CS5 Running very sticky

Report · May 03, 2010

Hello,

I've installed InDesign CS5 and it's running terribly when I have graphics placed, especially at high resolution display. It's choppy, sticky - to much to even work with. I've thrown out the SavedData and InDesign Defaults, but it doesn't help. Has anyone else experienced this problem, or have any ideas what I can do. CS4 runs fine.

Thanks,

Adam

Report · May 03, 2010

Operating system and version? Video specs? Hard drive free space? Memory?

Report · May 03, 2010

Macbook Pro 17" / 2.93 GH with 10.6.3

4 GB Ram

500 GB HD with 250 available.

NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT Graphics Card

Also, Illustrator CS5 and Photoshop CS5 seem to be running fine.

Report · May 03, 2010

Are you using a file that has been created with some older version of InDesign?... I have had some experience of slowing in those cases....

Report · May 03, 2010

I thought that was the issue at first. But I've created pages from scratch. As soon as I bring in some images or illustrator files, it slows way done. Gets horrible if the display is set to high quality. I created a test user and the same problem occurs.

Report · May 04, 2010

are you placing images from your local HD or from network?

Report · May 04, 2010

Local. I've been testing multiple pages in both CS5 and CS4 using the same images. I also created a test user account with same results. Lastly, I uninstalled and reinstalled - Same results.

Report · May 04, 2010

InDesign CS5 very sticky here too, especially in high resolution display. Extremely annoying... I thought this was built for Intel, you know, faster, blah, blah, blah. Running a 3.06 GHz iMac, Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB, OS X 10.6.3, 1 TB hard drive, 774 GB free.

Another thing, perhaps I don't have something set right, but I find this very annoying as well. When I export documents to pdf, there is no progress bar anymore. May sound trivial, but when I'm exporting like 50+ pages, it just sits there. Is it working? Has it locked up? Are we exporting? Hello, what's going on? Ahhhh.... So I just sit there hoping to see the pdf eventually pop up when it finishes.

Does anyone know how to get that progress/status bar back so I can see were I am in the export process?

Report · May 04, 2010

I think InDesign CS5 exports PDF as a background task. It means that you wont see a progress bar but you can perform other activities at the same time. That wasn´t possible with earlier versions...

Report · May 04, 2010

that's actually a good thing. there is a status panel you can open that will show you something is exporting/etc, but it no longer requires you to wait while it exports...so you can keep working on other things.

multi-threading.

Report · May 04, 2010

Can't help with the slowness, which I suspect is related to something else you have running, but PDF export is now a "background task" which means it no longer stops you from doing other things while it finishes. You can get details on background task from Window > Utilities > Background Tasks and while the export is active there is a widget that appears in the Menu Bar the right of the other things that are always there. It resembles a stack of short black bars that appear and disappear while the export is progressing.

Report · May 04, 2010

It's not something i have running as there is nothing else running during some of my testing. I can have both CS5 and Cs4 open at the same time and see the performance issue happening. CS4 is significantly better, especially with high Rez preview. I wonder if it could be font related? Though I've tested with many different fonts - but maybe one of those running in the background?

Report · May 04, 2010

I actually just watched my activity monitor while I simply moved images and text boxes around. The CPU% climbed as high as 80%. Stayed between 30-80% ish. That can right. With CS4, it stayed below 40% the whole time. Any thoughts?

Report · May 04, 2010

adamgordon wrote:
I actually just watched my activity monitor while I simply moved images and text boxes around. The CPU% climbed as high as 80%. Stayed between 30-80% ish. That can right. With CS4, it stayed below 40% the whole time. Any thoughts?

I think that would be pretty dependent on the document content. With a simple doc I don't get so much as a blip in performace in either version.

Report · May 04, 2010

I don't know enough about OSX to point you to waht to look for, but allcomputers have a large variety of background tasks running all the time -- som required by the OS, some not, and we often fail to realize that they are there. On the Windows side, for instance, a commonly used bit of online banking securtity software was causing problems, even when users were not engaged in online banking activities.

I'm not saying the program isn't running slowly on your system or on anyone else's, but that, particularly on Macintosh which has far fewer hardware configuations possibilities, a general problem of this sort would have shown up during the testing period and it's far more likely that the slownes issue is realted to something specific on the system.

Report · May 04, 2010

Cool, thanks. That worked. At least I know where I am in the export now, and agree, continuing to work is a good thing. Nice enhancement.

Still sticky though, and can get very bad in high quality display mode with larger images. To the point of image jumping. That is, moving an image with the mouse, and lagging behind so bad that you have to basically anticipate the sticky, jumpy movements to land it close to where you want it to be.

It happens on new documents, old documents, while nothing else is running, etc. It's only in ID, and can even get very slow responsiveness when trying to resize the window the document is in. In fact, when I was setting up my pallets, I chose to show the mini bridge. Opened the mini bridge and tried to drag it into another pallet area and CRASH! Sent the report to Adobe.

Not sure what to make of it, but there is definitely something going on with my ID CS5. Everything else seems smooth for the most part...

Report · May 04, 2010

cspann wrote:
Still sticky though, and can get very bad in high quality display mode with larger images. To the point of image jumping. That is, moving an image with the mouse, and lagging behind so bad that you have to basically anticipate the sticky, jumpy movements to land it close to where you want it to be.
It happens on new documents, old documents, while nothing else is running, etc. It's only in ID, and can even get very slow responsiveness when trying to resize the window the document is in. In fact, when I was setting up my pallets, I chose to show the mini bridge. Opened the mini bridge and tried to drag it into another pallet area and CRASH! Sent the report to Adobe.
Not sure what to make of it, but there is definitely something going on with my ID CS5. Everything else seems smooth for the most part...

That sounds like a video memory problem. Does it get better if you resart the computer?

Report · May 04, 2010

Yep, I've shut down, restarted, fixed permissions, cleared the PRAM, etc. Nothing helps.

Here's a real world example. I have three documents opened from an indb file. Total of 32 pages. (Catalog - Images, text) Set the display to high resolution, watch my activity monitor > system memory. At the worst, 2.94 GB remain free, 1.41 GB active. CPU shows at the minimum 50% of CPU idle.

Again, ID is the only one with this sticky problem. Doesn't seem like the those numbers show a struggling processor.

Report · May 04, 2010

Here's my video info:

ATI Radeon HD 4670:

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 4670

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 256 MB

Vendor: ATI (0x1002)

Device ID: 0x9488

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-B8030F-260

EFI Driver Version: 01.00.383

Displays:

iMac:

Resolution: 2560 x 1440

Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Built-In: Yes

Connection Type: DisplayPort

Report · May 04, 2010

cspann, seems like we're having the exact same issue. For me, it acts up with one text box and one image, on high res. preview. I get the same "jumping" of the image when trying to move it around too. Please post any progress you make with this issue. For me, it may be a deal breaker. I'll just keep using CS4, which runs very smoothly. I also tried re-installing CS5 with no luck. I don't see how it's my machine when CS4 can handle the same exact document with little effort.

Report · May 04, 2010

I having the same problem. CS4 does not have this sluggishness.

Report · May 04, 2010

Yea, it isn't machine related. Been around the block too many times to believe that one. I've got tons of space and memory as seen above. It's just in ID CS5, everything else works fine, including previous ID CS releases.

I have noticed that even reverting back to Typical Display doesn't entirely relieve the problem. In Typical Display, there is not smooth movement of images. It's just less jumpy than the practically unmanageable image and text box jumping after high res display.

You are correct adamgordon, I will likely have to resume using CS4 as well until some type of solution is found. It was smooth and constant there, as well as CS3 & CS2. I love many of the CS5 upgrades, but seriously, it greatly frustrates my workflow at this point, as I often need to be in high res display to properly render Illustrator images with acceptable clarity to add captions, numbers and proper close placement to other items.

Report · May 04, 2010

cspann - I've been too busy today to play around with this a lot, but I think the situation is worse if I have an .ai file placed as opposed to a .psd or .jpg or tif. Vector art maybe the culprit? Have you noticed this?

Report · May 04, 2010

I've noticed it with equal annoyance using ai, eps and tif files. It is much worse depending on file size. Larger is worse of course...

Report · May 05, 2010

cspann wrote:
Here's my video info:
ATI Radeon HD 4670:
Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 4670
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9488
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B8030F-260
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.383
Displays:
iMac:
Resolution: 2560 x 1440
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Built-In: Yes
Connection Type: DisplayPort

Your 2560 x 1440 resolution seems to indicate a 27" screen. 256 MB VRAM is probably on the scant side of sufficient for processing this many pixels quickly, though, there may be other aspects of the graphics processing subsystem that compensate well for the pure VRAM amount. I'm comparing that to my MacBook Pro 17" with 1680 x 1050 resolution has 512 MB VRAM - about half the pixels with double the amount of VRAM. Whether or not this is the key factor, there are some other things to consider, that I've not seen mentioned in this thread.

These Pages panel settings and options can consume lots of video processing when the display includes:

* Lots of document pages, with Pages > Panel Options > Page and Master sizes set to large or extra-large thumbnails, and Icons for Transparency, Spread Rotation, and Page Transitions checked (ON). In CS5, there are also page color labels

* Lots of small text, with Preferences > Display Performance > Greek Text below set to a small point size, or even zero points; also, Enable Anti-aliasing turned on; OpenType fonts with many options turned on, like ligatures, positional forms, etc - things that require calculation

* Many complex graphics with display performance set to maximum quality

* Conditional text (pages thumbnails show/hide content according to condition settings)

* Multiple page sizes in one document (CS5)

If CS5 is slower than CS4, the if you've set some new CS5 features, try turning them off.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

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Peter Gold

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