it is obvious that Mariusz does not speak English fluently and used it or similar to add his post.

While G-T is rather good these days with German, Italien, Spanish, and French, it does have it's problems still with smaller countries languages.

Also may I respectfully add, you don't help matters with your "what" spelled in Ghetto-Greek either... you intollerent ignorant buffoon.

[Mathias17]

WUT!