I prefer using hand props rather than hand sprites. It's a faster workflow for what I'm doing. I have over 50 hand props for a character in my scene manager. I've noticed the more I added the slower saving is and I see more of the spinning ball of annoyance. Would using sprites make a difference? Does having many many props in my content manager, but not being used, slow things down? I haven't seen anything in detail about optimizing the performance in CA4. Any info about better performance would be appreciated. 
Mac OS 10.13.6 High Sierra.
Intel Core i7
Processor Speed  3.5 GHz
1 Processor
4 Cores
32GB Ram