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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.

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Started (Available In Beta)  ·  AdminAvinash Singh Kotwal (Principal Product Manager, Adobe Illustrator) responded  · 

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:

  1. Open the Creative Cloud Desktop App
  2. Navigate to the "Beta apps" section
  3. 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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  • Mattnymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    Adobe team, ooh boring, they're talking in that multi-core thread again.
    Let's try and get that update on sharing japanese 3D objects on a tablet out this week.

  • Jeron Kuxhausen commented  ·   ·  Report

    Oh Yeah I totally agree with you it's annoying seeing all these updates with new features when the core program is still slow.

  • Oskar commented  ·   ·  Report

    Yeah, I know there have been thoughts here of what's keeping them from fixing it but it would have been a nice gesture of the team if they could at least try to explain why this isn't happening.

    Or perhaps it actually is happening but it takes time? Who knows?

    I would be in so much better mood if they could go out and say something like "we are working on it but it's difficult but we believe that we might have it all done in two years".

    Now it's just frustrating.

  • Jeron Kuxhausen commented  ·   ·  Report

    @Oskar People here have given thoughts on why they haven't done it, as I'm sure they would have to re-write large portions of the program but there has been silence from Adobe since switching it to Under Review. With the amount they bring in every month they need to bite the bullet and stop kicking the can down the road

  • nicky commented  ·   ·  Report

    @Oskar holy truth, it could be at least 4x faster if it exploited all cores/threads.
    Out there it seems that there are processors that also use 24 cores / 32 threads... what are they for if illustrator uses only 1 core?

    The thing that makes me angry is that I see illustrators wasting time (wheel spinning to think) even for simple operations and non-demanding files (zero effects).

  • Nikolas Karampelas commented  ·   ·  Report

    Oskar they don't even pretend to be working on it. They don't care, end of story for us. They grab the money and call it a day.

  • Oskar commented  ·   ·  Report

    Does anyone know if Illustrator team has provided any feedback on this one? I mean have they presented some thoughts on why they haven't managed to fix this?

    It's incredible to see the Activity Monitor showing activity in 1 out of 12 cores in my new Mac Mini when I work in Illustrator. The frustration of knowing this could be almost 12 times faster...

  • Irmantus commented  ·   ·  Report

    @Adobe, if your bean bag coders don't know how to do it, they can ask ChatGPT

  • Luis Encuentra commented  ·   ·  Report

    25 seconds to open a document on a 13900k with RTX 4090, 64GB DDR5 RAM and nvme 4.0 with 7600 MB/s... hylarious...

    Not to mention when the file is finally loaded, GPU changes tu CPU preview..... OH MY GOD.... Change this please......

    Multithread please.... "force GPU" to not change to CPU please.... we need to work faster... i can learn a new language while waiting Ilustrator .... for sure....

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    We are at about 6 years since this was requested. It is the 5th most requested upgrade to Adobe's software. I have a $5,000 custom built PC that runs circles around anything I throw at it. That is anything with the exception of Adobe Illustrator. When I open customer PDF files exported from AutoCAD and try and extract the vectors to separate layers it's just impossible. I click on something and wait forever for it to register. Utilizing only 1 thread for the bulk of the work is absolutely ridiculous. This is what most everyone feared about the subscription based model that they strong armed everyone in to by not offering upgrades to new versions as software used to be. Adobe has collected years worth of subscriptions from countless users and can't be bothered to use that to actually upgrade the software to solve this issue. They have you on the hook and they have you perpetually paying for a product and have ignored your requests to make this software utilize a computers full capacity for 6 years. Thank you Adobe for confirming our fears were not unfounded...

  • Will Carvalho commented  ·   ·  Report

    No idea, why. But if 3D tasks can use full CPU, RAM and GPU, why can't other tasks?

    Users should be able to decide how many resources some tasks can handle, like in Photoshop, you decide how much RAM to allocate and how much GPU RAM to allocate for 3D tasks.

  • Andrew commented  ·   ·  Report

    @Will
    Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that is due to Maxon dealing with the rendering.

  • Jeremy commented  ·   ·  Report

    Wow, I can't believe in 2023 that AI is still single-core. This would make a HUGE difference when working with artworks containing a large number of objects (e.g., floor plans).

  • InstyButte Typesetting2 commented  ·   ·  Report

    @Neff
    You're absolutely right. I had a piece of signage (3 panels) I was working on, and it ended up slowing down to the point that I would have to wait several minutes for an action to take effect. Still, the newest CPUs have about a 70% higher IPC than my TR. I'm using an RTX 3090ti for the graphics, but a 4090 would be about a 30% improvement to rendering there. So, instead of waiting 5 minutes for something, I might only be waiting 3? It's still a disgrace.

  • Neff commented  ·   ·  Report

    @InstyButte Typesetting2
    Trust me, even with the fastes GPU and CPU currently on the market, the program would still slow down to a crawl wit ha few medium sized artboards.

  • InstyButte Typesetting2 commented  ·   ·  Report

    @whstlblwr
    Nope. Still single-threaded. ~8.2% on my TR. An Intel i9 13900k (or other) or AMD Ryzen 9 7950x would be best right now, because of their single-threaded speed, but I'm not going to build a new system just to sidestep an issue that should be fixed. And it's still a waste of the other cores being idle. Why not just go back to single-core cpus? That's what Adobe seems to be suggesting...

  • Nikolas Karampelas commented  ·   ·  Report

    @whstlblwr lol so your fix is to buy a new system every time so adobe programs can work nice? How convenient for adobe :)

  • Christoph Herde commented  ·   ·  Report

    @whstlblwr
    That is no multitasking....
    The M2 CPU is just very fast on single thread...
    Illustrtor is still not Multithread capable

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Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests: Performance, Enhancements

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