Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests
When entering a new feature request, please provide:
- Description
- Why is this valuable to you?
4725 results found
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Snap shape to artboard or bleeds
When you draw a rectangle as a background color or border, you could snap to the edges of the artboard or snap to the edges of the bleed.
19 votes -
Relative math operations with defined and mixed values in input fields
When you have several objects with different parameters in your selection, Illustrator would show nothing in the input field controlling this parameter.
For example, if you have two paths selected, one having 1 pt stroke weight, and another with 4 pt — Ai would show nothing in Weight in Stroke panel, meaning it’s a 'mixed value'.What if we could focus this field, type '+5' in it, and get 1+5=6 for one path and 4+5=9 for the other?
Why not making it work for similar value as well? Instead of putting the cursor after the, say '2.25 pt' and type…
18 votes -
Effect dialogs need sliders
Illustrator's stylized filters need a more practical and dynamic UI.
Currently, stylized effects such as Drop Shadow, Feather, Inner and Outer Glow have an outdated UI and are not dynamic.
I remember that Gaussian Blur was not in the past either, but Gaussian Blur was updated years ago and these stylized filters were not.
I believe that these stylized filters deserve a more practical, faster and dynamic way of being adjusted, and I took the liberty of creating a UI suggestion inspired by the current Gaussian Blur UI.
What do you think, would it be possible?
18 votes -
Add an option to hide the Search/Filter field in Layers
Search/Filter is cool, but some prefer to not have it.
Other panels allow to choose components: we can pick sections to display in the Character panel, we can show or hide the search field in Swatches, etc.However, the panel does not have such an option in its flyout menu.
Please add one!18 votes -
Improved Layout of Illustrator Options
Illustrator 2023 (v27)
This is a proposal to improve the layout of the Illustrator option.
Illustrator format files contain two different types of data: PGF and PDF data. Currently, Illustrator options have three settings: PGF only, PDF only, and common settings for both PGF and PDF. However, these settings are currently mixed together in the window, making it difficult for users to understand which setting they are operating on.
To make Illustrator options more easily understandable, we propose organizing the layout and clearly distinguishing each setting. By grouping the setting items and labeling each group clearly, users will be able…
18 votes -
Appearance Variables
Imagine I have several drop shadows, with different colors, but same offset and blur values. Now I want to change the horizontal offset for all of them at once. Even if I use styles, it would require me change each style I have manually.
With Appearance variables though, I could have use something like '%h_shadow' in effects’ values’ fields, in all of these shadows, and set it equal to an actual numerical value in one place.
So, once I change it, every other shadow will adapt this immediately.18 votes -
Sync the order of Align and Distribute menu commands
Hey, we now have Object > Distribute commands! No more actions wraps to bind these to hotkeys!
However, why is the order is swapped? Align menu has Horizontal commands first, but Distribute has them at the bottom, under Vertical.
One can object it’s just like the Align panel has them, and this is not the legacy behaviour you better keep, really. Please sync these.
18 votes -
Customizable splash screen
Adobe marketing team decides what to display as splash screens. Sometimes the choice is great, and sometimes is not, much more often, to some of us.
And since the Illustrator splash screen is what we see often, and it obviously influence our thought and mood, we’d like to have options to customize it.
We can access the image ourselves, all of them are stored along with other version for different resolution screens at
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 2022\Support Files\Contents\Windows\aiccsplash.png (on Windows)
and packed in the application in Contents\Resources\ (on Macs),
but this feels like a hack.What if we…
18 votes -
Search for tools by name when editing the toolbar
When editing the tools that are in the toolbar we are confronted with a big panel full of tools. The recent update that categorizes them and allows for a grid view is very helpful. However, I still find myself scrolling down and up trying to find the particular tool I would like to add to the toolbar because it's so easy to miss it. If there were a little search bar at the top where we could type the name of the tool we are trying to locate to pair down the options it would be a much nicer/quicker experience.
18 votes -
Rearrange artboards on canvas accordingly to their order in the Artboards panel
If you use artboards to have pages, swapping wo of them could be a nightmare.
So:
1. Allow Ai to rearrange artboards on canvas as the order of items in Artboards panel suggests
2. Add Swap Selected artboards maybe, when exactly two artboards are selected18 votes -
Delete all saved selections
There is no way to quickly delete all the saved selections (displayed in the bottom of the Select menu, once you saved them via 'Select > Save Selection...').
You have to do it one by one, which is a torture.Also you can’t just right-click a name of it right there in the menu and say 'Delete' — because you have no context menu for top menu items. You do not like context menus in general.
18 votes -
Create a Collapse All Layers button (with an assignable hotkey)
Currently you can collapse (or expand) all sub containers by Alt key clicking on the little arrowheads on the left-hand side of the top level container items. It would be great if we had a button we could click that collapses (or expands) everything.
Bonus points if this could be called by an action or script!
18 votes -
Making all functions recordable
Corel has had this feature for ever. Need to increase productivity by recording actions and applying quick keys to it. But we need to record extensions, and scripts that we run.
18 votes -
Cluster / group small increment edits like nudging as one "move" in History to undo
In Photoshop, when a user nudges an object by holding down an arrow key for an interval of time, PS clusters that series of nudges as one "move". Then the user can undo all of the nudges at once with one "Undo move" command in the History panel. Since Illy doesn't have a History panel (and why is there no History panel? Don't like it, don't use it.), it's impossible to undo all of the nudges with one "Undo". Please make Illy treat nudges like PS does.
18 votes -
Extend path tool
I make carpets, and I alway need min. 10 cm extra design for fitting or if the carpet shrinkts in production. For Illustrator artwork, I need to extend all paths, smoothly or naturally outside the border of the design, without changing the existing design.
What I'd like is the bezier extension as shown in this clip from Vector Scribe plugin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlriFIrSoDU18 votes -
Pattern brush can be created while viewing preview as in pattern edit mode.
Creating tiles and checking whether the seams are aligned is hard work.
I think that it is convenient to have a function that can create a pattern brush while watching the preview as in the pattern edit mode.
It seems that the efficiency of pattern brush creation will be greatly increased.(Translated to Japanese)
タイルを作成し、つなぎ目が揃っているかを確認する作業は大変なので、パターン編集モードのようにプレビューを見ながらパターンブラシを作成できる機能がほしい。
制作時の作業効率が大幅にUPすると思います。18 votes -
Add reference point locator for symbols
Symbols only have registration point. Fine, store it. Use it as default for scaling-rotating and so on. But why I can't set reference point for transforming it as I want, and as I can for EVERYTHING else?! What, AI can't calculate it's left top coordinate or what? Why can't I flip it over the left edge, for example? Why can't I even COPY it's top left coordinate?
Shh, calm down.
18 votesThis can be done with Transform panel’s flyout menu — disable 'Use Registration Point for Symbol' option.
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Add option to Always update links
Sometimes I make a lot of changes within linked images. AI always asks if I am to update links, and I'd like to have this dialogue temporarily switched off (but enable it later)
18 votesAs per Neeraj: it is possible to control the update behavior of links — automatically or manually. Go to Preferences > File Handling & Clipboard > Update Links.
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Bring back Access Keys Underscores
AI 23.0 Win7x64 hides underscores until Alt is pressed down, while 22.1 shows them always. 22.1 does it rights, and 23.0 does not. Please give us option to always display underscores.
18 votes -
Batching actions can't access files through Windows file shortcuts
If a user has a folder with shortcuts to files in different folders and try to batch this folder, AI can't see files. It would be great if it could.
18 votes
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