How To Speed Up InDesign When It’s Running Really Slow
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Overview
- You will need a copy of Adobe InDesign 2018 or above. But you find that 95% of all the features in this course will work with earlier version of InDesign (e.g. CS6). A free trial can be downloaded from Adobe.
What am I going to get from this course?
- 70 lectures 5+ hours of well structured content.
- Create PDF Forms
- Master Long Documents.
- Advanced Fonts
- Master Styles
- Shortcut Sheet
- Create Charts & Infographics
- Create Interactive Documents
- Workflow Tactics
- Shortcuts & Speed Tips
- Advanced Creative Cloud Features
- Tips for working with Photoshop & Illustrator
- Using Scripts
- Exporting, Prepress & Printing tricks
- You will get the finished files so you never fall behind.
- Downloadable exercise files & cheat sheet.
- Forum support from me and the rest of the BYOL crew.
- Techniques used by professional graphic designers.
- Professional workflows and shortcuts.
- A wealth of other resources and websites to help your accelerate your career.
What is the target audience?
- This course is for people who already know InDesign and want to take their skills and speed to the maximum level.
- This is an advanced InDesign course, so you’ll need basic InDesign skills to find this course useful.
- This course is perfect for anyone that already knows how to insert images & add text.
- If you a completely new to InDesign try my InDesign Essentials course before starting this one.
- This course is perfect for anyone that has completed my InDesign Essentials course.
Course duration 7 hours 45 mins + your study.
Daniel Scott
Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor
I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.
Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.
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Transcript
Hi there, in this video we're going to look at how to speed up InDesign if it's running a little slow, especially with longer documents. The quickest and easiest is to go to 'View' and where it says 'Display Performance', switch it form 'High', which I think is the default for a little while now, and we're going to go to 'Typical'. It just means, can you see, that image there changed. I'll turn it back on, just watch, it's kind of pixelated. 'Display Performance' at 'High'. Looks nicer. So with nothing selected you can actually turn this whole document, this 'Typical Display'. Things will just start running faster, but things will look not as nice, but don't worry, they’ll print just fine, and go to PDF just fine. It's just the work flow thing. If it's going really bad, you can go to 'View' and go to 'Display Performance', and go to 'Fast'. It's not really a nice way of working but especially if you're just doing Text edits, they can work nicely.
Now what I found on long documents is, under 'View', 'Display Performance' if you have one selected, you can actually kind of force them to go high and low, and they ignore this. What you can do is clear out the 'Object-Level Display Settings'. It just kind of gets everybody back to being whatever you tell it to be in this. I found that happened on one of my documents, a really long one, one of my notes, and just by clearing out the Object-Level Display Settings life became great again, and I could work at high quality display, or Typical, without overriding that, which is what this option does. So clear it out, go back to 'Normal', life can be better.
One of the other things that can really slow down a document is Dynamic Spelling. If I turn 'W' off I got Dynamic Spelling on, I like it, but especially with Lorem Ipsum, everything's spelled wrong. Smart, just not the right language. So 'Dynamic Spelling' under 'InDesign', 'Preferences' go to 'Spelling'. Remember, it's under 'Edit', 'Preferences', 'Spelling' on a PC. Just turn Dynamic Spelling off if you don't need it. Just turn it on while you're working, turn it off, you'll find life gets a whole lot faster.
Another thing you can do, is down the bottom here, 'Preflight', we haven't done that in this course, we'll do it in the next video. But down here, Preflight's on by default. Shows a little green light on there, means it's trying to check it every time you do a little change. So what you need to do, is this little drop down menu here, go to the 'Preflight Panel', raise this on. Turn it off, close that down, and it's not going to check it every time you paste a bit of text in. I found that speeds me up.
The next trick to speeding things up is under 'Preferences'. So I'll show you what it looks like first. When I drag this image, can you see, it's redrawing it as I move. By redrawing it, I mean, you can see it the whole time. Same with the logo, when I'm moving it, you can see where I'm moving it. I know it seems a bit strange, but same with text, watch this. Can you see, the text flashes. Now I'm just kind of really stressing the machine out. My machine's pretty fast, so it's okay. You might find yours is finding it really hard to move things around. Now you can fix that by going up to 'InDesign', 'Preferences', 'Interface'. Remember, 'Edit', 'Preferences', 'Interface' on a PC. And down the bottom here, at the moment, 'No Greeking'. I'm going to go all the way down the bottom. It says, it's going to 'Greek Images & Text'.
Greeking just means, it's going to try and-- it's going to use kind of Placeholder stuff, not the actual image and text itself. Down here as well, let's turn this down to 'Never'. That's that redrawing that we've just seen. And there's 'Greek Vector Graphics' as well, still not on. Let's click 'OK'. Now when I drag this, you'll notice it's dragging a lot faster, it's not flashing but I can't preview the text. You can see, it's such a good lot, wherever I go, it appears. So, if you can live with that there might be a nice little thing to speed things up. Same with the images, here, let's start dragging it, it doesn't try and preview it, but when I let go, it appears. Same with this image here. Just drag it around, it's fine.
The other thing to do is, not embedding images. So, there is a way to embed images in InDesign. You know if you've got embedded images, basically they're not linked. So this image here, I'm going to go to my 'Links panel'. And see this little icon here, says it's Embedded. How to embed something? It means that it's not going to be connected anymore. So this one here is connecting to a file on my Desktop, called 'Logo Option 4'. I can right click it, and say, 'Embed Link'. The cool thing about that is that, it means when I send the InDesign file, these two images are inside of it. I don't have to package it, or send these files as well. So it comes along with the file. It makes the file size bigger, and it stresses InDesign out. It doesn't like doing that.
So what you can do, is you can unlink them. See this guy here, I can right click and say, actually 'Unembed Link'. You need to say 'Yes', and try to find the file again or it has the file, and you say 'No', and it says "Where would you like me to put it, now that I've kind of un-embedded it?" And I'll just stick it in my 'Desktop', in my 'Advance Coursework', and you can go in there. Nothing really changes, except now this image is linking to that folder I just stuck in. And things will run a little faster. And the last thing is your computer could be just too slow.
If you are looking to upgrade because things are just painful, and slow, and none of those tricks worked, what you're looking for is basically three things. There's two kinds of RAM, and a hard drive, that's going to give you your speed. The first kind of RAM is the normal RAM you get. When you're looking at the shop, and it says I've got 16GB, or 8Gb, or 4GB. That kind of RAM is your kind of general purpose RAM, and that's the main ingredient. So 8's the bare minimum, 16 is amazing, if you can get 32, you are winning. So get as much RAM as you can. Some laptops, mainly just PCs, you can upgrade the RAM. Check how much you can get to put in there. Often it's not expensive. For a Mac, most MACs don't let you put RAM in, that just can't be done. There's hacks to make it work but really if you're going to buy one, go high on RAM because it's really hard to upgrade.
The other kind of RAM is called VRAM, or Video RAM. It's generally publicized a little less in the shop. So basically, you've got a video card in your computer, and it gets its own bit of RAM, and the more you can have in there, the better. Where things are really bad is when they don't display the VRAM at all. That means it doesn't have any. It's like an on-board video card on the motherboard, really bad. Often that's when you're looking at like a $500 laptop. They can keep those prices because they just don't do what's called an external video card. So when you're looking in a shop, and you're like "Hey, does this one have an external video card, or VRAM?" It sounds like you know what you're talking about. They'll hopefully be able to help you in pointing to a laptop that's got both a good bit of RAM, and a good bit of VRAM.
Other thing is the hard drive. Now this is kind of weird. Normally it's a hard drive, how big it is, but recently hard drives have gone through a bit of a revolution. There is your normal tape hard drives. It's a little spinning wheel that spins around, and that's the hard drive's work. Now we've got something called SSD Drive, a Solid State Drive. It works more like a USB stick, a big version of it. The cool thing about them is that they are super-duper fast compared to more standard kind of wearing away hard drives that you buy. The trouble is, they're a lot more expensive and they're a lot smaller for that more expensive price.
So this laptop you're looking at now has 1 Terabyte, and cost me a fortune, because it's a SSD drive. Now, if you're using an old Mac, you can totally upgrade those. The model of MacBook Pro I had before this, you could upgrade the hard drive, that was a little bit of a hack, but man, did it make a big difference in the performance. This new one, I'm not sure, maybe you can upgrade them, I don't know, but it's got an SSD drive, so I don't need to. If you're on a PC, easily upgradable. Definitely cheaper to do than on a Mac but I'd probably take it to a technician to do it. If yours is still running slow you could just have a slower computer, and you need an upgrade. But hopefully in there, you'll find a little bit of nugget of good speediness to help with your InDesign work flow. All right, let's get on to the next video.
How can I speed up a slow Adobe InDesign document?
Start by reducing display quality, then turn off live features that are constantly checking or redrawing the document. If that is still not enough, avoid embedded images and check whether your computer has enough RAM, video RAM, and a fast SSD drive.
How to Speed Up InDesign When It Is Running Slow
Long InDesign documents can get a bit painful. Pages redraw slowly, moving a text box makes everything flash, and a simple edit can feel like it is asking far too much of the computer.
Before assuming you need a new machine, there are a few really practical settings that can make InDesign feel a whole lot faster. Most of these are workflow changes only. Your final print and PDF quality will not suffer.
Lower the display performance first
The quickest win is changing how accurately InDesign previews images and page content while you work.
With nothing selected, go to View > Display Performance and change the setting from High Quality Display to Typical Display.
Typical Display is usually the best balance between a usable preview and a faster document.
At High Quality Display, placed images look nicer because InDesign spends more effort rendering them. At Typical Display, they can look a little more pixelated or less refined on screen, but the document generally responds more quickly.
This does not change the quality of exported PDFs or printed work. It only affects the on-screen preview, so it is a really good trade-off when you are editing a long document.
If things are properly slow, use Fast Display. It is not particularly pretty, but it can be brilliant when you are mainly doing text edits and do not need to inspect every image while working.
Clear object-level display overrides
Sometimes a document seems to ignore the overall Display Performance setting. This often happens in bigger files where individual objects have been forced to use a particular display mode.
Go to View > Display Performance > Clear Object-Level Display Settings. This clears those individual overrides and brings everything back under the document-wide Display Performance setting.
It is a small fix, but it can be the thing that makes a stubborn long document usable again.
Turn off Dynamic Spelling when you do not need it
Dynamic Spelling is handy. It checks text as you type and highlights potential spelling issues. The trouble is that it is another live process InDesign needs to keep running.
This becomes especially annoying in documents using placeholder text such as Lorem Ipsum, where lots of words may be flagged even though there is nothing actually wrong with the layout.
To disable it on a Mac, go to InDesign > Preferences > Spelling. On a PC, go to Edit > Preferences > Spelling. Then turn off Dynamic Spelling.
Disabling Dynamic Spelling removes one more live check from a heavy text document.
You do not have to abandon spell checking altogether. Turn Dynamic Spelling on when you are proofreading, then turn it off again while doing heavy layout or text-flow work. That is often a much nicer way to work in a sluggish file.
Switch off live Preflight checking
Preflight is another useful feature that can quietly slow things down. It is enabled by default and is indicated by the green light at the bottom of the InDesign window.
When Preflight is on, InDesign is checking the document every time you make a small change, including when you paste text. In a complex or lengthy document, that adds up.
Open the Preflight panel from the drop-down menu beside the Preflight indicator.
Turn On off in the panel.
Close the panel and continue working.
You can turn it back on later when you are ready to check the file properly. During active production, though, disabling continuous checking can give InDesign a useful bit of breathing room.
Make moving objects easier with greeking
If dragging images, logos, or text frames makes InDesign redraw constantly, adjust the interface settings. By default, InDesign attempts to show the actual content as it moves. That looks great, but it can really stress a slower machine.
Go to InDesign > Preferences > Interface on a Mac, or Edit > Preferences > Interface on a PC.
Interface settings can replace detailed content with simple placeholders while objects are dragged.
In the lower part of the Interface preferences, enable greeking for images, text, and vector graphics. Then set live screen drawing to Never.
“Greeking” simply means InDesign uses a lightweight placeholder instead of trying to render the actual content while you drag it. Text may become a blue or grey block, and images will not display in full while moving. Once you release the mouse, the real content appears again.
It sounds a bit odd, but it can make repositioning objects dramatically smoother. If you can live without seeing every detail mid-drag, it is a very worthwhile speed setting.
Do not embed images unless you need to
Embedded images can make an InDesign file easier to send because the image data sits inside the document itself. You do not need to send a separate links folder along with it.
The downside is that embedded images make the InDesign file larger, and InDesign has to work harder with them. For better performance, it is generally preferable to keep images linked externally.
Open the Links panel and look for the embedded icon beside an image. To embed a linked image, right-click it and choose Embed Link. But if speed is the priority, do the opposite: right-click an embedded image and choose Unembed Link.
Keeping artwork linked rather than embedded helps keep the InDesign document lighter.
When you unembed a link, InDesign may ask where to place the extracted file. Choose a sensible folder, then InDesign reconnects the document to that external image file.
Visually, nothing needs to change. The image remains in the layout, but it is now linked to a file on disk rather than stored inside the InDesign document. That lighter document can run a little faster.
If InDesign is still slow, check the computer
If all those tricks have been applied and things are still dragging, it may simply be a hardware problem. For InDesign performance, there are three main things worth looking at: standard RAM, video RAM, and storage speed.
Get as much standard RAM as possible
Standard RAM is the memory usually listed when buying a computer, such as 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, or 32 GB. It is the main ingredient here.
8 GB is the bare minimum.
16 GB is excellent for a much smoother experience.
32 GB is even better if the budget allows.
Some PCs and laptops allow RAM upgrades, and it is often not particularly expensive. Check what the machine supports before buying anything.
Many Macs are far less upgradeable, so choose a higher RAM configuration at purchase time if possible. There are workarounds for certain models, but in practical terms it is much easier to buy enough RAM from the start.
Look for a proper graphics card and VRAM
The second kind of memory is VRAM, or video RAM. This belongs to the graphics card and helps it handle screen drawing, images, and graphics-heavy work.
More VRAM is generally better. Be cautious when a computer listing does not mention VRAM or a dedicated graphics card at all. That can mean the machine uses onboard graphics built into the motherboard rather than a separate graphics card, which is not ideal for demanding creative applications.
When comparing laptops, ask whether the model has a dedicated or external video card and how much VRAM it has. It is a very useful question, and it helps identify machines better suited to InDesign work.
Choose an SSD instead of a traditional hard drive
Storage is not just about capacity anymore. Traditional hard drives use spinning disks, while an SSD, or solid-state drive, works more like a large and very fast USB stick.
An SSD is much faster than an old-style spinning hard drive, and that speed can make a substantial difference to general computer performance and the way large documents feel in InDesign.
The trade-off is price. SSDs tend to cost more and offer less storage capacity for the same money. Still, if performance is the pain point, an SSD is one of the most valuable upgrades to look for.
Older computers may allow a hard-drive upgrade, although it can be a little technical and may be best handled by a technician. PCs are often easier and cheaper to upgrade than Macs, but the exact options depend on the machine.
A practical InDesign speed checklist
When an InDesign document starts becoming slow, work through these fixes in order:
Change View > Display Performance to Typical Display.
Use Fast Display for text-focused editing if necessary.
Clear object-level display settings if the document ignores the change.
Turn off Dynamic Spelling while you are not proofreading.
Disable live Preflight checking during active work.
Use greeking and disable live screen drawing while dragging objects.
Keep images linked instead of embedding them where possible.
If none of that helps, look at RAM, VRAM, and an SSD upgrade.
Most of the time, lowering preview quality and turning off a couple of live checks is enough to find a useful bit of speediness. The document may look less polished while you work, but it will still export and print exactly as it should.
FAQ's
Will Typical Display reduce PDF or print quality?
No. Display Performance only changes the on-screen preview in InDesign. Exported PDFs and printed output are not affected by using Typical Display or Fast Display.
Why is my InDesign file slow when moving text and images?
InDesign may be trying to redraw the full text, image, or vector artwork continuously as it moves. Enable greeking and set live screen drawing to Never in the Interface preferences to use simpler placeholders while dragging.
Do embedded images slow down InDesign?
They can. Embedded images increase the size of the InDesign document and require InDesign to manage the image data inside the file. Linked images are generally lighter and can help documents run faster.
How much RAM is good for InDesign?
Eight gigabytes is a bare minimum, 16 GB is a strong target, and 32 GB is even better for demanding InDesign work. More RAM gives the computer more room to handle long documents and other open applications.
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