From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences, then click Printers & Scanners.
- Illustrator User Guide
- Get to know Illustrator
- Introduction to Illustrator
- Workspace
- Workspace basics
- Learn faster with the Illustrator Discover panel
- Create documents
- Toolbar
- Default keyboard shortcuts
- Customize keyboard shortcuts
- Introduction to artboards
- Manage artboards
- Customize the workspace
- Properties panel
- Set preferences
- Touch Workspace
- Microsoft Surface Dial support in Illustrator
- Undo edits and manage design history
- Rotate view
- Rulers, grids, and guides
- Accessibility in Illustrator
- Safe Mode
- View artwork
- Use the Touch Bar with Illustrator
- Files and templates
- Tools in Illustrator
- Tools at a glance
- Select tools
- Navigate tools
- Paint tools
- Text tools
- Draw tools
- Modify tools
- Generative AI (not available in mainland China)
- Quick actions
- Illustrator on the web (beta)
- Illustrator on the web (beta) overview
- Illustrator on the web (beta) FAQ
- Troubleshooting issues FAQ
- Keyboard shortcuts for Illustrator on the web (beta)
- Create and combine shapes on the web
- Add and edit text on the web
- Apply colors and gradients on the web
- Draw and edit paths on the web
- Work with cloud documents on the web
- Invite collaborators to edit on the web
- Illustrator on the iPad
- Introduction to Illustrator on the iPad
- Workspace
- Documents
- Select and arrange objects
- Drawing
- Type
- Work with images
- Color
- Cloud documents
- Basics
- Troubleshooting
- Add and edit content
- Drawing and dimensioning
- Drawing basics
- Edit paths
- Draw pixel-perfect art
- Draw with the Pen, Curvature, or Pencil tool
- Draw simple lines and shapes
- Draw rectangular and polar grids
- Draw and edit flares
- Image Trace
- Simplify a path
- Symbolism tools and symbol sets
- Adjust path segments
- Design a flower in 5 easy steps
- Create and edit a perspective grid
- Draw and modify objects on a perspective grid
- Use objects as symbols for repeat use
- Draw pixel-aligned paths for web workflows
- Measure and plot dimensions
- 3D objects and materials
- Color
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- Select and arrange objects
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- Crop images
- Transform objects
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- Puppet Warp
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- Blend objects
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- Build new shapes with Shaper and Shape Builder tools
- Work with Live Corners
- Enhanced reshape workflows with touch support
- Edit clipping masks
- Live shapes
- Create shapes using the Shape Builder tool
- Global editing
- Type
- Add text and work with type objects
- Create bulleted and numbered lists
- Manage text area
- Fonts and typography
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- Add basic formatting to text
- Add advanced formatting to text
- Import and export text
- Format paragraphs
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- Character and paragraph styles
- Tabs
- Find missing fonts (Typekit workflow)
- Arabic and Hebrew type
- Fonts | FAQ and troubleshooting tips
- Create 3D text effect
- Creative typography designs
- Scale and rotate type
- Line and character spacing
- Hyphenation and line breaks
- Spelling and language dictionaries
- Format Asian characters
- Composers for Asian scripts
- Create text designs with blend objects
- Create a text poster using Image Trace
- Create special effects
- Web graphics
- Drawing and dimensioning
- Import, export, and save
- Import
- Creative Cloud Libraries in Illustrator
- Save and export
- Printing
- Prepare for printing
- Printing
- Automate tasks
- Troubleshooting
Learn how to make Illustrator run quickly and efficiently on Windows and macOS.
Several factors affect how efficiently Adobe Illustrator performs, such as your operating system, hardware configuration, workflow, and selected options. If you notice Illustrator running more slowly than usual, try the techniques provided for optimizing not only Illustrator performance but the performance of your other apps as well.
Before you begin, ensure that you have installed the latest version of Illustrator.
Click the tabs below to view and follow the listed steps to improve your Illustrator performance.
By configuring your operating system to run efficiently, you increase the amount of memory available to apps, which helps them run smoothly. Here are several steps to optimize Windows and macOS and improve Illustrator performance.
The hardware you use affects Illustrator performance: the faster the processor or hard drive, the faster Illustrator can process information. Other hardware enhancements, such as installing additional RAM, using a multiprocessor system, or optimizing and defragmenting drives, can also improve performance.
Choose your operating system and try the steps below to optimize hardware:
Use a faster processor
The speed of your computer's central processing unit (CPU) affects the speed of Illustrator. Because Illustrator manipulates large quantities of data and performs many calculations, its speed depends on the processor's speed. Consider using a computer with a faster processor.
Install additional RAM
If Illustrator has insufficient RAM, it uses hard disk space (virtual memory, scratch disk, or both) to process information. Illustrator is fastest when it can process information in memory without using a hard disk.
Optimize disk space
Here are a few ways to optimize disk space:
- Check your hard disk for errors or defragment files with a third-party disk utility (for example, Norton Utilities). If you're running macOS, the drive must be repaired with a third-party disk utility.
- Save your files to drives with faster access speeds. For example, use an internal hard drive rather than a network server or external drive.
Use a faster processor
The speed of your computer's central processing unit (CPU) affects the speed of Illustrator. Because Illustrator manipulates large quantities of data and performs many calculations, its speed depends on the processor's speed. Consider using a computer with a faster processor.
Install additional RAM
If Illustrator has insufficient RAM, it uses hard disk space (virtual memory, scratch disk, or both) to process information. Illustrator is fastest when it can process information in memory, without using a hard disk.
Optimize disk space
Here are a few ways to optimize disk space:
- Check your hard disk for errors, defragment files, and make the best use of available hard disk space by using the CHKDSK.exe and Disk Defragmenter programs. For more information on Windows, see Improve performance for Windows.
- Save your files to drives with faster access speeds. For example, use an internal hard drive rather than a network server or external drive.
- If you want to save a file to a network or external drive, save the file to an internal hard drive. Then close the file and use Windows Explorer to copy it to the network or external drive.
Use a PostScript printer
For best results when printing from Illustrator, use a PostScript printer. Most non-PostScript printers rely on display information, host computer resources, and proprietary printer drivers to relay print information to the printer. Therefore, they can take much longer to print than a PostScript printer.
The way you work in Illustrator—especially the way you view artwork—can affect Illustrator performance. Here are some ways to use Illustrator features efficiently.
Outline View hides paint attributes, displaying the artwork as unfilled paths. Working in Outline View can speed the display of complex artwork that contains gradients or patterns. Outline View also makes editing objects hidden behind other filled objects easier.
To display an Illustrator document in Outline View, choose View > Outline. To learn more, see View artwork.
You can create custom views of your document. Custom views enable you to quickly change the view mode, magnification, scroll position, and layer options.
To create a custom view of an Illustrator document, set the view attributes you want to save. Choose View > New View and enter a name in the New View dialog box.
You can change the resolution of raster effects to optimize Illustrator performance. To change the resolution of raster effects, do the following:
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In the Resolution pop-up menu, do one of the following:
- Choose Screen if you're editing files and click OK. Illustrator uses a resolution of 72 ppi for raster effects, increasing display speed.
- Choose High if you're printing files and click OK. Illustrator uses a resolution of 300 ppi for raster effects, decreasing printing speed but increasing print quality.
For more information, see About raster effects.
Use the Layers panel to organize and modify the artwork. When you hide layers and thumbnails that contain complex artwork or high-resolution bitmap images, Illustrator redraws the screen faster.
To hide a layer, click the
icon to the left of the layer name. To hide all but the selected layer, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (for macOS) the icon.The Layers panel can display thumbnails for top-level layers, nested layers, groups, and objects. Choose Panel Options from the Layers panel menu and reduce the number of thumbnails.
For more information, see Hide layers.
Overprint Preview provides an "ink preview" that approximates how blending, transparency, and overprinting appear in color-separated output. To enhance performance, avoid using Overprint Preview.
To enable and disable Overprint Preview, choose View > Overprint Preview. To learn more, see About overprinting.
Artboards represent the regions that can contain printable artwork. To optimize performance, consider deleting unused or unnecessary Artboards.
To manage your Artboards, choose Window > Artboards. Select an artboard you want to remove and click Delete. For more information, see Delete artboards.
When you work with an embedded bitmap image and your system doesn't have enough RAM, Illustrator uses hard disk space as a scratch disk. It takes longer to access information on a hard disk than it does to access information in memory. Therefore, using a portion of the hard disk as virtual memory can decrease performance. If you need more memory to work in Illustrator, Adobe recommends installing more RAM.
By default, Illustrator uses the system drive as its primary scratch disk. Change the Illustrator primary scratch disk setting to your fastest hard drive.
To change the scratch disk preference, choose your operating system and do the following:
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Choose Edit > Preferences > Plug-ins & Scratch Disk.
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Choose a hard disk from the Primary pop-up menu. If you work with large images and have more than one hard disk, choose another disk from the Secondary pop-up menu.
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Click OK and restart Illustrator.
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Choose Illustrator > Preferences > Plug-ins & Scratch Disk.
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Choose a hard disk from the Primary pop-up menu. If you work with large images and have more than one hard disk, choose another disk from the Secondary pop-up menu.
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Click OK and restart Illustrator.
Illustrator Document Profiles contain default patterns, gradients, graph designs, colors, color libraries, and brushes that appear in new Illustrator documents. These files also determine zoom level, window size, viewing preferences, and scroll position for new documents. To minimize the file size of new documents, remove unnecessary swatches and brushes from Illustrator's new document profiles.
Templates let you create documents that share common settings and design elements. You can minimize the file size of new documents by removing unnecessary swatches, symbols, graphic styles, and brushes from templates.
For instructions on creating template files, see Files and Templates.
Embedded bitmap images (for example, TIFF, BMP, or Photoshop EPS) can dramatically increase the size of an Illustrator document, causing slower performance. To improve performance, enable the Link option when you place a bitmap image. The Link option references the placed image on the hard disk.
If a service bureau requires embedded images, save a copy of the files. Select Include Linked Files in the Illustrator Native Format Options or EPS Format Options dialog box. For more information, see Import artwork files.
If a document contains linked EPS images with high-resolution previews, Illustrator redraws the screen slower as you edit artwork. To enable Illustrator to redraw the screen more quickly, use low-resolution EPS previews. Choose your operating system and do the following:
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Choose Edit > Preferences > File Handling & Clipboard.
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Select Use Low Resolution Proxy For Linked EPS and click OK.
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Choose Illustrator > Preferences > File Handling & Clipboard.
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Select Use Low Resolution Proxy For Linked EPS and click OK.
The Links Panel Options dialog box includes a Show DCS Transparency Interactions option. If this option is selected, the Links panel displays a yellow icon to identify linked DCS EPS graphics that are transparent or overlap transparent objects. Because this option forces Illustrator to regularly determine if linked EPS files interact with transparency, it can decrease performance.
To disable the Show DCS Transparency Interactions option, do the following:
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Select Windows > Links. From the Links panel menu, choose Panel Options.
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Deselect Show DCS Transparency Interactions and click OK.
The Navigator panel displays a thumbnail view of your current artwork for easy navigation. The processing time required to update the thumbnail each time you change the document depends on the complexity of your artwork. To improve screen redraw speed in a complex document, hide the Navigator panel. Choose Windows and deselect the Navigator.
You can set up custom views to more efficiently zoom to particular areas of your document. For more information, see View artwork.
The Anti-alias Artwork option smooths text and graphics by blending the color of an object's edge pixels with the color of adjacent pixels. However, this process can cause slow screen redraw. To disable this option, choose your operating system and do the following:
A. Anti-aliased artwork when disabled B. Anti-aliased artwork when enabled
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Choose Edit > Preferences > General.
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Deselect Anti-aliased Artwork and click OK.
A. Anti-aliased artwork when disabled B. Anti-aliased artwork when enabled
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Choose Illustrator > Preferences > General.
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Deselect Anti-aliased Artwork and click OK.
The Simplify command reduces the number of anchor points in paths and path shapes, reducing file size and increasing performance. To apply the Simplify command, select the desired path or object and choose Object > Path > Simplify.
For more information on the Simplify command, see Simplify paths.
Smart Guides allow you to create, align, edit, and transform Illustrator objects relative to other objects. If you've many objects in your artwork, Illustrator requires more time to display Smart Guides. To disable Smart Guides, choose View and deselect Smart Guides.
For more information on Smart Guides, see Rulers, grids, and guides.
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