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Attroll
Attroll
Inspiring
February 16, 2023
Question

A computer that will handle Adobe products without being sluggish

  • February 16, 2023
  • 6 replies
  • 2858 views

I have been using InDesign to publish my book for over six years now. I am by far not an expert with InDesign at all. I taught myself by watching YouTube videos. I know there is still a lot I don’t know.
I would like advice on what I should look for or get in a new computer (PC) that will handle all Adobe products without becoming sluggish or slowing down.

 

I have a top-of-the-line Dell laptop. It’s a few years old right now, but it does not seem to handle large files very well. Here is what I currently have.
Precision 7730 with an i9 CPU with 2.90GHz , 6 core processor in it.
32.0 GB of memory installed.

 

I really want to make this computer work or get a computer that will handle my files in InDesign and other Adobe products without being sluggish. It seems to be that large files being used in Adobe products that cause my computer to start being sluggish.
I can elaborate more if you need more information about my current setup or what I am doing in Adobe products.

This topic has been closed for replies.

6 replies

Mike Witherell
Mike Witherell
Adobe Expert
February 17, 2023

Two chicken-soup suggestions for you:

If Windows, have you emptied out the Temp folder lately?

Have you tried exporting your big INDD file to IDML; and re-opening the IDML file to SAVE-AS to a new fresh INDD file?

Mike Witherell
D
defaultl2dcn3pi5o8u
Inspiring
February 16, 2023

the biggest tell is the GPU. What GPU are you using? 

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Brainiac
February 16, 2023

Probably irrelevant in this case, as the book is not said to have a lot of graphic elements and Windows doesn't use GPU acceleration. Even in graphics-heavy documents, GPU performance pretty much only comes into play when displaying a specific page or spread — that is, graphics load is not cumulative for all the undisplayed pages.

 

 

D
defaultl2dcn3pi5o8u
Inspiring
February 16, 2023

Windows most certainly uses the GPU to render the page on your screen. Graphics and text are drawn with the help of the GPU, including zooming, drawing text frames, smart guides.. color rendering. It is especially important for Windows and Mac.

Peter Spier
Peter Spier
Adobe Expert
February 16, 2023

Your symptoms could easily be caused by file bloat or minor corruption. It's a good practice to, at a minimum, do a Save As at the end of each editing session. Ordinary saves leave all the change information in the file, but after closing it becomes inaccessible useless Bloat.

Rather than just Save As and overwrite the same file, I recommend saving a new version wioth a new name soi you have a backup chain, just in case something goes south, or if you work for other people, you can go back several versions and easily branch off in a new direction. I name my files [Filename working 1, 2, 3 ] and so on, but you can use any scheme that makes sense for you.

A corollary to bloat is minor corruption that can slow down or ultimately crash a file. Export to .idml, open that nad save with a new name and carry on.

Another major source of file slowness is large quantities of embedded graphic content. Link graphics and images instead. Even a very large book that's properly set up should typically be well under 100 mb.

    Attroll
    AttrollAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 16, 2023

    James

    I also have a NAS drive and my files are backup on a regular basic to the NAS drive.

    Peter Spier
    Peter Spier
    Adobe Expert
    February 16, 2023

    OK, that's good. How big are these slow files? And what do you consider slow?

     

    Do you have a lot of other stuff running in the background? Have you checked Task Manager to see what's using CPU and memory?

    Rishabh_Tiwari
    Community Manager
    Rishabh_TiwariCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    February 16, 2023

    Hi @Attroll ,

     

    Thank you for reaching out. It sounds like you already have a pretty powerful computer, and if it's still running slow, we'll need more details to troubleshoot this. Would you mind sharing a few more details like:

     

    1. The version of InDesign.
    2. Is this happening while working on a specific file or multiple files?
    3. Is it slow all the time or gets slower while working on a file or after performing any specific action?


    You can also check your scratch disk, as InDesign uses a scratch disk to store temporary files. Make sure you have enough space on your hard drive for the scratch disk and optimize your images.

     

    Let us know how it goes, we'll try our best to assist you with this.

     

    Regards

    Rishabh


     

     

     

    Attroll
    AttrollAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 16, 2023

    To answer a few questions that you all asked, Then I explain in more detail about my issue.
    I am running InDesign 18.1 x64. That is the latest version from what I can tell.
    My C: drive is a SSD 500 GB drive.
    My InDesign files are on my E: drive. That is a separate SSD 500 GB drive.
    Rishabh_Tiwari, you asked my Scratch Disk. I don't see where my Scratch Disk is inside of InDesign. I can't find it in Preferences. Do I need to set it up?

     

    Now back to my explanation.
    I also thought that my computer should handle what I have, and it once did.
    First let me say this computer is for business and there are no games or junk on here. It is basically used with Word, Excel, and one of my genealogy programs.

     

    I have been having these issues for a while now and have been dealing with it, but it has started annoying me too much now. It started after I did an upgrade to InDesign a long while back.
    Last time this happened I went in and reset my preferences and that helped. However, I tried this when it happened again a while back and it did not help. I also just did it the other day and it did not help.

     

    These problems did not previously exist. I am using the same document and it has not increased that much in size.
    Here is what I am having trouble with InDesign.
    When I run scripts on my document it takes ten times longer to run than it previously used to take. This is very annoying.When I close my document in InDesign it takes a while for it to close and allow me access to open another document. What I mean by this is the document closes but the InDesign home page will not allow me to click on anything for a little bit. It is like the screen freezes for a little bit. This is only in InDesign because I can go to other open programs, and they are not frozen in the other programs. I know you are going to ask how many open programs I have when using InDesign. It is usually just an Excel file, an Illustrator file, my gmail, and sometime Photoshop. However, this issue happens with InDesign being the only program open.

     

    I am also having troubles in Photoshop with it also being sluggish and crashing but I am more worried about InDesign right now.

     

    If you have any more questions, please let me know. I really need to get this resolved.

    Robert at ID-Tasker
    Robert at ID-Tasker
    Brainiac
    February 17, 2023

    How old / what mileage your SSDs have?

     

    Maybe they are just worn out? 

     

    Do you use ANY network resources in you INDD files - fonts / links? Or links to other Excel sheets in your main Excel sheet?

     

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Brainiac
    February 16, 2023

    Bob is correct; that system should handle even Photoshop and Premiere/AfterEffects projects fairly well. InDesign is not a demanding app on the overall scale.

     

    The CPU and RAM are fine. The one thing you don't mention is the storage: fast SSDs make a HUGE difference for nearly all apps these days. A fast HDD is good, but the performance an SSD brings is astonishing, especially with large files.

     

    All apps slow down as project files get bigger, the more so when the number of images, links, cross references, footnotes etc. increase. ID has various ways to make projects more manageable, starting with splitting large documents into multiple INDD files (by chapter, usually) and then using the Book feature to manage them as one document.

     

    More details on your project and any specific problems you're seeing would help guide better answers.

     

    BobLevine
    BobLevine
    Adobe Expert
    February 16, 2023

    That computer should be more than adequate so perhaps back up and tell us what issues you're having.

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