Illustrator 9: placement problems; crashing problems

Placement problems Paul Ranson describes two problems he has had with Illustrator 9 that were not present in 8.x: "I started a new document and placed a 1.5MB Photoshop 5.5 (psd) file as a linked image. The image (one I had used successfully in Illustrator 8) was supposed to be tulips, but was unrecognizable, just a rectangle of pixilated garbage. When printed to my postscript printer, it reproduced as the same garbage. When the file was then embedded and not linked, it appeared and printed normally. I tracked the problem down to this: the image had a "Curves" adjustment layer applied to the photograph in Photoshop 5.5. This adjustment layer was "grouped with the previous layer", (this is done so only that layer is affected by the curve adjustment). If the Curve adjustment layer is ungrouped, the problem goes away. In testing further, I could make this happen with some other grouped adjustment layers (levels etc.) but not all. Adobe has implied that this will be fixed in an update to 9.0. I will continue to use 8.01 in the meantime." Another issue: When placing a medium sized graphics file (15MB) the placement stalls at the point where illustrator reads the color profile of the placed image. It actually slows to a crawl, if left unattended for about 10 minutes it will proceed with the profile synchronization and place the file. As far as I can tell, the new color profiles in 9.0 are different from 8.0 and different from Photoshop 5.5. Tech support could not resolve or explain this issue (except to confirm that it is color profile related) and are working on this for me. Once again, these same files can be placed effortlessly into Illustrator 8." Crashing problems We have previously covered crashes linked to Illustrator 9. On the MacFixIt Forums, this thread provides more reader feedback. Another thread focuses on ATM as the likely coconspirator. Adobe continues to investigate this.