11 Replies Latest reply: Dec 15, 2010 4:45 PM by RDP RSS

    InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow

    Windytech-iAUKfq Community Member

      Hey everyone, I know this issue has been reported multiple times, but I'm bumping it by giving it a new thread. At work we just installed CS5, and InDesign is still horribly slow - almost to the point that it is humorous (not really). Anyhow, I've turned off/disabled the live redraw, disabled spell check, live preflighting, and pretty much EVERYTHING I could think of that might slow it down. CS3 runs smooth as silk, even when editing the same document. Has anyone found a fix? Does anyone know if there will be a fix from Adobe?

       

      I understand you have to have a decently fast system, and ours are brand-new iMacs. They are 2.8Ghz Quad-Cores, with 4GB of RAM, and the best video card. That should be more than enough power. And, having the same document run fine on CS3 makes me really think it's just a CS5 issue.

       

      Any help would be greatly appreciated...it's not fun having some expensive software on my computer that I can't even use. I've tried everything!

        • 1. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
          BobLevine CommunityMVP

          The best advice I can give you is to contact Adobe. While there are several people reporting these types of issues, it's not widespread and the more information Adobe gets from its customers the better the chance of finding out what the affected systems have in common.

           

          I'm sorry, but I have nothing better to offer.

           

          Bob

          • 2. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
            Eugene Tyson CommunityMVP

            Running InDesign CS5 on Windows XP with 2gb RAM and a 2.13ghz dual core processor.

             

            Only experience slowness rarely - when sometimes using the Span/Split column feature, or a lot information on the page using Overprint preview.

             

            I've one double page spread with a gradient in the background spanning spread (created in InDesign) that is a bit slow. But nothing unworkable.

             

             

            I've done enough jobs in CS5 now to realise there is no consistency when InDesign CS5 slows down. But it really hasn't slowed down enough for me to be too concerned.

            • 3. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
              MS-MacTech

              Hi, Windytech! We had a similar problem with our CS5 install. We did two specific things that immediately sped up INDD. Hopefully one or both of these will help you out.

               

              First, in the PREFERENCES panel, go to INTERFACE and set Live Screen Drawing to DELAYED.

               

              While still in the PREFERENCES panel, go to DISPLAY PERFORMANCE and set Default View to TYPICAL or FAST.

               

               

              Second, go to WINDOW > OUTPUT > PREFLIGHT to open the PREFLIGHT panel. Click the triangle in the top right corner of the panel and uncheck ENABLE PREFLIGHT FOR ALL DOCUMENTS.

               

              These sped up InDesign considerably.

              • 4. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
                Jeremy bowmangraphics Community Member

                Hi Eugene,

                 

                Only experience slowness rarely - when sometimes using the Span/Split column feature

                 

                I'm not sure what you mean by the Span/Split column feature -- would you mind saying a bit more?

                 

                A week ago I had the experience of CS5 wading through treacle (as my blood pressure waded through the roof) and I'm not sure how it started, nor how it ended (although thankfully it did end). Changing the display performance made surprisingly little difference -- still treacle even with grey rectangles everywhere.

                • 5. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
                  Eugene Tyson CommunityMVP

                  Start a document with 2 column text frame.

                   

                  Insert some text

                   

                  Make a heading and give it a style

                   

                  Then in the style settings go to the Span Split columns and choose Span 2 columns

                   

                  Now make a whole document using this feature regularly with lots of graphics and stuff.

                   

                   

                  InDesign, for me goes to a crawl. In so much that I had to remove the span columns and revert to the anchored text frame across columns instead.

                  • 6. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
                    BobLevine CommunityMVP

                    Another thing to try is to disable thumbnails in the pages panel.

                     

                    Bob

                    • 7. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
                      Jeremy bowmangraphics Community Member

                      I bow to your greater experience, but my (completely untrained) instinct is that there's something going wrong with columns, somewhere.

                      • 8. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
                        Eugene Tyson CommunityMVP

                        I acutally like having that on - but I guess there have to be sacrafices with such a machine.

                        • 9. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
                          Andy Eline

                          Thanks for the tips MS-MacTech. These really did the trick. One of the designers here was ready to throw in the towel and revert back to using InDesign CS4 rather than fight the slowness (on a brand spanking new machine, no less). Saved the day!

                          • 10. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
                            MS-MacTech Community Member

                            My pleasure, Andy. I am glad that it helped out!


                            • 11. Re: InDesign CS5 Ridiculously Slow
                              RDP Community Member

                              I have posted before about this subject and have been through hoops trying to fix this problem and nothing seems to work. I have upgraded my 2 6 month old Mac Pro's to 12 gig ram, installed ATI Radeon 5870 cards to little or no effect. What I have done is identified the problem, or so I think but others can try this out. I started with a new doc and placed a couple of images. As I moved the images around the bezier  handles re-appered instantly, as they should. I then placed more images and all was ok. Then I made drop shadows which slowed the whole thing down. The bezier handles were so slow coming back that if I moved the mouse to the next image it dragged that image with it. I deleted the drop shadows which improved things only slightly. The point of this is that I believe ID has problems with transparencies which only Adobe can fix but until they get out of denial nothing will happen.