1 2 Previous Next 43 Replies Latest reply: Feb 16, 2012 12:08 AM by ohcm9 RSS

    Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?

    JWH-NIRC Community Member

      InDesign CS5 takes from  5 to 20 times longer to move objects around the screen than CS3, even on a very fast PC. Did 5.5 fix this or just make slight improvements? We want to buy a site license to move up to 5.5, but not if it will be slower than CS3 was. In that case, we are happy to forego the other improvements, since the speed of working is a major concern.

        • 1. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
          Stix Hart Community Member

          That's what trials are for...  But first of all have you tried changing your live screen drawing prefrence to delayed or never?

          • 2. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
            JWH-NIRC Community Member

            We tried all the "tricks" suggested, but the improvement was only minor in CS5, and in any case we really don't want to forfeit the fast live screen drawing that we have become accustomed to with CS3.

                 Sorry, but I am not sure what the reference to trials are for. Do you mean we should download a trial? Yes, if there are no replies, we will do that. But frankly, it is a little disconcerting not to see any mention in the advertisements about the update that this problem (which has been mentioned often) has been addressed.

            • 3. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
              Stix Hart Community Member

              Yes I did mean download a trial, available here.  To say that the problem was fixed would be to admit there was a problem in the first place...  I've never seen anything officially to acknowledge that many users find CS5 slow compared to CS3, maybe with the latest specced computers it isn't?

              • 4. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                JWH-NIRC Community Member

                Here is just one of the users who found it slow: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/663177. And another one: http://forums.adobe.com/message/3142010

                We have spoken to people locally who use the latest MAC and PC computers with CS5, and they all report the same frustrations.

                • 5. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                  John Hawkinson CommunityMVP

                  Please be a lot more clear.

                  The users in both of those threads seem to have solved their problem

                   

                  Did you turn off "Live Screen Redraw"?

                  • 6. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                    JWH-NIRC Community Member

                    Yes, not only did we turn Live Screen Redraw to NEVER, but we chose FAST for all the screen options. When I open a page of text from our journals in CS5, it took 4 seconds to move a frame. The same frame with the same material moved all but instantaneously in CS3—and that is with Live Screen Redraw on and the best quality screen option. With pictures, CS5 is even slower.

                      This is running both on Windows 7 with 4 gig of memory and nothing else open.

                    • 7. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                      P Spier CommunityMVP

                      JWH-NIRC wrote:

                       

                      in any case we really don't want to forfeit the fast live screen drawing that we have become accustomed to with CS3.

                       

                      CS3 did not have Live Screen Drawing. Setting to delayed would simulate the behavior of CS3.

                      • 8. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                        JWH-NIRC Community Member

                        I don't want to be impertinent, but my original question was whether the actual speed of moving things around the screen at the highest screen performance is any closer to CS3 in 5.5 than it was in 5. We have a lot of programs to purchase on a limited budget, and I was wondering if regular users had any input. The input from users on CS5 was, as you will see by clicking on the links, decidedly negative, and we did not purchase it.

                           I thought that maybe, with CS 5.5 out now, there might be some reaction one way or the other—especially since the company notices on the update did not say anything about the problem having been addressed. The "workarounds" are, to be frank, not very good advertisement. The suggestion of forfeiting the best screen quality to compensate for a speed problem leaves the impression of having one's back against the wall. And so, to repeat, I wanted to hear whether all those who complained out 5 being slow were responding favorably to 5.5 on that count. If so, THAT would e great advertisement.

                        • 9. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                          P Spier CommunityMVP

                          You aren't being impertinent, but I can tell you that in my expereince here there is no difference in how objects move between CS3 and CS5 (or th4 limited amount of use I've given to 5.5), when Live Screen Drawing is set to delayed. I run Windows XP on relatively fast quad-core machine and a dual-core laptop, both with dedicated video cards with at least 512 mb of dedicted vRAM.

                          • 10. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                            P Spier CommunityMVP

                            And my default view settings are High Quality Display...

                            • 11. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                              Stix Hart Community Member

                              I assumed from your original question that you had CS5.  Never go off complaints on this forum as a reason not to purchase.  As has been pointed out already the other posters fixed their problem.  Yes they had to disable a CS5 feature but only one feature out of many many others.  And for every person who had the issue and posted here there was probably a few thousand who did not have the issue and we didn't hear from.  I'll say it again, it is a very statistically dubious way to see if a release is any good, try it yourself, on a non-production machine on non critical work, for 30 days.

                              • 12. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                     It took me a little time, but I installed a trial of CS5.5 on the fastest computer I could find that already has CS3 on it. And, sure enough, with a small file of graphics and text, there was no difference in speed with the "live screen rewrite" set to DELAYED or NEVER.

                                     Then I took one of the typical, text-intensive files we create for typesetting our books and journals—48 pages, full of footnotes, but in this case no graphics or other linked items. In CS3, I could manipulate text frames instantaneously,resizing, moving, etc. When I opened the same file in CS 5.5, with nothing else open and the computer dedicated only to that task, it took an average of 4 full seconds to manipulate the text frames. Editing the text was also considerably slower than CS3 (which was still instantaneous), even with all the screen settings down to the lower.

                                     Just to be sure it wasn't just this one file, I created a new one from scratch, with identical details, in CS5 and CS3. Same results.

                                     I would be happy to post the file along if anyone there wants to see what I mean. But there is nothing "peculiar" about the file or the data, in the sense that we have been working with these kinds of files in InDesign ever since we shifted away from Quark 8 years ago, and have used it for thousands of pages of books and journals.

                                     In short, I have yet to be persuaded that CS 5 and CS 5.5 can emulate CS 3 when it comes to speed—at least not for text-intensive typesetting.

                                • 13. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                  P Spier CommunityMVP

                                  Are you opening the CS3 file in CS5/5.5? If so, try exporting a .inx file from CS3, then open that instead.

                                  • 14. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                    John Hawkinson CommunityMVP

                                    If you're really having this level of problem, you'd better work with Adobe to get it fixed or start looking at a Quark future.

                                    http://adobe.com/go/supportportal.

                                    • 15. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                      Stix Hart Community Member

                                      It's already been stated that they get the same results with a file created from scratch which negates the possibility that it might be that type of issue...

                                       

                                      To the OP, what are the specs of the machine you are putting it on?

                                      • 16. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                        JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                             You are right about the fact that a new file created from scratch was the only sure way to test the difference. The results were exactly the same.

                                             As for the OS, I am now back on my own computer where I do a lot of typesetting. It has an Intel core i5 CPU at 2.4 GHz, and 4 gig of RAM.…But surely, if the problem has been duplicated on several computers at our research center, and also on the latest MAC with a colleague, then getting a new computer is not the way to go.

                                        • 17. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                          P Spier CommunityMVP

                                          But was the file created from scratch in CS5? It's not clear from the previous posts if you used the very same file (made from scratch) to test both CS3 and CS5. You would need TWO files to do the test properly.

                                          • 18. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                            JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                            Sorry if I was not clear. Both files were created from scratch, with the data "dumped in" from the same MS Word file.

                                            • 19. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                              P Spier CommunityMVP

                                              I don't see the kinds of delays here that you experinece (not saying yours aren't real, just I've never seen them) so I don't have much to go on. Have you already turned off page thumbnails (and no, I don't think this is a good solution)?

                                               

                                              Is there anything beyond plain text in the word file that might be supported in CS5, but not CS3, like cross-references?

                                               

                                              Have you looked for an updated video driver?

                                              • 20. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                                If you can give me a mail address, I will send you the file that I have used as an example. If it works on your machine (it does not on ANY of ours, PC or MAC), then there is indeed something wrong with all of ours... I adjusted the text with nonsense words, but it is from a published journals so I would prefer to send it privately for your consideration, if you agree.

                                                • 21. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                  P Spier CommunityMVP

                                                  Happy to take a look.


                                                  • 22. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                    P Spier CommunityMVP

                                                    Sorry for the long delay...

                                                     

                                                    Jim sent me a test file, and I've been playing with it for the last 15 minutes or so. I don't know if this is good or bad news, but it behaves badly here, too. A similar annotated file of approximately the same length from my own collection shows no slowdown at all.

                                                     

                                                    Some of the things I've done to Jim's file include removing unused styles, substituting Minion Pro for Mincho on the off chance it was a font problem, and exporting to .idml. Non of these have made a difference in performance in CS5.5. The .idml opened in CS4 behaves normally, but is slow in CS5 and CS5.5.

                                                     

                                                    Jim, would you be interested in looking at my file for comparison?

                                                    • 23. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                      JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                                      Sure, I'll be happy to have a look at it. By the way, I cleaned up a lot of the "fancy" stuff from the stylesheets and eliminated all the proprietary fonts that were in the original, to make the sample file as clean as possible. Also, I thought the culprit might be with the “automatic numbering” of  the footnotes (Sonar InSequence 9), but when I removed all the notse and the  plug-in, it didn’t make any difference. Incidentally, the  automatic footnoting of InDesign does not give us the control  we need, nor does the one that Virginia Systems offers as a plug-in, so we have  always used the linked frames. I am not sure if this is part of the problem or  not, but it is certainly something we would not like to give up.

                                                      • 24. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                        P Spier CommunityMVP

                                                        It's on it's way.

                                                         

                                                        I'd be curious to know if a really "plain vanilla" file behaves similarly on your end.

                                                         

                                                        I'm going to send Matthew Laun a note about this. I suspect there's some sort of interaction with your plugins, though the .idml route didn't speed things up here.

                                                        • 25. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                          JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                                          I did have a look at it and it worked fine on my computer. I also eliminated all your footnotes and added our style footnote boxed for about 30 pages, and this too worked fine. I am going to try once more (tomorrow) to set up a new file without basing it on anything from  CS3 (template, text, styles, etc) and see if that does the trick. If so, it means that the problem lies in the importation of some elements by opening a file from CS3. that would not entirely be good news, since it means not being able to work on older files, but at least it would identify the problem for a future fix.

                                                                But I am getting ahead of myself.

                                                          • 26. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                            P Spier CommunityMVP

                                                            Opening CS3 files directly can definitely be flakey. Open your template in CS3, export to .inx, and open that in CS5 or 5.5, then save as a new template and try that.

                                                            • 27. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                              John Hawkinson CommunityMVP

                                                              Oof.

                                                               

                                                              (Peter is right that conversions of files from older versions can have problems. And it sure sounds like that is what the trigger of the problem here. But it is still a bug that someone should kick Adobe over, or at least it seems that way. http://adobe.com/go/supportportal)

                                                               

                                                              Well, I spent more time than I should have looking at this file and drew only fragmentary conclusions.

                                                              There is something wrong with some of the text frames or other page elements in your document, and it is not just one of them.

                                                               

                                                              I did this on a Mac, so Windows folks will have to adjust the process.

                                                              I took your file (thanks for emailing it!) and exported it to IDML, which makes it editable, and opened the IDML and confirmed it that was still broken.

                                                               

                                                              Then, I ran the following:

                                                               

                                                              $ mkdir A
                                                              $ cd A
                                                              $ unzip -x ../A.idml
                                                              $ i=0; while :; do i=`expr $i + 1`; zip -r ../A$i.idml .; echo $i; read x; done
                                                              

                                                               

                                                              And that script unzips the IDML file, and then every time you hit return in the window, it zips up the contents and saves it as a new IDML file,

                                                              A1.idml, A2.idml, A3.idml, etc. It was handy.

                                                               

                                                              Then I started editing the IDML, starting with designmap.idml. Basically I concluded that with everything commented out of your document

                                                              except for any of the <idPkg:Spread src="Spreads/Spread_u19a.xml"/> -type tags,  the problem was still visible. (IDML has the nice property that if you omit any definitions or references to things, InDesign chooses "reasonable" defaults.)

                                                               

                                                              Unfortunately it becomes tricky to test for it.

                                                              I exported your main story as InDesign Tagged Text (B.txt), and when opening versions of the IDML where I had editted out your story reference, I was able to place the indesign tagged text and replicate or not replicate the problem.

                                                               

                                                              I found that if I auto-placed B.txt in a text frame of its own, autoflowing into new pages, then Indesign worked great.

                                                              But if I flowed it into the existing frames, then it became a performance pig.

                                                               

                                                              Anyhow, it took me an embarassingly large number of divide-and-conquer divisions and some backtracking to reach this conclusion.

                                                              So it might be in error.

                                                               

                                                              But I guess the way to track this down involves making divide-and-conquer modifications to all the Spread files in parallel, because they are probably all generated with the same properties and it is one of those properties that is causing the problem.

                                                               

                                                              This is a bit more work than I'm willing to put in, but I'd probably make a single spread file template and generate all the remaining spread files from it, thus making it easy to make a change in all the spread files at once.

                                                               

                                                              I thought I almost found the problem by eyeballing your spread file against a clean one. All of your frames have Vertical Justification turned on, which I convinced myself was the problem. Turns out I was wrong, the problem happens without it turned on. Though I can kind of see why that might cause more calculation when text changes.

                                                               

                                                              Incidently, resetting all the frames to top justification is accomplished with this 2-line script:

                                                               

                                                              var ts=app.activeDocument.textFrames; for (var i=0; i<ts.length; i++) {
                                                                ts[i].textFramePreferences.verticalJustification = VerticalJustification.TOP_ALIGN;
                                                              }
                                                              

                                                               

                                                              So good luck with that.

                                                              • 28. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                                                Well, I went and saved the CS3 file as idx and then imported it into CS5. Empty, everything moved around fine. As soon as I copied the text from the offending file  (auto-flowing all but the first page), there was a major slowdown. And when I added the footnote frame, we were back to where we were before. Same slowdown. I then deleted all the text and all the paragraph and character styles and copied in a Word file, pasting it again and again until I filled up all the frames. Same problem.

                                                                • 29. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                  P Spier CommunityMVP

                                                                  Are you using Copy/paste, or File > Place to get the text into the file? If not already using Place, does that make a difference?

                                                                   

                                                                  Certainly disappointing that the .inx conversion didn't help. How long would it take to make a test template from scratch in CS5 or 5.5?

                                                                   

                                                                  I would also say you should be reporting this to your plugin vendor.

                                                                  • 30. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                    JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                                                    I tried inputting text from another file into the template, but it was too short, so I pasted it again and again to fill it. I also tried pasting  the same text from the offending CS5 file. The plugin in question was not installed into the trial version of CS5.5

                                                                       This weekend I will try to import templates and files from other books and journals made in CS3 to see how it works. Anyway, I am relieved to know that there are people thinking this through along with me. We really DO want to update our fleet of computers, but right now the staff are shaking their heads as they follow this discussion.

                                                                    • 31. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                      P Spier CommunityMVP

                                                                      Jim,

                                                                       

                                                                      I've got your new files, and I've managed to more or less convert the CS3 version to CS5 (It should open and work OK in 5.5). You spoke of templates, but what you sent are documents, not templates, and there seems to be some sort of corruption in the footnotes. Don't know if this is a result of the plugin, or the Quark origins of the file. Best practice with Quark conversions is to immediately export to .inx or .idml to clean them up.

                                                                       

                                                                      A template is just a framework on which you would build a document, and it would contain only Master pages, swatches, styles and static elements.

                                                                       

                                                                      In any case, here's what I did:

                                                                       

                                                                      I opened the CS3 version (missing plugins and some missing fonts here) and I exported the main text thread to InDesign Tagged Text, then did the same for the notes. Next I deleted all but the first three pages from the document (So I retained the chapter opeing page and the first regular spread), then deleted text frames on these pages. I saved this as a .indt template file. I exported this template file to .inx.

                                                                       

                                                                      I opened the template .inx file in CS5 (same missing plugins and fonts), the placed the main text by holding the Alt key to flow text onto the start page and leave the overset loaded inthe cursor, then the Shift key to autoflow from the second page to the end. I adjusted the frame heights on the first three pages to accomodate notes, placed the notes notes story, leaving it overset at page three (too much work for me to figure out 40-odd pages of starting and stopping the notes, and the file is performing normally). I did get what might be a clue to the problem when I placed the notes:

                                                                      TaggedTextError.png

                                                                       

                                                                      But I was able to press continue and place the story. I have no idea what the reset button does or why it's there in the screen capture -- it says cancel in ID, so this must be something odd about the capture.

                                                                       

                                                                      I'm sure there is still cleanup to be done, but I'm going to send the files I made back to you.

                                                                      • 32. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                        [Jongware] Community Member

                                                                        (FYI)

                                                                        P Spier wrote:

                                                                        [...] I have no idea what the reset button does or why it's there in the screen capture -- it says cancel in ID, so this must be something odd about the capture.

                                                                         

                                                                        A Very Useful Feature, which I first saw in Photoshop. Some (most? all? [*]) of the dialogs can be reset to their default values, after you started tinkering with them. The ones that can, change "Cancel" into "Reset" when you hold down the Alt key. Since you are on Windows, you must have used Alt+Print Screen to grab the screen shot.

                                                                         

                                                                        [*] It might be a standard feature of all dialog boxes in InDesign, even when there is nothing to 'reset', or it might be under full control of the programmer and they messed this one dialog up

                                                                        • 33. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                          JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                                                          Well, you did a lot of work and I really appreciate it. I will try tomorrow to reproduce your process with the original, longer file. If it works, we are in business. My mistakes initially seem to have been these: (1) only import a template from CS3, not the text; (2) when transferring text, do not copy-and-paste from CS3 to CS5.5, but export to tagged text and input from there.

                                                                             As for the "Chinese," this is because the text had a Chinese font in the footnotes, so that is not an error. The missing plug-in will not be a problem either—or at least I don't think so. I'll know for sure after going through the process myself.

                                                                          • 34. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                            P Spier CommunityMVP

                                                                            [Jongware] wrote:

                                                                             

                                                                            A Very Useful Feature, which I first saw in Photoshop. Some (most? all? [*]) of the dialogs can be reset to their default values, after you started tinkering with them. The ones that can, change "Cancel" into "Reset" when you hold down the Alt key. Since you are on Windows, you must have used Alt+Print Screen to grab the screen shot.

                                                                             

                                                                            [*] It might be a standard feature of all dialog boxes in InDesign, even when there is nothing to 'reset', or it might be under full control of the programmer and they messed this one dialog up

                                                                            Ah yes, right you are. I don't know what you would possibly reset here, though.

                                                                            • 35. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                              Harbs. CommunityMVP

                                                                              I've been out of things fpr a while...

                                                                               

                                                                              I'd be interested in seeing the document also.

                                                                               

                                                                              Tracking down performance issues is a favorite activity of mine...

                                                                               

                                                                              Harbs

                                                                              • 36. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                                JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                                                                I'd be happy to send my own  files, but not on the forum. Kindly send an e-mail address and the files are yours to look at.

                                                                                • 37. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                                  Harbs. CommunityMVP

                                                                                  On its way...


                                                                                  • 38. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                                    JWH-NIRC Community Member

                                                                                       Well, I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon creating 3 new templates from scratch, with new character and paragraph styles in CS5.5 I then imported data from Word files and manipulated it the way we would in an ordinary editorial process: cutting out sections and importing new sections to replace them, adding footnote frames, adjusting the margins, etc. etc. On each occasion, it did not take more than 10 minutes to bring the program to its knees, slowing down not only the movement of frames but even the typing in of new text. And the more I worked on an already slow file, the slower it got. In two of the new files, it took a full two seconds for a letter typed in to be registered! Even when I tried to avoid all the no-nos suggested by experts and other users along the way, I always ended up doing something ordinary that threw a wrench in the works.

                                                                                       Later I took the new templates and tried them out on another, faster computer that also has a CS5.5 demo installed on it. Same problems.

                                                                                       I then took all 3 of these unresponsive files, along with all the other files that first got me started on this thread, saved them as IMDL files. I opened them in InDesign 4 and saved them as IDX files. I then opened all of them in CS3—all at the same time!—on the older, slower computer that has a demo of CS5.5 on it. And they all, everyone one of them, worked instantaneously, just as they should. No slowdown, not in the slightest, even in the most complex and messed-up importation of data. We didn't have to mind our p's and q's, just work as we always did.

                                                                                       So while I am grateful for the tireless efforts of those on this forum who looked at our files and suggested where we might have gone wrong, who showed us how to create new and clean files that were up to speed, exprience tells me that ordinary work on the files undoes these careful procedures in no time at all. Mind you, we work in text-intensive files. Perhaps CS5.5 is better for graphics or brochures or internet presentation. But for books and journals, the "update" has taken a giant stride backwards that has taken a lot of our time to prove unworkable. Our colleagues who use CS5.5 and have had the same problems are hunting around for CS3 originals so we can share our work together without the headaches of the past months. None of us have any more time to dedicate to this, and will wait for a demo of CS6 to even think about an update.

                                                                                       Thanks for your kindness, Peter. It has helped put our minds to rest that we did the very best we could at giving InDesign CS5.5 a chance.

                                                                                    • 39. Re: Is CS5.5 a speed improvement over CS5?
                                                                                      John Hawkinson CommunityMVP

                                                                                      This really is disheartening.

                                                                                       

                                                                                      But I do encourage you to take this up with Adobe Support. You can't stay on CS3 forever, it's going to give you problems in the end. You're going to have to move to CS6 or Quark 10 or whatever eventually. And if you'd like to keep your options open with Adobe, you should open a support case and try to get them to acknowledge and fix the problems.

                                                                                       

                                                                                      It seems like it's clearly reproducible, so it shouldn't be that difficult to get them to kick it up the chain to the people who actually fix bugs.

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