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rickmartin_art
rickmartin_art
Participant
October 2, 2015
Answered

Illustrator CS5 + Mac El Capitan = Crashing!

  • October 2, 2015
  • 36 replies
  • 114601 views

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!

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer AshutoshChaturvedi

    El Capitan is not a supported operating system for CS5.

    Please refer to system requirements here: System requirements | Adobe Illustrator

    36 replies

    J
    JMiranda1984
    Participant
    September 14, 2016

    Hello, I had the same problem with Creative Cloud and after months of searching the web found the solution that worked for me. Figured I had a duty to help others since fellow users on the Web helped me

    I know you said 5 so possible it won't work, but if you're still frustrated, it's worth a try, right?

    I fixed mine a month ago by resetting both PRAM and SMC. You can find instructions via Google for your Mac easily. This did the trick for me when nothing else worked.

    Good luck!

    willychen0924
    willychen0924
    Participant
    August 2, 2016

    http://capitalmacservice.com/possible-fix-for-mac-adobe-illustrator-cs5-crash-on-exit/

    Try this possible fix for Adobe Illustrator CS5 crashing on exit:

    1. First, make sure Adobe Illustrator is not running. Now, head to your user library folder on the Mac. This is accomplished by holding down the option key on your keyboard and choosing the “Go” menu from the Mac OS X Finder’s menubar.
    2. Choose “Library” from the pop-down menu and release the Option key.
    3. Find the “Application Support” folder and double-click into it.
    4. Find the “Adobe” folder and double-click into it.
    5. Find the folder called “CS5ServiceManager” and click on the title of this folder.
    6. At this point, you should be able to rename this “CS5ServiceManager” folder, by adding “.bak” to the end of it. So now, you will have a folder called “CS5ServiceManager.bak”. Close this window and head to the next step.
    7. Head to the main hard drive by clicking on the Finder’s “Go” menu and choose “Computer“
    8. Find the “Library” folder and double-click into it.
    9. Find the “Application Support” folder and double-click into it, the same as earlier.
    10. Find the “Adobe” folder and double-click into it, the same as earlier.
    11. Find the folder called “CS5ServiceManager” and click on the title of this folder.
    12. Rename the folder again to “CS5ServiceManager.bak” and exit this folder.

    At this point, Adobe Illustrator CS5 can be launched as usual. Feel free to open a few documents and make some changes to the preferences area. Try to quit the program as usual and notice if it throws the same crash as it did before. After we did these steps exactly, the crashing stopped and the preferences are now saved perfectly once again.

      pixie47740880
      pixie47740880
      Participant
      January 16, 2017

      Wow this was simple and really helped! Illustrator stopped crashing on quit. Happy!

      (Haven´t tested them a lot yet, but tested to save a file and Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign now worked without crashing on quit.)

      I have El Capitan 10.11.6 and CS5 and Java 6.

      A
      Anonymous
      March 29, 2016

      The 10.11.4 update has solved the Illustrator gradient fill/eyedropper issue with CS5.

      Hope that cheers up a few legacy Adobe users around here.

      AshutoshChaturvedi
      AshutoshChaturvediCorrect answer
      Legend
      March 18, 2016

      El Capitan is not a supported operating system for CS5.

      Please refer to system requirements here: System requirements | Adobe Illustrator

      D
      Debra Frisch
      Participating Frequently
      March 18, 2016

      Went to Apple Store. Spent 2 hours with a Genius. He did everything and anything to get Illustrator to work properly. Including reinstalling it and updating it. Nothing worked. I guess I will have to get the subscription for the new Adobe programs. I only use Illustrator and Photoshop. So, It will be $28 a month. Most of my clients are using that and it will also make me compatible with them. Oh well.

      Plumlytics
      Plumlytics
      Participating Frequently
      March 18, 2016

      Hi Debra, I just installed the beta version of el cap and 99%+ everything works and no crash's with dropper or for that matter with anything.

      C
      curlybikeguy
      Participant
      March 17, 2016

      The eyedropper crashes Dreamweaver CS5, and interestingly my Coreldraw and Photopaint which I run through parallels. Weird. I'm guessing it's all El Capitan related.

      D
      Debra Frisch
      Participating Frequently
      March 16, 2016

      I am having similar problems. I upgraded to El Capitan because I was having problems with Safari. Pop ups were causing screen freezing,and other issues. After installing it, Illustrator is all screwed up! Font drop down is invisible, white on white, can only see one font at a time. Eye dropper causes illustrator to quit. I get a crash message when i intentionally quit. And, some of my text files are corrupted. They make no sense, just a bunch of senseless letters and punctuation marks. I'm bringing my Mac to the Genius Bar tomorrow. But, not too hopefully they can do anything.

      Larry G. Schneider
      Community Expert
      Larry G. SchneiderCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 16, 2016

      Did you reinstall your Adobe apps after updating the OS? Your other problems can be somewhat alleviated. For the font problem, go to System Preferences>Accessibility>Display and check the box that says Reduce Transparency. No one has come up with a solution to the Eyedropper problem yet.

        D
        Debra Frisch
        Participating Frequently
        March 16, 2016

        System Preferences in Illustrator or the Mac? I don't see "Accessibility" in the Illustrator drop down. And System Preferences on the Mac has "Accessibility", but does not have "Reduce Transparency". Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

        Plumlytics
        Plumlytics
        Participating Frequently
        February 21, 2016

        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!!!

          W
          wpbpatfl
          Known Participant
          February 21, 2016

          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
          Plumlytics
          Participating Frequently
          February 21, 2016

          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.

            M
            Moscool
            Participating Frequently
            January 28, 2016

            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.

            H
            Horsti007
            Participant
            January 28, 2016

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

            W
            wpbpatfl
            Known Participant
            January 28, 2016

            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.

            A
            Anonymous
            January 21, 2016

            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.

              B
              bici
              Participating Frequently
              January 21, 2016

              Thank-you. signed it.

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

                W
                wpbpatfl
                Known Participant
                January 30, 2016

                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-not-a-hackintosh/

                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.


                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.

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