Work with precision, speed, and rock-solid stability on large, complex files thanks to the new Adobe® Mercury Performance System in Adobe Illustrator® CS6 software. Illustrator CS6 has been renovated from the ground up, resulting in the fastest, most advanced and efficient vector drawing environment in the software’s 25-year history.
It’s fitting that such a significant evolution marks the 25th anniversary of Illustrator. The Mercury Performance System is a revolutionary overhaul that lays the foundation for the next generation of Illustrator advances.
True 64-bit support on Mac OS and Windows®, with access to all of the RAM on your computer system, translates into comprehensive performance improvements. Along with the capacity to handle extremely intricate artwork and complex effects, just about everything feels faster and more responsive.
Gorgeous, sophisticated designs and large files are not a problem in Illustrator CS6. The Mercury Performance System enables work that was simply impossible before, and you’ll be pleased by what you don’t experience — you won’t miss those out-of-memory error messages or long delays in opening, saving, and exporting your most ambitious artwork.
Prior to introduction of the Mercury Performance System, working with artwork that had many instances of effects such as Gaussian blur and drop shadows could be grindingly slow. As the technology behind one of the most popular effects in Illustrator, Gaussian blur received special attention and has been specifically optimized in CS6. As a result, other effects with operations that depend on Gaussian blur have also been enhanced, so you’ll see performance improvements in both drop shadows and inner glows.
Interaction in general is more responsive thanks to the Mercury Performance System, so you can keep your flow going and freely experiment in new and creative ways. Moving around and among tools, panels, options, and layers is super smooth and provides a freedom in your everyday work not possible before. You’ll notice a nimble, lively touch when you work with multiple artboards and threaded text. Creative tools such as the Bristle Brush have been optimized for both speed and efficiency so you can work fluidly, even when you generate immensely complex designs composed of hundreds of overlapping transparent paths.
Performance in Illustrator CS6 means more than working faster, it means working more efficiently, too. A large part of the ground-up rebuilding of Illustrator is a modern and more efficient user interface. More than 40 enhancements to the Illustrator UI make working with your favorite tools smoother and more intuitive. For example, in the Character panel, you can now use arrow keys to change fonts in context and access glyphs for caps and superscripts — right there. Tools, panels, and controls are still where you expect them, but daily tasks take fewer steps and your interactions are faster and more direct — from inline editing of layer names to navigating the font menu.
