Make Illustrator multi threaded on CPU
Illustrator performance is awful, its slow and lumbering at all but the most basic operations. It is bound to only a single cpu thread which is ridiculous now in an age of multi core and multi thread CPU's and it has been this way for many years. It cannot handle background tasks and is completely out of parity in function and performance with other Adobe software such as photoshop and inDesign.
Adobe Illustrator's Multithreading Journey Begins!
Dear Illustrator Community,
I'm thrilled to announce that we've embarked on an exciting journey to bring multithreading capabilities to Adobe Illustrator. This significant undertaking will enhance performance and responsiveness across various aspects of the application.
While this is a complex process that will take some time to fully implement, I wanted to share our progress so far.
Our Approach
We've strategically begun by focusing on the most computationally intensive operations—those that typically take more time and block the main thread, resulting in slower response times while you work. By moving these operations to separate threads, we aim to significantly improve your overall experience with Illustrator.
It's important to note that you may see more noticeable impact in some areas than others initially. However, we want to assure you that this is just the beginning, and we will continue this journey to bring improvements across the entire application.
What We've Accomplished So Far
We've already moved a few areas to multiple threads:
- Periodic document back-up
- Snapping guide generation
- Rasterization (currently for JPEG, PNG, and TIFF formats)
- Thumbnail generation for layers
- Linked/Embedded image (jpg, png, tiff) handling
What to Expect
These improvements will lead to more responsive and faster performance in several key areas:
- Placing multiple images
- Embedding linked images
- Object > Rasterize
- Export to PNG format
- Document opening with heavy linked images
- Simultaneous placement and drag-and-drop of multiple linked/embedded images (JPEG, PNG, and TIFF files)
We're committed to enhancing your Illustrator experience, and this is just the beginning. While the full implementation will take time, we're excited about the improvements already in place and those yet to come.
Stay tuned for more updates as we continue this journey. Your patience and support are greatly appreciated as we work to make Illustrator faster and more efficient than ever before.
Try It Now in Beta!
We're excited to announce that these multithreading improvements are available for you to try right now in our Beta builds. You can access these builds through the Creative Cloud Desktop App:
- Open the Creative Cloud Desktop App
- Navigate to the "Beta apps" section
- Look for the Illustrator Beta and download it to experience these performance enhancements firsthand
We encourage you to try out the Beta version and share your feedback with us.
Thank you for being part of our community!
Best regards,
Adobe Illustrator Team
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Anonymous commented
oldie please catch up with your younger competitors cours plus vite
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Anonymous commented
Agreed, when will we see multi-threading on Adobe apps.
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Eric Bryant commented
I agree with this as well. I use Illustrator heavily throughout my workday, and I want it to be able to leverage the hardware on my computer better.
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Steve Whitla commented
We also work with extremely complex compositions and it is so infuriating that there's no way to spec a machine to handle them. We have these exteremely powerful machines with extremely powerful CPUs, GPUs and huge amounts of RAM but AI is using a fraction of the power available. I appreciate this probably means re-writing half the program but surely a single-threaded codebase isn't sustainable in the long term as more and more features are added and user requirements become more and more demanding.
In terms of performance gains I would say GPU acceleration has helped our studio out somewhere in the region of 0%. Perhaps less as in a number of cases it has made the program slower and/or more unstable. These are new machines with modern nvidia graphics cards.
Our workflows revolve around AI, so this is probably the number one reason we don't fully embrace the Adobe ecosystem - we're hoping that at some point a competitor program will come along that matches the functionality but doesn't have these performance issues. It would make a world of difference! Even just to know that it was on the radar.
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Jason commented
Agreed, this is an absolute must and fundamental considering the specs of even ordinary machines these days. For me, working on complex maps, this is the single biggest problem with Illustrator. In fact it has the worst performance of any app I use, yet the one I need to use most!! And please, don't lump the performance gains on the GPU, as for the most part this really isn't helping much.