Thanks for your thoughts @Nate, Linked files aren't really much of thing for my workflow but I'm glad someone is seeing a benefit. I'm agreeing with you @Eric Cobain, they initially focussed on the obvious raster stuff that is easier to distribute computationally to multi-threading. Also stuff that doesn't make much of a difference to the core vector functionality of the software,

I was interested in the claimed improvements to performance. I'm quoting from their v30.0 pitch. "Speed up saving large files to protect your work instantly, recover documents quickly and reliably after unexpected crashes, and enjoy smoother editing when moving, scaling, rotating, or duplicating—without lag or interruptions."

The first bit can be ignored as I absolutely will never trust ai to recover reliably from the expected crashes. I assume it won't so take advantage of Astute Graphics Autosaviour function that performs periodic backups while also creating any number of previous versions too. Maybe it will help with speeding up saves but it looks like there are problems with this approach to just saving the updated file info if you have linked ai assets in other files like InDesign or Photoshop (both of which I do so I'll be watching to see if that issue ever gets resolved).

Which brings me to the claimed 'smoother editing when moving, scaling, rotating, or duplicating—without lag or interruptions'. Hmmm - now that is genuinely useful.

However, @Ken Lustig - I find the same approach is required with ai to keep it as snappy as possible, so also close and restart it periodically. I think I'll just keep doing that. This approach also helps with the ridiculous bugbear of the intermittent copy fail that has plagued the last few years of my illustrator use. 10-30mins a day just going round and round trying to copy an asset again and again until it finally copies it. And yes - I've been through all the usual suspects to sort this and have a whole host of work arounds to try to avoid having to actual copy anything. Sigh!

Thanks for your thoughts. Looks like v30 is another 'nothing to see here' version for this threads requested feature.

Thanks Eric. My tolerance is set to 1px and this even happens with a single rectangle on an artboard with zero distractors.

Eric Cobain. I'm not from adobe but I can answer your snapping issue. Has to do with your tolerance. Tolerance is set to 4pt. In order to activate the snap you have to be within that space. When you are zoomed out on a file you can't get your cursor close enough to the point to snap to it because each cursor move is more then 4pt. Change the tolerance and then you will be good. If there are a lot of points on your design this could cause problems when you zoom in and start doing stuff at a smaller level.

Oh yea, wtf is going on with the unreliability of alt drag. Works half the time. Seems like its got a millisecond sensitivity and if you dont time it exactly right, youre just dragging, not duplicating.

Its fun going backwards in technology.

I want someone at adobe to explain why i have to always zoom to 300% or more to use selection tools or snap in any kind of effective way. Its a computer, if i can see it, the computer with perfect vision and precision should be able to also. Snapping at 100% is just so bad and i really hate not being able to see the transform controls or avoid hitting the rotate.

It also has a window problem in windows. Constantly losing focus, sometimes due to a hidden modal that didn't rise above the existing windows and sometimes for absolutely no reason.

I can drag an image into Illustrator and i still have to click into Illustrator again to register it. Why? My last action was a drag release in the program.

I suspect adobe devs are pretty bad at windows development and thats why we see the mixed bag of people who either love adobe or people who hate it with a passion.

My shop does tons of large format. Overall, performance has increased noticeably with larger and more complex graphics, especially with the save and export functions. However, it's been my perception that this has been offset by big decreases in stability and a host of new bugs introduced to even legacy core functions - for example, keyboard shortcuts abruptly not working, bizarre rendering problems, inability to use file->new, 'An unknown error has occured', 'Illustrator was unable to save', and the list goes on. Given that we routinely build graphics for semi trailers, walls, clings and other really big placements, my workstation is a beast with no shortage of RAM, GPU, CPU or storage capacity and speed. Seems like there also are memory leaks and other issues that gradually worsen as the program operates, eventually creating lag with even fresh files. Best advice is to save constantly and restart often, as there are clearly growing pains. YMMV.

I'll be the one to say it. They only added multithread on a handful of barely useful processes. It still feels slow af.

Adobe software is always the bottleneck in any machine.

I never am using even half of my resources while i sit and watch Illustrator struggle to process.

They did the bare minimum just to be able to claim they added multicore capabilities.

As a user, I see zero improvement. In fact, due to all the useless AI, its slower.

The generative AI in Illustrator is terrible and pointless. I dont want a raster fill option in a vector app. Ill use photoshop for that.

@Stuart Chesters — Marked performance improvements on documents with lots of linked files, which is very noticeable in my day-to-day. Yet to notice any bloat or negative change from v29.x, and all of my third-party bits and pieces seem to be working well.

So what's the feedback from those brave real world users of the new v30.0 and the efforts of adobe to speed up any of it's core functionality?

Just curious as I've no intention of upgrading yet from 29.4 - far to risky for someone who relies on it for making a living. I'm sure they'll be the usual sparkly AI bloat that has yet to offer me anything remotely useful as a professional user so that would never entice me. What would make me take a risk is if they actually managed to leverage any of that massively redundant processing power that any computer of the last decade or more has. Ever hopeful that this great bit of software will get the love and development it deserves.

Me uno a esta petición como usuario profesional. Es frustrante ver cómo una estación de trabajo de última generación (i9-13900K, 128GB RAM) se ve limitada por el uso de un solo núcleo en Illustrator. Agradezco enormemente el progreso que el equipo ha anunciado recientemente y les animo a priorizar esta modernización. La capacidad de que las operaciones de trazado y manipulación de vectores sean multinúcleo transformaría por completo nuestro flujo de trabajo. Gracias por escuchar a la comunidad.

The performance of using the mouse wheel to zoom needs to be optimized.
Currently, using the 'Zoom Tool (Z)' is very smooth, but 'Zoom with Mouse Wheel' is severely lagging

This Idea was shared on 2017 and yet in 2025, a Ryzen 5 7500F, 32 GB DDR5 6000MHz, 2TB NVME 4.0 7gbps, and an RTX 3080 cannot run adobe illustrator smoothly is crazy, No proper gpu acceleration supported, and no Multi threading is supported. Illustrator freezing with less than 10% of the resources are used... Affinity Designer works flawlessly if we don't wanna say way smoother than adobe illustrator

Just had to update a job from this time last year that involved exporting a 2.4m x 900mm complex vector artwork to a 300dpi PNG file. Last year it took over two hours to process it, this year it took 15 minutes. Very satisfying to see all 8 cores maxed out and Activity Monitor reporting Illustrator CPU usage @ 790%! Last year it was capped at one core & 100%.

Thank you for the progress so far, this is a great update and I look forward to seeing similar results for Object > Rasterize and Gaussian Blur. Great work!

Hi Mathias - Thank you for bringing up performance concerns with complex vector brushes. We completely understand the frustration and importance of smooth performance, especially on high-end hardware.

Based on our performance roadmap, we're implementing several improvements that will directly address vector brush performance.

I'd appreciate if you could share more details/examples of specific brush files giving you trouble at file@adobe.com - this helps our engineering team optimize for real-world use cases.

Please improve performance when using complex vector brushes. For example, texture brushes (retrosupply/true grit) with more than 1000 anchor points in the reference! That would be a real game changer if you could finally work smoothly with it.
I was really disappointed when I realized that my illustration on the expensive iMac (3.6Ghz 10 Core, 128G Ram) doesn't run any smoother than on a cheap Macbookair...

1. Multi-core Optimization
2. Multi-threading Optimization
3. Reduce Canvas and Software Startup Memory Usage
4. Parallel Processing Capability
I hope that Adobe Illustrator can improve software performance in these areas, leverage the performance of modern new CPUs with multi-core capabilities to enhance software performance, currently version 29.1, which is still slow to process on the latest CPUs and graphics cards

These are all cosmetic changes that don't improve the core problem with complex vector files at all.

Hello All,

With the latest Beta, we have now implemented multithreading capabilities in some areas of Adobe Illustrator to improve performance. We've a clearly identified Performance-enhancement roadmap that we are executing against and will share regular updates on the progress.

For now, we have added multithreading support to the following operations:
-Image Import & Export
- Import, Place, and Drag-and-drop operations for JPEG, PNG, and TIFF files
- Converting linked images to embedded images
- Working with Photoshop files (Import, Place, and Drag-and-drop)
- Exporting to JPEG and PNG formats

Effects
- All Photoshop effects on images
- Object rasterization (via Object menu)
- Working with layers panel

Smoother and faster layer operations: Hide, Unhide, Expand, Collapse, Scrolling up and down. etc.

We'd love to hear about your experience with these improvements, particularly if you've previously encountered performance issues in these areas.

Please:
1. Test these operations with your typical workflows and assets
2. Pay special attention to files or operations that previously caused performance issues

You can provide feedback through this two-minute brief survey: https://survey.adobe.com/jfe/form/SV_e2Olp1bJXTun2Zw

Thank you for your time. Your input helps us continue improving Illustrator's performance for everyone!

@Oli no, it have being customized for sure over the years, and way before the first CS release but it is probably very easy to break something.

So if they have a piece of code that does something and can be re-written to do that thing better, they have to ensure that it also still works with the myriads of components that depend on that code to do other things.

imho, every piece of software need to be re-written after a decade at least and not keep on building on decades old base.
ofc you don't start from scratch, I mean if something works independently and works fine on the old app, why not to move it's code to the new app and do a bit of customization there? Anyway it is complicated, but the thing remain, illustrator need to restart from scratch.

@nicky there is space for improvement but what you see with having better performance with CPU is purely because the 1050Ti is a slow cards. I have noticed it when I moved work from a system with a newer AMD 5500XT 4GB to the same system at office but with a much older Radeon HD 7850 1GB. CPU was working better with that old GPU.
The thing is for illustrator to tap on the compute power of the GPU to improve more things. Here even affinity is only using GPU for accelerating rasters, they should find ways to tap the power too.

I think the problem is not only CPU performance, but also untapped GPU performance. I read many posts with problems in GPU performance, users complaining about having an Nvidia 4090 and having slowness and blockages. Even, and I confirm even though I have a modest nvidia 1050Ti, if you disable GPU Performance and Zoom with animation in the Illustrator settings, the software works much better.
For example, when I start Illustrator for the first time and create an EMPTY DOCUMENT, or open a file, this only in the first start, Illustrator takes a long time, even if the document is EMPTY. By disabling GPU performance, the empty document is created immediately.
Absurd GPU Performance should increase performance, not decrease it significantly...
So Houston we have very very very serious problems...