Adobe Software - so buggy and slow

[Ewen Cameron]

Not sure if anyone here uses InDesign, but the wife recently upgraded to InDesign CC 2017 and the speed is really bad. I posted an online video link on the Adobe forum showing the difference in redraw speed, it runs like some old Mac from the 1980's when lots of text boxes are on a page.

link here if you're interested http://sendvid.com/v9pkifw2

The above test is actually lots of text boxes duplicated down the page and then grouped and cut and pasted.

Do you reckon all the hardware and software companies are in on this, surely by now Adobe software should by screaming without any wait whatsoever, I can't believe its just dodgy coding. So do you reckon its a sinister way of making us all upgrade to the very latest machines just so we can use the software?

I mean what the hell does InDesign need in terms of processing power anyway?

The computer performing the above test is getting on a bit now, but can run other software just fine.
4.1 Mac Pro upgraded to 5.1
32GB ram
500GB SSD
3.46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2048 MB

 

[phrehdd]

Seems rather strange you would have such challenges. Have you checked on how to optimize your set up for the given application? I know that with Photoshop, there are certain settings within Photoshop that make a difference on performance with respect to the machine and somewhat, the graphics chipset(s).

 

[Ewen Cameron]

Seems rather strange you would have such challenges. Have you checked on how to optimize your set up for the given application? I know that with Photoshop, there are certain settings within Photoshop that make a difference on performance with respect to the machine and somewhat, the graphics chipset(s).

Sorry I should have said that I had gone through and uninstalled and reinstalled BOTH Adobe InDesign versions just prior to the test, also went through the preferences and disabled any options that had been flagged on the Adobe forum as causing possible slow down, restarted, rebuilt permissions, disabled font management plugins, no other applications running at time of test except Chrome and Mail.

I also received the following email from Adobe after they had asked me to send them the test file in the video...


Thanks,

The document was really useful, we were able to recreate this issue locally via your document.

We will perform required analysis for this issue , and try to make this experience better in future releases.

Please keep on providing such feedback, this always help us in making InDesign a better product.

Regards

-Sumit


Which presumably can only mean one of two options....

1. Oh **** you found out our secret of making InDesign slower on purpose.

2. Yes we constantly release software that has not been tested correctly and just expect the general public to do all the testing for us.

Its not just InDesign, Photoshop runs the fans really high if using the Mac OS video driver, but is fine when using the the Nvidia Driver.

Illustrator 2017 has random crashes and general odd behaviour after running for a while.

So currently I am using 2015 InDesign and Illustrator and only the 2017 version of Photoshop with Nvidia Driver.

I guess now they have changed the model to online only, they don't need to try so hard to get things right.

 

[thejoshhoward]

I have read quite a bit about and have experienced slow downs in InDesign and other CC apps because of CC Libraries. Disabling that "feature" and removing it from all of my palettes made a significant performance improvement for me.

 

[robgendreau]

Yes, probably they have decided to deliberately slow down their software just to annoy you. Maybe if you wrapped the machine in foil...

But seriously there's this issue: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2234580

 

[Ewen Cameron]

General slowness is something I have become used to with InDesign, but my test above really shows something strange is going on, like it's checking each text box before drawing it on the screen, disabling the CC libraries makes no difference.
In fact I have just opened InDesign 2017 and disabled virtually all the 'extra' features, so it is running on the most basic settings available (including Fast display) and disabling anti alias text.

It makes no difference whatsoever to the speed of the redraw, its exactly the same as the video above.

Adobe have already seen the file and have acknowledged it does the same on their systems.
[doublepost=1481145014][/doublepost]

Yes, probably they have decided to deliberately slow down their software just to annoy you. Maybe if you wrapped the machine in foil...

But seriously there's this issue: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2234580

Yes i've read that one thanks, you will also see a link to my video towards the end of that thread.

 

[monokakata]

It's been a few weeks since I finished my last InDesign project (a book). I do remember feeling as though all was not well with CC 2017 (latest version) but nothing was as bad as what your video showed. It just wasn't snappy and I did feel as though it wasn't responding to my menu clicks and mouse work as well as it should have. I was on a deadine so I just forged ahead and got it done.

I'm starting the next book for the publisher now. It's not visually complex (no tables or anything like that -- just text without any fancy formatting) but I'll keep a careful eye out for problems and make notes.

I hate to go on "feeling," but as I said, ID 2017 doesn't feel as lithe as 2015 did.

I'm on a 5k iMac with i7, 24 gb, SSD, and M295x.

 

[Ewen Cameron]

Yep, what the video actually shows are groups of text boxes (each segment is a separate text box), not actually tables. The artwork is based on a document I was given to update and was originally produced by someone else. I just want to make sure people don't compare the redraw speed of real tables to the slow speed of grouped text boxes shown in the video.

I just find it incredible that a bunch of text boxes grouped together would redraw more quickly on the old Mac I used running PageMaker over 20 years ago.

You can try it yourself, it would be interesting to see how many others have the same slow down, although as mentioned Adobe has agreed with me that this is an issue (but how the hell did it get past testing).

Just make a new A4 page, write a word and then duplicate it about 10 times horizontally, group those words together and then duplicate them down the page about 20 - 30 times and see if it really starts to slow down. Then group everything and do a cut and paste and then let me know if its as slow as my video.

 

[monokakata]

I'll do that later today, and report.

Depending on where you are you might not see it -- I'm at GMT -10 and your use of "A4" suggests you might be in the UK or Europe.

 

[monokakata]

Here's what I did.

Created a single text box with 11 words in it, on one line.
Duplicated that text box 22 times on the page.
Grouped those boxes, copied and pasted to the next page.
I could see the filling-in as it happened, bottom to top, but it only took to the count of one. Definitely not as slow as in your video.

 

[Ewen Cameron]

Yup in the UK, good to hear you saw the same issue, I think the reason the slow-down wasn't as bad with you was because you only had 22 text boxes, basically the more text boxes on a page the slower it gets, the amount of words is less relevant to the amount of text boxes. So InDesign 2017 is pretty useless for doing catalogue work, perhaps they don't expect people to use InDesign to produce work for print anymore, it wouldn't surprise me.

Edit update: I changed the video at the beginning of the thread to show a more simple version - this is running on the same Mac, with all prefs set to the most basic. The last cut and paste is weirdly a bit faster, but no idea why.

 

[MacGizmo]

I produce 2 catalogs a month with no speed issues at all. Now that's all perception. No speed issues compared to what (in my case)? Compared to the previous version, CC2017 is definitely faster. But that doesn't mean it's "fast."

I have the GPU setting turned on (on the 5K iMac, but it's not available on regular iMacs that are less than 4K). I have Display Performance set to Typical with Anti-Aliasing turned on. Interface Options I have set to High-Quality with Immediate Live Screen Redraw.

That being said, in the catalogs I produce, I don't have more than say 8 or 9 text boxes per page anyway, so I would likely never run across this problem.

 

[smacrumon]

Not sure if anyone here uses InDesign, but the wife recently upgraded to InDesign CC 2017 and the speed is really bad. I posted an online video link on the Adobe forum showing the difference in redraw speed, it runs like some old Mac from the 1980's when lots of text boxes are on a page.

link here if you're interested http://sendvid.com/v9pkifw2

The above test is actually lots of text boxes duplicated down the page and then grouped and cut and pasted.

Do you reckon all the hardware and software companies are in on this, surely by now Adobe software should by screaming without any wait whatsoever, I can't believe its just dodgy coding. So do you reckon its a sinister way of making us all upgrade to the very latest machines just so we can use the software?

I mean what the hell does InDesign need in terms of processing power anyway?

The computer performing the above test is getting on a bit now, but can run other software just fine.
4.1 Mac Pro upgraded to 5.1
32GB ram
500GB SSD
3.46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2048 MB

Hello there my friend. You forgot to mention that InDesign, and the interface of a lot of Adobe products, hasn't change much since the 1900's. Those menus!!! Long and deep and impossible to find things even as an experienced user. Those dialogue boxes!!! Couldn't be more inconsistent. It's almost as if 50 different teams wrote 50 different parts of the software and each got a menu slot. No harmony. Just a mess.
A rethink is desperately needed for Adobe products. I suspect a lot of it is legacy code and an unwillingness to change it because Adobe have a market still.
Let's usher in new software packages with modern interfaces, a set of concise but powerful tools and a slimline set of menus. Thank you Adobe, but you're time is up. Goodbye Flash, goodbye the rest.

 

[Ewen Cameron]

I produce 2 catalogs a month with no speed issues at all. Now that's all perception. No speed issues compared to what (in my case)? Compared to the previous version, CC2017 is definitely faster. But that doesn't mean it's "fast."

I have the GPU setting turned on (on the 5K iMac, but it's not available on regular iMacs that are less than 4K). I have Display Performance set to Typical with Anti-Aliasing turned on. Interface Options I have set to High-Quality with Immediate Live Screen Redraw.

That being said, in the catalogs I produce, I don't have more than say 8 or 9 text boxes per page anyway, so I would likely never run across this problem.

Exactly the point I was making earlier then, its like they have slowed everything down to give people a reason to use the GPU setting and therefore have to upgrade to the newest 5K iMacs. Why else would the same 'extremely simple' document above draw so much quicker in InDesign 2015 compared to InDesign 2017?

If InDesign is still around in 10 years time, it probably still wont be any faster. InDesign CS1 was relatively quick, but I guess that was when they were competing against Quark.

It's just some boxes on a page for Goodness sake, I would have laughed my head off 15 years ago if I could have looked into the future and seen layout software in 2017 drawing boxes on a page this slowly in an age of supercomputers as standard!

I can play Fallout 4 on pretty high settings with a fairly decent frame rate, but when it comes to a few text boxes on a page using InDesign 2017 my computer acts like a ZX Spectrum.

 

[MacGizmo]

I must admit, I've never run across the problem in your video with text boxes, but I HAVE had the exact same problem with pasted vector paths. Too many paths on a page and you run into the same issue.

Like I said earlier, I've found InDesign to be getting faster with each release, but that doesn't mean I think it's fast. It's absolutely the clunkiest app I've ever run. Ever. And that's going back a long, long time.

I've made a pretty good living using Adobe's apps in my career. And I love ID, PS and AI for what they do. But as soon as Affinity releases their ID competitor (Affinity Publisher) to go along with the existing Photos and Designer apps, I'm likely going to make the switch (providing the Publisher app is up to par).

 

[Ewen Cameron]

Just tried my video test on an old copy of Quark 8.5 I have, the text boxes duplicate and cut and paste instantly.

I will keep an eye on Affinity Publisher, do you know how much will it be?

 

[MechaSpanky]

Evan,

I too am excited for the release of Affinity Publisher. I have been using Affinity Designer & Affinity Photo since they were first released and they are great. Affinity Photo 1.5 added some really great new features and I love Designer. The Affinity team is always adding new features all the time. I would guess that the price of Publisher would be $50 or at least around $50 as that was the price of both Designer and Photo. Don't expect Publisher to be released anytime soon though. They will release it as a beta first sometime in 2017 so it might not be ready for actual production work until the first release, which could be in 2018 (no one knows). Affinity is offering some great software that is powerful enough to do actual production work at a great price and with no subscription.

Mecha