Mercury Performance System enhancements in Illustrator
Zoom and scroll up to 10 times faster with 10 times higher zoom magnification.
Published
Work with the fastest, most precise Illustrator ever.
Pan, zoom, and scroll up to ten times faster with ten times higher zoom magnification thanks to the new performance system boost with GPU acceleration.
Previously GPU acceleration was available to Illustrator running on Windows machines using compatible and video graphics cards.
Now this feature is available for a wider range of video cards on Windows machines as well as on compatible Macs.
You can tell the GPU performance is active because you can see GPU Preview in the document title bar or tab.
The rocket icon in the application bar takes you directly to the GPU performance settings and preferences.
If your system supports it, GPU performance is turned on by default.
You can toggle the GPU performance and also configure other GPU settings as well.
Without GPU performance turned on, you can see that zooming is slow and panning is not very smooth.
Back in the GPU performance preferences, I can turn on the option again.
By default, GPU performance is enabled for both RGB and CMYK documents.
With the animated zoom on, zooming is smoother and animated as you'll see shortly.
Down here in the dialog box, information about the software and hardware environment Illustrator is operating in is listed.
To learn more about these options and video display requirements, you can click the More Info link.
Back in the document with GPU performance enabled, you can now see that right and then left with the zoom tool now zooms smoothly and is animated allowing you to work faster and much more precisely.
Pressing and holding with the zoom tool zooms smoothly and is animated as well.
Panning and scrolling the document is also faster and smoother.
In previous versions of Illustrator, we could only zoom to 6400%.
At roughly 6400%, you can see there's a person standing on the balcony.
Now you can zoom up to 64,000%.
At 64,000%, you can see the artwork clearly.
This is invaluable when working with precise, detailed artwork.
With these new mercury performance enhancements in Illustrator CC 2015, Illustrator can take full advantage of machine GPU and work faster and with more precision.
So launch Illustrator now and give it a try.
