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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Nandor commented
Hi Saurav,
With all due respect, this thread has been on here for well night seven years and it might take all of us longer than 12 hours to suddenly respond to you becuase you have decided to sit up and realise we might be onto something.
I agree with Anna, that the problems with the software are clearly outlined in the previous 15 PAGES, should anyone care to actually read it, and probably in more detail than your 2 minute survey will address.
Having said that, I will submit responses to the survey and hope - for your sake - that Adobe doesn't become the next QuarkExpress.
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onenower commented
@Avinash 非常期待!同时期待在用户操作体验及功能完善方面也能看到更多的进步
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--Anna-- commented
"So far, we have received very little response on the survey form that we floated to understand your pain points better." You have 15+ pages of comments on here. I would start reading those 15+ pages.
Also putting a survey link here would get very little visibility; maybe try adding it to the startup of Illustrator. (But again, I'd start with reading the comments). Thank you.
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Seth commented
@Avinash, thank you for bringing more information to the discussion. I look forward to seeing our complaints get crushed by real improvements.
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Hello everyone,
First off, I want to take a moment to sincerely apologize for not sharing regular updates with you regarding Illustrator’s performance enhancements. I completely understand the frustrations many of you have expressed about our progress (or lack thereof) in making Illustrator a more multithreaded and multiprocessor-friendly application. Your feedback is vital, and it’s clear that we haven’t done a great job of keeping the lines of communication open.I want to assure you all that your voices have been heard loud and clear. We are working on making Illustrator multithreaded and multiprocessor-capable. It's a big undertaking, but it's happening! We genuinely appreciate your passion and ideas about how we can improve Illustrator’s performance, and I will ensure that we keep you updated on our progress moving forward. You deserve to know where we stand and what we’re working on.
I know actions speak louder than words, so I'm looking forward to showing you the improvements we're making. Thanks for sticking with us, and for pushing us to do better.
We've been digging deep into the app's architecture, and I want to give you a peek at what we've been up to. We've identified several tasks that were bogging down the main thread, and I'm happy to report we're making progress in moving these to background threads. Some of the areas we have tackled so far: Crash Recovery, Snapping, Thumbnail generation. These processes are now running on separate background threads, which should start to yield noticeable performance gains. We will be continuing to identify and shift more processes off the main thread.Additionally, we've been focusing on optimizing key areas that users have flagged as pain points. We've made significant improvements in: Image handling, File saving, Applying effects.
Very soon you will see these changes in action. I will share an update once these are in Beta build for you to experience these improvements firsthand. We know there's more work to be done, and we're committed to continuously improving Illustrator's speed and efficiency.
I will continue to update this thread with ongoing progress. I’d also like to invite you to be part of our Customer Advocacy Board (CAB). This CAB will allow for closer engagement, giving you a seat at the table as we explore ways to enhance our product. If you're interested in contributing and being part of the conversation, please let us know through this link: https://survey.adobe.com/jfe/form/SV_czQpFnmd3PWAreS
We appreciate your patience and feedback.
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Michael Wagner commented
Image traced raster images are a big pain point. I've noticed a number of customer files we have performance issues with include very complex vectorized images (likely scaled down from a larger raster image). Even worse when those are used to make a pattern. Performance is also affected if they're hidden behind a clipping path. Often best to rasterize, but that also takes quite some time. I uploaded an example file to the survey last week. It was a small example around 20mb, but we've had nightmare AI files of over 1GB using complex vectorized images.
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Nikolas Karampelas commented
The worst offender is stock vector "watercolor" images that are probably just image traced rasters with no optimization at all. They just trace it, save it and good luck opening that file.
That being said those files are working OK on affinity designer not great, but manageable at least, so yeah it can work better, if the application is good.
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InstyButte Typesetting2 commented
@Seth I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes I get massive raster files that have to be traced and manually cleaned up, then I have to use the shape builder to optimize it. It can get to the point where it takes a minute or two between operations, just waiting for Illustrator to do something. The final file is usually just a few MB, but you wouldn't know it from the way the program responds to future edits. By then it is 100% vector, but still as slow as molasses. I haven't had a crash yet, from that type of scenario, but I know it is only a matter of time.
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Seth commented
Oh, speaking of files you can't upload, I once had to handle a monstrosity that was an image trace of a print resolution wood texture behind a logo. It was something like 48"x36" and was well over a gig and took something like 5 minutes just to open and draw all the layers (there were only a couple). And if you wanted to do anything... you... just... had... ... to... ... w---.... be..... pati-...ent.
That one made Illustrator crash more than once. lol, it was a nightmare.
I imagine Adobe has the means to reproduce such a nonsensical real-world nightmare. But yeah, that's one of the reasons I think Illustrator needs a few more cylinders under the hood, because we don't always get to choose what we work on and sometimes a client (or corporate) hands you a "situation" and you just have to deal with it.
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InstyButte Typesetting2 commented
I would have loved to have uploaded a problem file in the survey, but they are all property of my clients, and I do not have permission to share them.
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Nikolas Karampelas commented
@Neff oh I see, you mean you work with them in a collaboration and don't provide final files. Tough luck, I work with smaller clients and the only time I need to share files are with the printshops that most require PDF anyway.
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onenower commented
1.关于填写调查表,我想大家不愿意填写的原因其实很简单, 就是Illustrator团队不够重视客户的意见,提出的建议可能需要等几年后才会开始解决。目前在论坛中的很多小问题、与日常操作息息相关的问题也不能及时得到解决。
2.长期以来Illustrator卡顿、崩溃、缓慢问题一直都没得到有效改善。
3.希望Illustrator团队接下来一方面尽全力优化性能;一方面解决日常使用(甚至是基础的)息息相关的功能,比如:选择功能,画板操作,统一变换,对齐操作,在不同输入法状态的快捷键问题,等等。
4.与Illustrator相比,photoshop做出了很多高质量的升级:启动速度、移动画布速度、滤镜渲染速度等等都非常快,最近推出的“悬停显示图层边界”功能,“自动设置默认字体大小”等功能都非常实用,解决了日常操作的很多痛点。这些都是值得Illustrator学习的。 -
Neff commented
@nikolas-karampelas that is nice for you, but when my clients (that are also bigger companies) expect me to handle files in AI or PSD because they internally work with that, I can't just tell them to accept PDFs.
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Nikolas Karampelas commented
@Neff just handle out editable PDFs, I don't know which type of client is expecting ai and psd but I don't provide those files, whatever I use I hand out editable PDFs and jpeg/png.
The safest option and nobody complain to me. -
Neff commented
@stuart-chesters In my last tryouts with Affinity, it was in general at least 10 times faster than any Adobe product. The problem still persists in a lack of advanced features compared to Adobe and of course Adobe being the industry standard (monopoly). So when a client comes to you he expects everything to be handled in AI and PSD files, which Affinity doesnt fully support. This is by design from Adobe, as PSD and AI are closed formats, that others need to reverse engineer.
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Stuart Chesters commented
This thread makes me chuckle, as it reminds me of herding cats or as a Yorkshire friend of mine says, 'It's like pushing fog up a ditch with a rake".
That said, I'm glad that we keep on reminding those with the power to make a difference that their product stills falls woefully short and we care about that.
The point I wanted to make was I was genuinely excited as I read through @Seth comment from July 5th outlining what should be possible and a way forward. If only. How great it was to dream for a while about that parallel world where Illustrator got the developer love and dollars it deserves.
I'm also wondering in a genuine attempt to explore alternative solutions, what experience others have had in trying to jump ship to Affinity Designer?
Wishing this community patience, reliable recovery of illustrator crashes and ingenuity in finding work arounds. We're creatives after all!
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InstyButte Typesetting2 commented
It is still horribly slow and laggy for complex illustrations. I have noticed no real improvements in any capacity. Again, I don't need Illustrator to save more power for other tasks. I need it to be responsive, quick, and smooth. I don't think I can fill out any more Adobe surveys without swearing. Fix. The. Performance. Issues. That's all we want.
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Carlos Garro commented
Is this what they call in the US "Gaslighting"?
I believe that Adobe's company vision has recently shifted. It's pretty unfortunate, to be honest. -
Eric Cobain commented
I'm pretty sure I can speak for everyone when I say this new performance update is yet just another bandaid you guys slapped on a dying pig and is not what everyone is asking for.
The problem is in all your products btw. I'm using Premiere right now and previews in 1/4 with high quality turned off with minimal fx, and only using 10% cpu. 3% gpu, 25% memory, is just a nightmare. It's impossible to get a preview in real time without wasting hours. The issue is not addressing this years ago has made it even harder for you to fix because you buried your legacy code in garbage features nobody asked for. Now you have a giant mess that is virtually impossible to tear down and rebuild.
It's too late for Adobe. It would take less time for a competitor to build a new product from scratch while using Adobe as a cautionary tale to avoid the big mistakes.
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EXEC Design commented
Juste installed and tested 28.7: When loading a bit heavier files the interface still freezes and the top menue still fades out to white till AI catches itself again. Exactly like in the current stable release.
Zoom indeed is a bit better (but still far from good - or even smooth). But when I move graphics or vector elements, they still DISSAPEAR which makes them nearly impossible top place. In GPU view I even don't get the vector outlines. Nothing here which blows me away, but honestly didn't expect anything else. So sad, Adobe, so sad...