Hi,
Thank you, Mike and Margot, for sharing your detailed experiences and candid feedback about Illustrator's performance issues. As cartographers working with complex documents, your use cases are valuable to us.

Margot, I've reviewed the video you shared showing the delay in text manipulation, and this is not the experience we want for our users. I'm particularly concerned that you're seeing worse performance after the 29.1 update, as this runs counter to our goals. We're investigating this specific regression as a matter of priority.

Mike, you shouldn't need to remove data layers or resort to workarounds like recreating text elements instead of editing them. We are working towards to make sure we address these issues in next few releases.
Let me be transparent about where we are in our multithreading journey. While we've begun implementing multithreading with rasterization in 29.1, we've a clearly identified roadmap that we are executing against. We're taking a methodical approach to these changes to ensure stability.

Your real-world examples are invaluable for our testing and optimization process. I would greatly appreciate if you could share your working files with me at kotwal at adobe.com. These files will be used exclusively for internal testing and will help us replicate and address the specific scenarios you're encountering.

We will provide regular updates on our progress, and we will ensure that your use cases are represented in our performance testing suite.

Thank you for your patience and continued feedback as we work to improve Illustrator's performance.

Margo Carpenter - as a fellow cartographer and user of Illustrator for about the same amount of time as you, I feel your pain. I have experienced the same sort of scenarios as shown in your video. I keep hoping it will get better but it gets worse and worse! Last year I invested in a new computer, an M2 Max Mac Studio with 96GB of RAM, and that hardware upgrade did nothing to improve my experience with Illustrator. The software does not seem to take advantage of any of my hardware's capabilities. I'm constantly trying to find work arounds to trim my files and make them run more efficiently. The crazy thing is, some of these files are maps that were created 10 years ago, and ran well on much weaker hardware. Now I'm having to remove data layers just so I can work on them. Sometimes when I'm adding text if I make a typo I will just delete the label and start over because using backspace slows everything to a crawl. With the map I'm working on now it takes about 15-20 seconds just to create a new empty layer. And meanwhile, I'm running ArcGIS Pro, on a virtual Windows installation on the same machine, and it can handle massive amounts of data without lag or hiccups. Argh.

I've been using Illustrator for almost 15 years and have been so disappointed with its decreasing efficiency. Was hopeful about the announced effort to improve multi-threading but version 29.1 has proven to be the worst and slowest version yet. It took nearly 57 seconds to select and move a single text element. See the attached and watch the seconds tick by. (The vid is a bit blurry from downsizing it so much.)

Yes, it's a complex document with multiple artboards, but when I was working on the same document last week -- before updating -- it was not this painfully slow.

@ rbajgo
I understand using Illustrator the way you described for customer files, (which are often a nightmare) but I've been doing design and print for 24 years, and when I set up something from scratch, I use Photoshop for raster, Illustrator for vector, and InDesign to do the overall layout. Sure, I sometimes do raster effects in Illustrator, or text layers in Photoshop, but my primary workflow is as I described. When I have to edit a customer pdf, like you mentioned, I almost always use Illustrator. Most of the pdfs we get now are made in Canva, so that is a new can of worms. I do more design and physical printing than actual prepress work. I hope it stays that way.

Hi. Do we get these improvements in Illustrator 29 launched yesterday?

@ InstyButte

I work in a printing house prepress department and we all hate when we get PDF Indesign files, because all edit and adjustment is impossible (maybe with Pit Stop). So, OF COURSE you should use Illustrator for combining vector and raster elements, the advantages are huge. You should use Indesign mostly for layout with lots of pages. Any other situation Ilustrator (and you save everything in a single file, no package or that kund of rubbish).

And about improvement, please work on OVERPRINT PREVIEW. It is unusable jn latest version, and in packaging we keep it always ON.

I need multicore support for actual vector work. When I do complex work, or use the Shape Builder, Illustrator can get so slow that I have to wait 30 seconds for my changes to take effect. I don't use Illustrator for raster artwork. I don't place raster artwork in Illustrator files. I use Photoshop for raster artwork, and I use InDesign to combine raster and vector artwork. You know, the programs that are designed specifically for these purposes, unless I missed something. Improve the actual Illustrator core functionality performance, please.

I've been working wit Illustrator for over 20 years, and it is my favorite program. However, within the past 6-8 months. I've noticed a significant decrease in performance on a brand new high-end windows computer. Many others have noticed the performance issues as well (you can find more detail here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/illustrator-2024-performance-issues-in-windows/m-p/14882413#M421518).

While new functionality is fun, there should be a priority of making the software stable before adding anything new. Please look into these issues!!!

ok let's see then

Hi, nice to see movement here, certainly w/regards to raster images I have some documents that are almost unusable, and have had to split documents into many in order to continue working - so this is very welcome.

Are there plans to address optimization w/regards to complex vector-only documents + functions as well? Notably 'object/expand' and pathfinder operations when working with large selections of paths, complex patterns and brushes, navigation (redraw glitches), and interaction latency when working with these documents. Often in these cases I see a single core loaded (and usually at less than half capacity).

Apologies if this has been discussed before.

Thanks

Hello!

As we approach Adobe MAX in Miami this year, I wanted to reach out and connect with our users who are planning to attend. I'd love the opportunity to chat with you in person about our overall approach. Your feedback is invaluable to us as we continue to work on performance improvements.

Our team has been working diligently and we'd love to share some details about our approach with you. If you're attending MAX, I would be happy to set up some time to chat and hear your thoughts on our improvement strategies.

Are any of you planning to attend Adobe MAX in Miami this year? If so, please let us know through this short survey: https://survey.adobe.com/jfe/form/SV_0VzklAr12gxsDaK

I will reach out to coordinate a time to meet up during the event. Looking forward to potentially connecting with you at MAX!

look forward to. When can the official version be released

This sounds great, thank you. Look forward to testing it out shortly.

You all rock! I know this is a time intensive process. Thank you!

This is welcome news. Im looking forward to trying the Beta.

@Anonymous
That article sounds great. I sure hope it happens, and doesn't get obliterated by Adobe's corporate and legal juggernaut. I'm sick of having the price of this software jacked up every few months. I'm also sick of this huge shift toward AI, without having improved the basic functionality issues of so many Adobe products.

We need to support other developers instead of letting out our frustration here.
https://petapixel.com/2023/06/08/abode-is-a-new-suite-of-creative-apps-that-takes-aim-at-adobe/

Ive been banned from the Adobe Community for these very same complaints. To make it so much worse, I have contacted support more than 4 times about this, requesting an incident report and was ghosted everytime, eventhough I was promised a prompt reply.

So, yea, your survey is an empty gesture. You can just google "Adobe sucks" and find all the answers you need.

Most Adobe users don't even know this forum exists - and I think that's on purpose.

Complaining that not enough users participate in the survey is just peak Adobe corpo bubble.

I first added to this thread a year ago when an illustrator file I was working on brought my reasonably spec'd M2 macbook pro to it's knees.

It's that time of year, and I have to revisit the file again. Despite the resources of Adobe, they still can't get this right and fix the performance issues with a piece of software that is considered by many an industry standard.

With big files, the software is still buggy. Particularly when applying effects. It is nice to hear this is now being addressed. But in the real-world, no real change yet...

It's really annoying that it takes upsetting this many users to start to move the needle.