Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 5/20/2008

Question
I have been using illustrator since it's invention and have never experienced
the amount of unexpected quits or beachballs of death as with cs3. Currently
installed on Mac Pro 2x3 dual core 8 gb ram.  I first installed cs2 in
December and came to the conclusion that the conflict was 10.5 OS and cs2
related which led to the 3 upgrade.  I do work w/ very large complex files
but, seem to be limited to under 300 mb files open one at a time whereas my
3 y/o g5 would have no problem w/ all cs programs open at once while
working on gigabyte photos and half gig ai or indesign docs.  Following other
threads advice, I've been trashing prefs routinely and resetting the scratch to
primary my start up (250 gb) and secondary (750 gb) Hoping you might shed
a little light -  thanks in advance

Answer
Hi Mike,

You were correct in upgrading to CS3 on Leopard, CS2 was not built for it.

Have you run all the updates that were released since January for both Mac and Adobe? There has been a lot of Mac OS bug fix patches that were required to fix conflicts, however, Illustrator CS3 has been the most stable of the suite.

Do you use any third party plug-ins when you create these large files?

One other option is if you use a lot of effects (never use filters!) you can turn down the resolution while you are actively working on the files under Effects>document effects raster settings and set it to 72 ppi. You can turn it back up to hi-res before you save for print.

Let me know if these work or not, and I can dig deeper.

Thanks

Kevin