Calculate the bounds in Document Raster Effects Settings automatically
As for today, if you apply a Gaussian Blur or a Drop Shadow effect to a shape — with a large enough value — it often gets cropped.
A workaround exists — to go in Effect > Document Raster Effects Settings dialog and increase the 'Add' value, thus increasing the bounds of the image generated.
...but why is this still a problem that we, users, should take care of, really? Ai knows how large is the blur, it knows the resolution, yet it can’t calculate the tight bounds automatically. Like what, is there at least one user who’d like their blurs cropped? What’s a point of this in 2023?
AdminEgor Chistyakov
(Admin, Adobe Illustrator)
shared this idea
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Margaret Trauth
commented
Yes please.
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A related request about the shadow bounds for the 3D and Materials’ shadows:
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/47523377-make-shadow-bounds-for-3d-and-materials-to-auto-ma -
Other apps limit the shadow in one way or another, just checked.
— Affinity Designer 2 allows no more than 1024 px blur (even though I try to create it within a A4 document, with 'mm' as my base unit and hardly care about pixels).
— Xara Pro allows a strange 1.06 cm maximum... which is actually probably 400 px at 96 dpi (Xara loves 96 instead of traditional Ai’s 72).
— CorelDRAW uses some nameless units to blur a shadow, up to a 100 (but they offer 5 variants of blurring!)
— Inkscape offers 200 px.
— Illustrator limits it to 144 px... again, it’s always in pixels, and the values doesn’t change based on the chosen raster effects resolution: with 72 or 300 dpi it’s always 144 px. If I try to create a shadow in a pront-based document, the value is 50.8 mm — same 144 px at 72 dpi. I know this number veeeery well.
But the maximum value is another thing, if you think about it.
The problem is clipping, that happens before the shadow ends. Only Ai has it.
The value It should be not 'Add some value', but 'Limit to a value', if you care about resource wasting... I guess there is no other reason to have the value at all. -
Anonymous
commented
Yeah, the "add" thing should be completely removed from the UI. Asking the user to manually estimate the dimensions of their raster effects is just weird.
It should be calculated automatically (per effect so you don't need one size fits all).
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Okie Wardoyo commented
this is very very important. How this ancient thing be there?
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Jean-Claude Tremblay commented
Make AI adjust automatically for the need area.