Speeding Up Work By Avoiding Slow Previews

Because the operating performance of Illustrator CS3 is vastly improved, this may be more of a CS2 tip. When working on complex effects such as 3D Revolve or Blends that contain multiple effects, you may find redraw performance grinding to a halt. One way to speed things up is when applying or altering a complicated effect, turn off Preview in the dialog until you input all the specifications and are ready to press OK. In this way, Illustrator will not update the effect with each change to the specs. In a complex illustration containing lots of 3D effects, this simple way of working could save a lot of time.

Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.