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MDD867 · Nov 28, 2005, 09:05 AM

I just spent a ridiculous amount of money to upgrade to Creative Suite 2 and to a Quad G5 and noticed that Illustrator CS2 uses only maximum 25% of my computer's processing power.

Using activity monitor I can see that Illustrator never goes beyond 100%, whereas Photoshop goes all the way to 400% usage when needed.

Saving/opening complex graphics still takes way too long, as also using 300ppi effect like outer glow. It's so frustrating to know that 3/4 of the processing power just is just idle.

And adobe says Illustrator CS2 is a professional app with multiple processor support?!

What is Adobe going to do about this? Editing complex drawings is still painfully slow even if I have a Quad G5 with 4.5GB RAM... I'm so mad at Adobe right now...

Any suggestions?

production_coordinator · Nov 28, 2005, 09:49 AM

Call Adobe. Was it slower than your previous computer?

MDD867 · Nov 28, 2005, 10:02 AM

The Adobe support here in Finland won't probably even know what a Quad G5 is but maybe I'll try...

No, it isn't slower but it's only 1/4 as fast as it should be.

MDD867 · Nov 28, 2005, 10:37 AM

I just called Adobe technical support about this and in short, their response was a big f*** off:

" There is nothing that we or you can do to solve this, we're sorry "
" Maybe in the future there will be a better support for multiple processors / multiple cores but we can't give you any details "
" Use the feature request form on our website "

production_coordinator · Nov 28, 2005, 10:59 AM

That's the trouble with buying the latest and greatest, you must wait for the software companies to catch up.

Most programs aren't designed for 2 processors... and to be fair to Adobe, the software was released before the hardware was available. Adobe is just getting the hardware... to expect them to have optimized in a little over a month or so is somewhat unrealistic.

Hopefully when we move over to x86, the raw speed of Photoshop will be on par with Windows.

NOTE: I would NEVER change to Windows for the raw speed.

bluedog · 09:25 PM

Not having multiple processor support that takes real advantage of the extra processors by Adobe is definitely not just a month long notice!

They've [Apple] had dual processor macs since 1997 or 1998? OK, since going to OSX has been more recent with decent support for more than a single processor. But these machines are doing quite well with video editing and taking advantage of the power of more than a single processor.

I am astonished to hear that it is using only one processor (25%) for your particular needs.

I can't imagine how much time the developers have put into the new 'whizbang' features when improving performance through SMP or other methods to take advantage of multiple processors would help the bottom line for their customers -- the professional graphic artists.

Arg!!!

himself · Nov 28, 2005, 01:42 PM

As far as Adobe software goes, the Photoshop team is the only one that seems to be on the ball, where Mac software is concerned. The Illustrator team seems to not even care anymore... the quality of Illustrator has been dropping since version 9 was released. It's slow, they leave out obvious features/commands, and the software has just been plain buggy. It's incredibly sad, and infuriating. I have to say this though — it's a sh!tload better than Macromedia's software.

::maroma:: · Nov 28, 2005, 07:49 PM

Yes I wish Adobe would start caring about their Mac user base more. Illustrator is just depressing to use now. Knowing how it used to be (version 8 anyone?), now when I use it I just get sad. Adobe has always been a big player, but now that they've squashed all real competition they've gotten very lazy. They don't have to make the best products they can possibly make anymore. They just need to make them good enough. And instead of enticing customers to upgrade with better performance, revolutionary features and things like that, they force us to upgrade because the new versions are incompatible with the old.

Bah! It stirs up feelings I have for Quark (don't get me started). I've always spoken more highly of Adobe than their competition, but lately that's not working too well. I wish they'd stop making all those other little apps like VersionCue and Bridge and just focus solely on the big 3 (and Acrobat). They also need to have their respective teams TALK to one another for god's sake! I hate it when Photoshop has a great feature or keyboard shortcut, only to find that Illustrator and InDesign have nothing of the sort, or something completely different.

Come on Adobe, its time to refocus!

iT4c0 · Nov 28, 2005, 10:09 PM

i've always thought that illustrator never meant to be a processor hungry application. I use illustrator cs2 everyday at work and I noticed what makes differenence from a complex graphics is the memory. The more memory you have the faster illustrator is to deal with all the mesh or gradient info.

lothar56 · Nov 29, 2005, 08:10 PM

Originally Posted by MDD867

4.5GB RAM...

You're saying he needs more???

production_coordinator · Nov 29, 2005, 08:52 PM

Originally Posted by bluedog

Not having multiple processor support that takes real advantage of the extra processors by Adobe is definitely not just a month long notice!

They've had dual processor macs since 1997 or 1998? OK, since going to OSX has been more recent with decent support for more than a single processor. But these machines are doing quite well with video editing and taking advantage of the power of more than a single processor.

I am astonished to hear that it is using only one processor (25%) for your particular needs.

I can't imagine how much time the developers have put into the new 'whizbang' features when improving performance through SMP or other methods to take advantage of multiple processors would help the bottom line for their customers -- the professional graphic artists.

Arg!!!

I was talking about quad CPU support. Dual cpu support has been lacking since the first dual cpu Macs.

While Adobe is to blame for much, I think Apple also has to take some of the responsibility. Up until Tiger, Apple didn't have a "stable" API (on that was guaranteed by Apple no to change every OS X upgrade) Why would Adobe spend time optimizing the Application for OS X only to have some feature change... requiring fundamental changes to the program? It's also known that OS X doesn't multi-task all that well. It's getting better, but back in the old days of OS X, the other CPU was dead weight.

sauria · Dec 4, 2005, 06:23 PM

OSX

has always multi-tasked well -- OS 9 did not!

production_coordinator · Dec 6, 2005, 02:56 PM

Originally Posted by sauria

OSX

has always multi-tasked well -- OS 9 did not!

I would say OS X has "average" multitasking at best.

bluedog · Dec 6, 2005, 03:04 PM

Well, average may be a relative term

I have a dual 533mHz machine. This thing still performs well even though faster machines have come along. I've been running OSX on it since pre-Beta and it has gotten *faster* with many of the revisions (all 'zippier' jokes aside).

I don't think a 533mHz machine would have had the longevity of the dual I have. Of course I have 2GB of RAM a faster IDE card, faster video card to upgrade the components. The real thing keeping this thing I believe is the memory bus speed.

Of course it depends on usage, and its now long in the tooth for iMovie and video editing. Adobe Illustrator is slow, and Photoshop is slow when saving an 800MB file. But its surprisingly effective for what it is.