Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests
When entering a new feature request, please provide:
- Description
- Why is this valuable to you?
582 results found
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Smarter Crop tool
If I have an image like a t-shirt with a white background, the crop tool should be able to immediately set boundaries to the edges of the pixels.
Currently it does one of 2 things.
1. I sets the boundary to the edges of the white box which is not useful.
2. it sets boundaries which are completely random which means it's actually faster to just mask the image rather than messing with the randomly placed boundary from the crop tool.In Photoshop, crop is able to intelligently decide to crop to empty pixels, or whatever.
Also, the crop tool…4 votes -
Continuous Line via Length and Angle
Create a variant of the line tool that you can continuously add a segment via entering length and angle in a tool options dialogue box. It would stay open and follow you around on your screen until you click okay/finish/done. Just a small box with length and angle options.
3 votes -
Image trace options
I like the 'ignore color' function. I want to have an option where I can select i.e. four colors, and image trace the divides the image into those four categories. This could save so much time in tracing maps/drawings/scans.
2 votes -
Cropping Rotated Image should offer to rasterize it to have the cropping frame orthogonal
When I select an image layer, rotate it, and then want to crop it to make it fit into a spot, the crop shows up square instead of following the rotated image. To my knowledge there isn't an easy way to crop a rotated image. I understand a lot of people are trying to crop square but I would love a checkbox in cropping properties that lets me have it conform to the rotation of the image.
IE: if an image is rotated 30 degrees, I want my crop bounding box rotated 30 degrees too.
2 votes -
Turntable feature is not available for Intertwine objects
Quoted from Victoria White:
When I use the Intertwine tool, the turntable feature is no longer available. It would be very helpful if the turntable remained active after Intertwine is applied.4 votes -
Fast Skew Option in Illustrator
I’d love to see a faster skew workflow in Illustrator.
Currently, skewing objects requires extra steps, and it feels slower than it should be for frequent transformations.
Suggested behavior:
- When an object is selected, the normal bounding box appears.
- When the cursor moves near the left, right, top, or bottom edges of the bounding box, the cursor automatically changes to a skew icon (two opposite arrows).
- Click and drag from those edges to quickly skew the object.
- This would work similarly to how "rotating or scaling" works near corners, but specifically for skew transformations.
2 votes -
A way to delete all unnecessary handles on straight lines
I want a way to delete all unnecessary handles on straight lines Join tool create (here’s a bug report: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447/suggestions/51071002).
I want to select all of those and make them lines in one click. It is very time consuming to take care of each individually.2 votes -
Move a shape side (edge) without selecting both anchor points
Illustrator currently requires selecting both anchor points of a side to move it.
When working on very tall or large objects at high zoom levels, this forces users to pan away from the working area just to select the second anchor point, interrupting focus and slowing down layout work.Feature request:
Add an edge-based editing option that allows moving an entire side (edge) of a shape by interacting with a single visible anchor point or directly with the edge itself, without selecting the opposite anchor or changing the viewport.This behavior exists in other design tools (Figma, InDesign frames, CAD…
4 votes -
Populate in Illustrator, like you do in Adobe XD
I can tell that many designers would love to have that function. Creating an item info like Image, Name, Info about the item, and then multiplying it on a page, like a flyer, or a poster - and populating the image and text, just by dropping a text file and a set of image you have in a folder to populate the design. Here is a visual example.
6 votes -
Make GenAI tools to be able to use selected artwork as context
As a branding designer, I often build my layouts directly in Illustrator before using AI tools.
Illustrator's generative AI tools, especially Text to Vector Graphic, should be able to use selected Illustrator objects as design context.
Currently, the AI generates new content without understanding the editable artwork already on the artboard. It ignores selected text, vector paths, colors, gradients, and layouts, which makes it difficult to maintain a consistent design language in professional branding workflows.
I suggest adding a "Use Selected Artwork as Context" option. This would allow the AI to understand selected Illustrator objects and generate graphics that match…
1 vote -
Dynamic Dimension Tool
Happy New Year
Just a thought for the upcoming year.
Add the ability to automatically extend the length of a dimension after the dimension is set and have the dimension to adapt to the new measurements.
Currently the measured distance is static, WYSIWYG. Would make placing objects in Illustrator a lot easier.2 votes -
A mode for Free Transform tool to hug selected points tightly
Affinity has Transform mode for selected points (see the GIF).
Figma recently announced a similar thing — https://x.com/figma/status/2018778936482935124Illustrator meanwhile allows to use Scale, Rotate, and other dedicated transform tools for a partial selection. No bounding box is allowed when Direct Selection is active.
We can pick Free Transform and use a familiar frame to transform the partial selection... but this frame hugs the entire object. This can be useful in some cases, but not that handy in others -—like when you need to work with a rather small part of a larger artwork.
Perhaps there should be a way…3 votes -
Absolute mode for Scale tool
Speaking of Transform Each new absolute mode, presented in one of Beta builds (removed for now).
While having it is great (especially in the finished state), Transform still relies on one of 9 reference points.
To set a custom transformation pivot/origin we need to use interactive tools... and they don’t offer absolute lengths.Here, take a look, a real example.
I need to scale this > shape to be exactly 20mm height — and I need it to be scaled exactly from the position I marked with guides — the bottom right corner of it.
Transform panel can’t offer me…
5 votes -
Smoothing a selected portion of a path converts the extreme points in the selection into sharp from smooth
Here I have a path with all the points being smooth (all handles are at 180°), but one portion of the path is particularly bumpy. I want to smooth only this portion.
I select it (using Lasso), I make sure these are smooth, I pick Pencil, hold Opt/Alt, drag the slider... and it makes the selected portion of the path connected to the rest of it in the sharp manner. There is no tension at the star/end points, it just flops.
While this can be useful, being blind like this, I’d love for it to at least give me the…5 votes -
Add Biology & Scientific Diagram Tools for Easy Cell and Medical Illustrations
As an illustrator specializing in biology, microbiology, and scientific educational diagrams, I often find it time-consuming and challenging to create natural-looking cells, organelles, biological textures, and clean labels within Adobe Illustrator. To improve workflow and accuracy, I propose that Adobe adds a dedicated set of toolbar tools designed specifically for biological and scientific illustrations, focusing on ease of use, organic shapes, and diagramming features.
Suggested Tools Include:
Organic Blob Tool: Create irregular, smooth cell shapes with adjustable wobble and roundness.
Cell Chain Tool: Draw linked cells or bacteria chains with customizable spacing and size.
Pseudopod Tool: Add flowing, arm-like extensions…
3 votes -
Dynamic Stroke Weight for Pencil Tool
I want to suggest a feature for the Pencil Tool: the ability to automatically apply a Variable Width Profile based on my real-time input.
Currently, the Pencil Tool only draws lines with a uniform stroke (or with a VSW profile from the selection)
I propose adding a new option in the Pencil Tool preferences to link stroke weight dynamically to: Pressure Sensitivity (Tablet Users) and Drawing Speed Sensitivity (Mouse/Trackpad Users)
This single addition would transform the Pencil Tool into a powerful, intuitive instrument for design.
2 votes -
Proportional Push & Rotate Tool
I’m relatively new to Illustrator, not sure if such a feature already exists, but I’d like to suggest a tool that allows selected objects to be proportionally pushed away from the group’s center point or a custom pivot point — without scaling them — and optionally rotate them around that same point. For rotation, it would be great to have options whether the objects keep their own rotation (independent) or rotate as children following the group’s rotation. Additionally, it would be helpful to allow setting horizontal and vertical movement ratios (e.g., move 1 unit horizontally while moving 0.35 units vertically)…
2 votes -
Image Trace needs 'Simplify' option we can disable
Image Trace is still not functioning properly. The 'Simplify' feature is still missing. Forcing Simplify should not be allowed.
6 votes -
Make Free Transform scale corners, strokes, and effects by default, like it used to
In the past, 99% of the time I used Free Transform was to resize objects without making them look different. I realize that it also has perspective+distort options, but I only use those occasionally, and I very frequently switched between the Selection tool and Free Transform depending on how I wanted to resize an object. Now every time I want to do that, instead of simply hitting the V and E shortcuts, I need to go to the Transform panel and check/uncheck 2 boxes. This is a huge pain and I don't understand why it was changed. What is even…
2 votes -
Rotate bounding box only
It’s similar to a request to do it on iPad I made: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/931888/suggestions/46244521
Ditto.
Ai should give us a mode to freely rotate the bounding box the way we need, to zero or any angle.
There should be a way to quickly align it to a chosen straight segment or even a point.Affinity Designer has a feature that can be used for this purpose, Select > Cycle / Set Selection Box — even though it doesn’t exactly does the same thing.
There are also two plugin methods to achieve this in Ai today:
1. ToolShed plugin by Graffix: https://rj-graffix.com/product/toolshed/…5 votes
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