InDesign CS5 lag slow on Snow Leopard 10.6

Report · Sep 20, 2010

I am reaching the end of patience with this one and starting to wish i'd not paid for a CS5 upgrade.

I installed under Mac OS 10.5 originally, did all updates and had font and other deathly slow issues in Photoshop.

In the end, I enacted a TOTAL system maintenance routine and upgraded to System 10.6 in order to try and get round probs with CS5.

I since have ditched all prefs, reset all caches, cleared all logs, done total font checks and removed a couple of corrupt ones, repaired disk permissions etc etc etc.... Photoshop 'appears' to work ok, although saving and saving to web can be sluggish (pizza wheel waiting for it....)

InDesign CS5 is now taxing my productivity. I thought it was my Wacom Intuous 3 tablet, but find the issue (at the mo as I've not noticed anything significant yet in Illustrator or Photoshop) only occurs with InDesign CS5.

The issue is the glitchy interface - stepped or delayed movements of objects across the page, selecting menu dialogue boxes can take a second when i click on a value, slightly steppy movements make selecting the tiny up and down arrows on some menus very tricky to be accurate. PLUS saving and saving PDFs in particular as well as PLACE images CMD-D can be deathly slow. It used to be almost instaneous, slowed only by the hard drive firing up. Now i try to do things and have to wait on many actions. It's doing my head in! This is NOT PRODUCTIVE.

In InDesign i have tried turning off Live Redraw, dropping display quality to fast (makes working almost impossible as i need to see what i'm doing), and disabled the Preflight option that is on by default, and i'm sure other options too i've seen on forums. But no better.

I have a Quad Core 3Ghz Intel Mac with 14Gb RAM, and an NIVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT graphics card.

IS this APPLE or ADOBE issue? How on earth can i get my speedy productivity back so i can move around the screen smoothly, save and place quickly, and select menu dialogues without waiting for it to react..... HELP!

Report · Sep 20, 2010

Have you read the other threads dealing with similar problems? Some people have found setting live screen drawing to delayed has worked wonders.

Bob

Report · Sep 20, 2010

tried that Bob. Doesn't help (well very very very marginally if at all).

What annoys me intensely is that a once brilliant app is just clumsy now. Maybe it's Snow Leopard as well contributing (although other apps don't suffer this problem, Adobe CS apps included as far as i can tell thusfar). It's Just ID CS5.

What exactly is the point of a wonderful fully featured app with useful functions and then turning all the functions off? My computer is more than adequate to run it, so why is it such a bug.

Report · Sep 20, 2010

and the reason i posted this was because I've tried everything i can find, and spent almost a day of my time doing stuff to the computer, trying things out, testing etc - wasted when i don't have time to waste as my workload is terrible at the mo. I had a productive computer. Until i installed CS5. Now i have a semi-productive computer. Grrrrrrrrrr. Sorry, this has really rattled me.

Report · Sep 20, 2010

Try turning off thumbnails in the pages panel.

Just to be clear, however...Snow Leopard was a clean install?

Bob

Report · Sep 20, 2010

Yep, thumbnails OFF in pages panel.

No, Snow Leopard was not a clean install, it was an upgrade, as I don't have time to do everything that is involved in installing all the other software back in and hours of downloading updates to everything that a clean install implies....

The nearest I've got to 'clean' is running all maintenance I can off the install disk, plus using OnyX, and manually trashing all the Adobe Prefs for extra safe measure. That plus starting up in Safe Boot which forces some clean up, plus all fonts sorted and caches cleaned out.

Appreciate your help Bob, not getting at you 😉

I'd wonder about the issue if it was a prob in other apps. Only place I get annoyance is Photoshop being sluggish on Save for Web mostly. I wondered if it was the Window server for the Mac but as i say it's pretty much only ID5 that all the sluggish is happening in.

Report · Sep 20, 2010

FWIW, I tried that route from Leopard to Snow Leopard and it was a disaster along the same lines as yours.

Blew it out, did a clean install and everything's fine. I'll never buy into that propaganda again. Operating systems, whether they're sold from Redmond, WA or Cupertino, CA should not upgraded on a mission critical machine.

Bob

Report · Sep 20, 2010

ah Bob, so you say you had similar crazy issues to me - you did same OS route to installation upgrade as i have done. And once you did a clean install of Snow Leopard all was fixed?

It's gonna take me a weekend of backing up, wiping and installing, downloading all the upgrades etc, but if you reckon its the only way, perhaps i need to put up with it for now and then wipe the system and start afresh when i get a spare weekend. Can't do it during the working week.

While we're on this, is it better to install MS Office suite before Adobe or after you reckon? I ask as like many apps these days they all want to install fonts all over the place! I'm using Suitcase Fusion 3 to coral them all into some sense of order.

Thanks for the heads-up. I was trying to avoid the clearly obvious inevitable

Report · Sep 20, 2010

First point, I can't promise it will fix anything at all.

I would install Office first but that's my Windows persona coming through and I'm not sure it matters one way or the other.

BTW, you mention Suitcase Fusion 3. There have been a couple of updates since it was released. I'd certainly make sure you've downloaded and installed them before doing anything else.

Bob

Report · Sep 20, 2010

markmld wrote:
ah Bob, so you say you had similar crazy issues to me - you did same OS route to installation upgrade as i have done. And once you did a clean install of Snow Leopard all was fixed?
It's gonna take me a weekend of backing up, wiping and installing, downloading all the upgrades etc, but if you reckon its the only way, perhaps i need to put up with it for now and then wipe the system and start afresh when i get a spare weekend. Can't do it during the working week.
While we're on this, is it better to install MS Office suite before Adobe or after you reckon? I ask as like many apps these days they all want to install fonts all over the place! I'm using Suitcase Fusion 3 to coral them all into some sense of order.
Thanks for the heads-up. I was trying to avoid the clearly obvious inevitable

Don't forget to deactivate at least one CS suite application, and every Adobe stand-alone application before wiping your drive clean.

Another thought: considering the high cost of your time and the low cost of hard drives, whether you're on a laptop or desktop, consider starting over with a new clean drive and install applications, and copy user files to it. A bonus benefit of this approach is that you'll have preserved a perfect complete backup - the old drive itself - before you start!

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

Report · Sep 20, 2010

thanks for the heads-up Peter. Id not have thought to deactivate Adobe stuff first.

I've ordered a new WD Caviar Black (larger cache than i have on current drive) so a slight upgrade of drive, and as you say, a preserved backup. I dont have any spare bays in my Mac as i've filled them with other drives used for backups and other stuff, so i may need to buy an external case for the SATA i'm taking out. No matter, it will be sorted this weekend.

thanks all for help. fingers crossed this rather drastic step works!

Report · Sep 20, 2010

markmld wrote:
thanks for the heads-up Peter. Id not have thought to deactivate Adobe stuff first.
I've ordered a new WD Caviar Black (larger cache than i have on current drive) so a slight upgrade of drive, and as you say, a preserved backup. I dont have any spare bays in my Mac as i've filled them with other drives used for backups and other stuff, so i may need to buy an external case for the SATA i'm taking out. No matter, it will be sorted this weekend.
thanks all for help. fingers crossed this rather drastic step works!

Glad I thought of it. However, if you're keeping the drive, and don't have other installations, you can keep the backup drive installations active if you'll have a use for them if you boot from that drive. With your slow performance issues, you'll probably not want to use InDesign on that drive, but perhaps you'd want to use some other rarely-used apps from that drive. Yes, space, the final frontier.

OWC has USB drive adapters that work with many types of drives, including SATA, for about $30. They're open gizmos - no enclosure, no power supply, no fan, etc. They also have notebook-sized (2.5") drives up to 1TB with USB portable enclosures under $200, less for smaller.

Consider an extra empty drive for use with Time Machine, as an ongoing automatic backup. It's very comforting. An alternative or supplement is yet another drive that you use with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, inexpensive shareware, that make complete and/or incremental backups, on demand or on schedule. I use Time Machine to back up a Time Capsule drive - wired or wirelessly - and CarbonCopy Cloner to back up to a portable USB drive that's Velcro'd onto the top case of my MacBook Pro.

Oh, and for suspenders to go with my two belts, or maybe that's a belt to go with my two suspenders, I also use Carbonite online backup - wirelessly or wired, about $5/month for unlimited storage. Their gotcha is that data is kept while it's on your drive, and then they delete it from your storage 30 days after you delete it from your drive. I had tried other online storage - Mozy, and some others, but at that time, about a year ago, they didn't work reliably. Probably better now. Not sure if they keep data after you delete it from your drive, or for how long after you delete it. I think also that some online storers define "unlimited" differently.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

Report · Oct 01, 2010

@markmld

I have a client experiencing the same problem as you are. So I am really curious to know how it all went. Have you had the time to try a new installation and did you find that it helped in any significance?

Regards,

Alfred

Report · Oct 01, 2010

Hi Alfred, in a word, no.

I have a new disk, clean install of OS, fully updated. Then clean install of CS5, fully updated. Clean install of Wacom Intuous 3 driver - installed exactly per instructions (apparently make sure tablet is not plugged in during installation and make sure all Wacom/Intuous/Tablet drivers, software and preferences are gone from the computer, install the fresh driver software from Wacom and once done and restarted the computer THEN plug in the Intuos).....plus the best and fastest graphics card I get get my hands on (which is pretty slick i must say!) Some hefty upgrading to try and resolve the issue.

But no, there would appear to be some kind of issue with Indesign CS5 and the Intuous tablet, that I doubt anyone is going to take ownership of.

I've tried taking the tablet pen tip double-click preference setting to "off" which makes a marginal difference maybe? But to be honest, i've noticed that the more processes i have running on the computer, and the more complex the Indesign document, the worse InDesign runs for this inability to 'let go' of objects and window resizing once you lift the pen off the tablet. It seems the only way that kind of gets round it is to literally lift the pen high off the tablet once you're done with a move. Which is stupidly ridiculous.

I'm at a point of wondering if there is any other tablet i can try or is this going to be an issue with anything i use. I'd try the Bamboo one but the Intuous range is supposed to be better, and besides it wasn't cheap... i'm loathed to buy a different model just because there is some kind of potential issue with Indesign and how it uses memory perhaps and how it's screen interaction works when using a tablet pen.

If anyone else can shed light and solutions, that would me much appreciated. For now I struggle on... Or I go back to a mouse. Which after 6 years of using a tablet is going to be hard for me.

Report · Oct 01, 2010

Ok I see.

It really seems to be connected with the Intuos tablet.

But if you are only using the mouse, did you find any improvement when you did a clean installation of Snow Leopard, as Bob suggested?

My client are upgrading frpm CS3 to CS5 and there is a considerable delay when moving objects, grouping, placing images etc. It is not connected to network issues as I have done som tests working solely with local links. And the machines are way better than the System requirements so it should not be a problem.

Regards,

Alfred

Report · Oct 01, 2010

actually, i just tried it by unplugging the tablet and using the Apple mouse (wired usb) and the same behaviour..... Maybe not the tablet. Maybe a bug in InDesign. Doesn't explain why me and other people aren't complaining. Unless they're just soldiering on? Dunno.

Report · Mar 23, 2011

It's not the tablet.

I've just begun looking for a solution to the lagging, slow motion movement I'm experiencing in InDesign CS5 since I installed it last month. I think it is an Adobe bug. I am using both an Intuos tablet and a mouse. It's lagging on both of them.

I have not upgraded to 10.6 Snow Leopard yet, although I've got it right beside me, ready to install when I feel like dealing with that hassle. But evidently that is not going to fix the problem.

I upgraded the whole CS and only InDesign is screwy. It is so bad that I have gone back to using CS4 in InDesign. I can't work in CS5. It's impeding productivity and causing lots of errors and redo's because the program can't keep up with my movement. I'm mainly a print designer so this is a big deal.

Did this issue get resolved? Have I missed that? Please if help if you can.

thanks,

Dory

Report · Mar 23, 2011

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I am running Mac OS 10.5.8 on a MacPro 2 x 2.8 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor and I have 24 GB of RAM. InDesign CS5 movement lags even if it is the only program open and has no competition for RAM. Plus, if I open the same files in CS4, there no problem, response is instant.

This reminds me of once in the past, when Quark had a built in function that checked your network every five minutes to look for pirated copies of their software. The application would just d-r-a-g until it did a check of your ethernet CPUs. I think that was Quark 5.0, maybe 6. It was months before Quark acknowledged what was happening and fixed the bug. I switched to InDesign shortly after that.

Dory

Report · Apr 17, 2012

YOU. Dear Sir are a lifesaver! I know this is an older post, but I just upgraded to Lion and CS5 and I've been searching for 2 days for a resolution. Changing the live screen drawing setting to delayed... WORKED WONDERS! Thank you!

Report · Jun 22, 2013

Don't forget to restart indesign after changing the settings. That did the trick for me in CS6 and 10.8.4

Report · Sep 20, 2010

Did you do a clean install, or an in-place upgrade to 10.6?

Report · Oct 01, 2010

Not to disagree with Bob but I can tell you this. I purchased

8-Core Two 2.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” processors 16gigs RAM Brand new Installed CS 5 Brand new

ALso have a 1 year old 8-core did the snow leopard upgrade and installed CS 5 Brand New

Every problem you are have both machines are having.... This is not some random problem. All 8 installs at the agency are experiencing this problems. 2 of my designers have gone back to CS3. Adobe/Apple better fix these issues or I'm going back to Quark!!!!!!!!!

Report · Oct 08, 2010

Just to add to this thread-

My agency has been running CS3 since its release. One of the machines it has been running on was a now 5 year old PPC G5 2ghz tower with only 2gb of ram, and though it ran smooth and flawless, we felt that we were falling behind the times, so just last month we spent a gut wrenching sum of money to upgrade not only our Creative Suite to CS5 design premium on all workstations, but also a brand new loaded Mac Pro tower to replace that PPC machine- and I too can assure you all that we've lost productivity.

We took the machine out of the box, brand new from Apple, and installed CS5 onto a blank slate. Opened it up and immediately started "working" with ID on a deadline driven project and right away noticed the lag. After that project was out the door, I then installed my tablet hoping it would run smoother than the mouse, and there is literally no difference.

So based on running a clean install on a brand new Mac with no font management tools, extra drivers, wacom tablet or anything else at all on the system- I can assure you all that its an Adobe issue, and it needs a fix- FAST.

Report · Oct 08, 2010

Hi guys,

has anyone of you smooth working CS5 on a brand new Mac PRO or I-Core 7 Imac with Snow 10.6.4 ? Anyone? Please report. We have to find the reason.

I start to believe that there is some kind of problem with multi-threading on powerful MACs multi core machines. Fast ICore 7 Imacs - 8 threads, 16 threads Macs PRO.

We work on PCs. We have one "brand new" Mac Mini Core 2 DUO 2.53 Ghz, 4 GB of RAM as the support for files exchange. CS5 works on it perfectly. Even if we have the screen mode set to Immediate. I can open 350 pages catalogue full of texts and photos and work on it with no delays at all.

Lets do some statistic to narrow the potential source of problems. Please add your machines:

1. Mac Mini, Core 2 DUO 2.53 GHz, 4 GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400, Snow Leopard 10.6.4 - OK!

Report · Oct 08, 2010

Phorna,

I have everything from 2 27" i7 imacs, the newest 8 core, 2 one year old 8 cores, a 2.4 ghz imac 24 " 4 original quad core towers

all have at least 6 gigs ram some have up to 16 gigs ram and snow leopard cs5 is unresponsive slow and clumsy, The mouse tracking is awful, everything is just running slow. My 24" 2.4g i-mac at home running leopard and cs3 runs faster then my tower... This needs to be fixed