Slow illustrator and EXTREMELY laggy

[alyssajerome]

Hi guys,

I do simple graphic design (flyer at the moment) on illustrator and it keeps lagging and going extremenly slow. At first, I thought it was a problem from my mac but now I also have a PC and it is doing the same problem. It's lagging at EVERY click. I did every step on the ''Improve Illustrator performance'' page and I checked for memory issues. I am so not a itech pro so please help me!

[Monika Gause]

Which version is it?

How much RAM is installed?

[alyssajerome]

Where do I check for the RAM ?

[Monika Gause]

Apple menu: About this Mac

On the PC there should be an info setion about the computer in the system settings.

[alyssajerome]

My PC have Windows 10 pro 21H2 with 16.0 GB installed RAM

My mac have macOS Monterey v12.5 with 8 GB installed RAM

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

So your Mac has just not enough RAM installed. You might try if an earlier version of Illustrator works better. The PC should work better with 16 GB, but maybe the graphics card is not well equipped. Maybe someone else can tell you how to find out and what to do about it.

[alyssajerome]

I bought a new PC (old processor died so I had to) with 32 GB installed RAM and everything is better now. Thank you!

[Anubhav M]

Hello @alyssajerome,

We understand that encountering technical issues can be frustrating. We are here to help and would like to suggest trying to reset Illustrator's preferences as described in this article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/troubleshoot-preference-issues.html). Also, try updating the GPU drivers (https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/update-graphics-driver.html) and setting the High-Performance Graphics preference under Windows Settings (https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-110) for Illustrator and sharing your observations.
We appreciate your time and effort in helping us resolve this issue.

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,

Anubhav

[alyssajerome]

Hi, thank you for replying but nothing worked

[Anubhav M]

Hello @alyssajerome,

Thanks for confirming that. Would you mind confirming if Illustrator also behaves this way with other files? And are your files located on an external/network drive or a cloud-synced folder (Google Drive/Dropbox/OneDrive etc.)?

Also, does Illustrator feel slow when using a particular tool/feature/workflow? Would you mind sharing a screen recording of the same (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/screen-record-an-issue-on-windows-amp-macos-f...) so we can better understand the problem? Also, share a screenshot of the Performance Panel under Illustrator's preferences, so we can check what GPU is installed and whether the optimal settings are selected for your workflow.

Looking forward to your response.

Regards

[alyssajerome]

It was not responding for 4 minutes in this video.

[Anubhav M]

Hello @alyssajerome,

Sorry for the delayed response. I hope the problem is resolved by now. If not, kindly share a sample file (https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/share-your-files-in-6-simple-steps/td-p/12967...) so that we can check it on our end.

Looking forward to your response.

Regards

[Mike_Gondek]

If both computers are using the same account login account, I suspect your account may have an issue. Was this working properly before? Check if your adobe cloud updates are done installing.

OOBE RESET MAC

1. Quit the Creative Cloud desktop app  (100% you must do this)
2. The \Users\<user folder>\Library\ is hidden by default for macOS 10.7 and above. Option click on the GO in the mac finder to reveal the Library folder.
3. /Users/<user folder>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/OOBE
4. Delete all the files within the OOBE folder, but do not delete the folder itself.

[lizzzzahhh]

or just use Figma 🙂

[FredFet]

I had the same problem, I serched adobe and google folloowing all the possible solutions, and no fix in sight .

I relized had to be the DPI the real problem since works fine in outline mode ( I'm workinh in 4k)

I end up fixing the issue by changing the high DPI setting in all the Adobe Illustrator aplications. 

(PC) Go in to the program files > adobe> Adobe Illustratot 2023> suport files> contents> windows

Select Properties for each application in the folder (5 in total), in Compatibility select "Change High DPI setting" > check mark High DPI scaling behavior scaling performance and in the dropdown select system.

I hope it works for you 

[Bobby Henderson]

High DPI settings are going to depend more on the performance of the computer's graphics accelerator. Obviously a system with its own dedicated graphics board and separate supply of GDDR RAM is going to deliver better performance on things like 4K displays than a system with an "integrated" graphics chip on the motherboard that siphons away main system RAM.

I wouldn't recommend anything less than 32GB of system RAM when buying a new computer to use for general purpose graphic design work. The notebook I bought for myself last year as well as 3 design systems I've ordered for my workplace were fitted with 64GB of RAM. They all have dedicated video cards with at least 8GB of on-board GDDR RAM. Some people might laugh and say "no one needs that much RAM." After living through my decades of computing experience I can confidently say there is no such thing as having too much RAM. If someone wants their PC or Mac to be productive and useful for more than just a couple or so years it pays dividends to bump up the RAM and video card specs if they can afford it.

Recently I was trying to help a friend who was looking at Mac-based systems. I don't know what Apple was thinking when they configured the current iMac lineup. There appears to be only one size (24") and the systems can't have more than 16GB of "unified" memory. And the memory is "baked" onto the motherboard. That stinks! If I wanted to buy an iMac right now I'd be trying to find a slightly older model that had some actual expansion capacity via RAM that isn't baked in. The Mac Studio can hold more RAM, up to 64GB with the M1 Max chip and up to 128GB with the M1 Ultra (the RAM is baked-in and not user upgradeable). But this thing, which looks like a Mac Mini on steroids, costs a LOT. Starting price is nearly $4000. The Mac Pro tower is the only current model that has real expansion capacity, but it costs a fortune. If Apple is wondering why their year over year Mac sales numbers have plunged by 40% they might want to take a look at these problems here.

[Petty_Peach]

I'm having the exact same problem, I was trying to to some simple 3D (inflated) text for streams. Every time I try it gets super slow and my computer fans start to go crazy. At some point the app just crashes. 
My specs are: 32GB RAM, RTX 4070ti, AMD Ryzen 9 5800x... Any help? 

[Bobby Henderson]

Are you running the latest updates to your video card and for Adobe Illustrator? I haven't been able to see too much of a performance difference myself, but the GeForce Experience Studio drivers are supposed to be more geared for content creation than the Game Ready drivers that are usually installed by default. If everything is up to date another thing to check is your document settings -or rather the size, resolution and quality of the objects your computer is trying to render. 3D can be pretty demanding. It would seem like a new generation video card like the RTX 4070ti should be able to handle just about anything thrown at it. But there is a lot of "shorthand" used in video games versus doing high quality rendering of 3D objects. What fonts are you using for your 3D text? Are they simple or complicated? A rough looking typeface will require far more polygons to render. If there are any letters overlapping each other, such as a connected script typeface, you might try converting the text to outlines and welding the letters together. It might make it easier for Illustrator to render that kind of an object.

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Petty_Peach,

We understand that encountering technical issues can be frustrating. Would you mind performing a clean reinstallation of the GPU drivers (Intel / NVIDIA / AMD) and setting the Graphics Preference to High-Performance for Illustrator (https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-110), as suggested by Bobby and checking if it helps? Also, try the suggestions shared in this help article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/optimize-illustrator-performance.html) and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Anubhav 

[defaultmxkpfm48v2cy]

DO NOT FORGET THAT THERE IS A LIMITATION OF THE NUMBER OF FONTS THAT CAN BE ACTIVE AT ONE TIME.

It took me two work days to realize that I had two many fonts activated!!!!

Turn off those not needed, and everything works fine!!!!!

[Bobby Henderson]

Both the quantity of installed fonts and the quality of those installed fonts matter. That goes for fonts installed directly in the computer's operating system or fonts that are handled by a font manager application. Generally speaking, the fonts carried in the Adobe Fonts service are very good. But it's probably not a good idea to have several hundred or even thousands of those fonts synced at any given time.

There is an enormous number of free or semi-free fonts available for anyone to download. Some are pretty good in quality and others are not so good. I've encountered technical problems with fonts downloaded at the Google Fonts web site. Sometimes I'd go back a few months later and download the same type family again and see it work properly (fonts do get technical updates from time to time). Picture fonts that contain clip art images as glyphs can cause a computer to hang a little or a lot when scrolling through a font menu.

[James Donato]

I hear you. The latency of AI [AI 28.2 on an iMac 19,1 with 64 GB of RAM in Sonoma 14.2.1 w/Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB] is shocking to me. I've been using Illustrator since Illustrator '88 and it feels like working in sludge.  I click an object - wait a  full second for it to show as selected in the UI. Click 8 objects in rapid succession and I am waiting 12-15 seconds for the computer to catch up to me. There's so much dead time in the workflow now. I dont want more features of dubious provenance. I just want it to be responsive in a 64 bit environment as it was in a 16 bit environment 36 years ago.

[andrea1549]

I uninstalled the latest version and installed an older version and that fixed the issue for me.  The slowness and lag of Illustrator is maddening.  The problem was not with RAM, etc.  I was working on a brand new computer.  The issue is with the software.  I also turned off automatic updates.  

[Rafael27534418s7rt]

I was going to post the same. I've been using AI for many years and I'm facing these lagging problems recently. I own a pretty decent computer. TBH this sucks Abode team, when I'm working I get desperate when this happens. Please solve these problems, you're not cheap.

[creative explorer]

@Rafael27534418s7rt Double-check to see what your 'Preferences' are. Typically, I have the GPU Performance, Animated Zoom and Real-Time Dragging and Editing on. I am using 16 gigs of RAM with an i7 chip....and Illustrator is fine as is.

Here is a more detail look what all this means for you: 
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/gpu-performance-preview-improvements.html

Another thing too, is how many history states are on (the more history states you have, the more RAM is required to store this information). This is why only have 50 history states in my preferences. Other things that could affect is the number of fonts. I used to have over 500 different fonts, and yeah, it's great, but, do I really use that much. So, again, I remove fonts that I don't use. 

I also cleared my Illsutator cache on my computer. Maybe about 5 weeks ago, I had 7 gigs of cache. I never knew, until I literally deleted the cache inside that folder, and my computer is running so smooth since then (on a MAC, it's HD - Library - Cache. I was told by Apple that I can select all and delete as the computer will create up-to-date cache if needed)

Sometimes, it isn't just Adobe, it's the computer itself that causes the issues. Adobe isn't slow, it's the RAM, and the unneccesary amount of data that Illustrator doesn't need and makes it harder for it to run as fast you want it.