Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests
When entering a new feature request, please provide:
- Description
- Why is this valuable to you?
178 results found
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Search filed is focused by itself
Every time I go back into Illustrator, the current version, my cursor automatically appears in the search area in the upper right hand corner. This was never the case in the past. This is problematic because, when I go back into Illustrator, I may want to select a tool or paste an object and unless I click on the artboard first, it pastes into the search window. Just one more simple glitchy thing that SLOWS DOWN WORKFLOW!
1 voteIn the latest release this search filed is gone, and it now has a button instead. Most probably it does solve the problem. Please comment back if it does not.
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Quick Command for Trim View
Quick Command for Trim View. I alternate a lot between normal view and trim view but have to stop to select trim view every time.
19 votesYou can assign your own custom shortcut to this command via Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts. Toggle 'Tools' to 'Menu commands' from the dropdown and search for 'Trim View'.
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Auto live paint
I very often colour linework using live paint. This is a great tool but if I could automatically colour every shape it would save a lot of time. At the moment I have to manually click every area I want to fill. Could this be done with one click? Many thanks.
4 votesYes, there is a way to fill many areas at once.
A double-click on a fill (or a stroke) should apply the currently chosen color to all sections that has this color (unless these are not separated with strokes).
A triple-click will change the color of all sections of the same color, no matter if these are separated or not.
Same applies to Live Paint Selection Tool.
You can read more about these methods here
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Allow Eyedropper tool to copy/apply different things
Guys, the Eyedropper is an incredibly important tool, whether or not it's "****" by virtue of its age. You haven't updated it in, what, decades? Among the things that it is incapable of copying are:
- multiple strokes
- stroke profiles
- transparency
- blend modes
- graphic styles
Those are extremely common usages/needs. And that's off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more. Obviously there's no reason this tool shouldn't be able to copy these things! Almost every aesthetic effect that gets added to AI should be reflected in that tool's pickup abilities. Please make this happen already.
1 voteThe Eyedropper tool can work in two modes: basic and extended: basic picks/applies only colors and text. extended allows you operate chosen appearance attributes.
If you open the tool’s options (by doube-clicking the tool button or hitting Enter while it’s picked), you’ll see that you can check/uncheck two top ‘Appearance’ options and customize attributes to be processed.
This is not intuitive, but very powerful once you get the concept.
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Install brushes to Illustrator
Install custom brushes to Illustrator
With photoshop, you can install custom brushes. With Illustrator, you have to make any custom brush yourself which can be tedious and very difficult.4 votesIllustrator for desktop allows to save and import brushes with an ease.
To save brushes, just save a document with your brushes as an .ai file. You don’t have to have them on canvas for this, just in Brushes panel.
To load brushes, click the Brush Libraries Menu button in the bottom left corner of the Brushes panel (looks like a bookshelf). Choose Other Library, locate the brush library .ai file.
If you want to create, save and import brushes in Illustrator for iPad — you have to vote for this feature here: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/931888-illustrator-ipad-feature-requests/suggestions/41682511-import-or-create-brushes
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Search items on canvas within Layer panel
Hi, it's hard to find a certain path/vector art assets from the layers menu if the list is super long. My suggestion for the search function is when you click the asset on the art board, you can simply hover your mouse over the layer's list and click e.g. ',' (comma) and it shows you the right art asset from the layers' dropdown list.
Thank you
1 voteIllustrator offers a way to locate a selected object on canvas in Layers — with the Locate button at the bottom of the panel (the magnifying glass icon). If you have several objects selected, the topmost one would be scrolled to.
There is a separate request to make this function work automatically.
Another request asks for a hotkey for the button.
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Make Document Color Mode menu available to set up as an action
Make Document Color Mode a recordable action. I have to edit lots of files and they all have to be CMYK. If I forget one, it will look horrible on our website and we might never notice it. It would help a lot if color mode could be set up as an action.
3 votesYou can insert the 'Document Color Mode: CMYK' command into an action using the 'Insert Menu Item' from the Actions panel’s flyout menu
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Contextual Eyedropper Tool
Currently, the Eyedropper Tool is an underutilized and often counter-intuitive tool that needlessly increases the complexity of a workflow because of its limitations. This- combined with Illustrator's poor color tools- often adds unnecessary time and effort to what should and could be more simplified tasks.
For example, a common situation is that I have a shape with a fill color that I like, and I want another shape that has a stroke to also use that color, except only for the stroke. Currently, if I use the eyedropper tool on the filled shape, it will completely remove the stroke and…
5 votesThe solution to that would be to activate a stroke if you want to apply a color to it, then to hold Shift when clicking a color — does not matter where this color is on a stroke or a fill. Illustrator then applies the picked color to the active fill/stroke, ignoring the source nature. There are two things to know — the cursor does not inform you about this mode (unlike the Alt-mode, should be addressed), and if you pick a color from a swatch — you’d get a screen representation of the color... harmless for RGB documents (if your color settings are in order), but crucial for CMYK documents (should be addressed too). Pleas comment back. -
Ability to set line width based on the angle of the line
I'd like to be able to set the line width based on the angle of the line, so if the line width is 10 pt on horizontal lines, and you set it so it's 90% of that on vertical lines, it automatically sets it to 95% on 45 degree lines etc.
In the example image you'd just have to draw a circle, set it to a 10 pt line and then set the thickest point (vertical) to 400% of the thinnest part (the horizontal).
The controls for this would be simple, all you need to be able to do is…
1 voteThis effect can be achieved with Calligraphy brushes. Set one up in Brushes panel, use angle 0, change the size to be the thickest weight you want, and use the roundness value to change it at thinner horizontal parts. If you want 4x difference, set it to 25% of the set size. Done — apply it to any path you want.
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Shortcut for the SMOOTH tool please.
N brings the pencil... I need something for the SMOOTH tool.
4 votesYou can assign your own hotkeys to different tools with Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.
Also, you can pick Pencil, hit Enter )or double-click the tool’s button) to open the Pencil Tool Options dialog and check 'Alt key toggles to Smooth Tool' — this will allow to quickly temporarily access Smooth on the go while you are working with Pencil.
Same applies to the Brush and Blob Brush stools by default.
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make one layer from more layers like in photoshop
Hello, I would really like it if different layers could be used to create one layer, just like in photoshop.
(so if you work with a lot of layers, and you repeat the design on the same page, or want to create a pattern, this doesn't work)
I very much hope that this will be possible in the future1 voteYou can do that using Layers panel’s menu (a hamburger icon in top right corner). Select layers you need and choose one of three available commands: Merge Selected, Flatten Artwork, Collect in New Layer.
Also, you can operate with a selection of object on canvas. Select object you need there, focus a layer you want you objects to be in and apply Object > Arrange > Send to Current Layer.
Finally you can drag a square marker of a selected objects in Layers to another layer to move them.
Please comment on how it works for you.
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Crop Image tool
With the Crop image tool, it would be nice if the initial crop bounds were to the exact size of the selected image. Right now when you select an image to crop, it creates a random selection, that requires more work than if the crop selected the outer bounds of the image instead of a small selection.
1 voteEric, this behaviour is regulated in Preferences > General > Enable Content Aware Defaults.
Notice that checking this off will also disable auto-placing of color stops in Freeform Gradients and of, pins in Puppet Warp.
If you want to be able to regulate these separately, perhaps you might want to vote for this request:
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Bring back the previous Illustrator CC toolbar
Bring back the previous Illustrator CC toolbar. After years of having the AI tools in a particular spots, now they're all over the place and hard to find and the Edit Toolbar is a cluster#$%& of madness. Bring it back!
10 votesWe have not removed the previous toolbar, it is just that it is not the default. Please use the Window menu > toolbar to get back to the advanced toolbar
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Move anchor points in opposite direction relative to the object’s center point
For years I have been hankering for a way to work with anchor points the same way as the width tool works or the option/alt modifier key works when resizing a shape with the selection tool.
When two anchor points are selected I want to be able to move those points in opposite directions. Either attract or repel.Imagine there is a straight line between the two selected anchor points, when one of the points is moved away from the other point (pressing the modifier key) the point that is selected but not dragged should move in the opposite direction.
5 votesThis is possible with Smart Guides and Scale tool, like it’s described in the comments.
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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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Toolbox zoom and hand tool on same tab instead of separate tabs making it slower to select since having to flip back and forth all the time
Previous versions CS6 etc had the toolbox panel better laid out: Hand tool and zoom tools were on a separate tab now CC doesn't give the choice but having them both on a same tab so having to hover, drag etc every time I want to select my favourite tools is really tedious whilst there are many useless tools on the toolbox displayed why changing a feature that worked perfectly in previous versions?
7 votesThe original toolbar with all the tools in classic arrangement is still available as 'Advanced' and can be enabled from Window > Toolbar menu. The currently offered toolbar is called 'Basic' and serves the purpose of making new users fell less overwhelmed with the amount of tools Ai has and display the most popular only.
A questionable decision, but it came with the possibility to make our own customized vertical tool panels. Read more about this here: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/tools.html
If you want to have horizontal toolbars (as a separate option, along with 'torn-out' groups), vote here: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/38230498-the-illustrator-toolbox-should-be-able-to-display
If you want to be able to add dividers in toolbars (we lost them when customization had been added), vote here: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/38097085-add-dividers-to-custom-tools-panel-or-enable-stac#comments
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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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Allow the existing file to remain active when using "Save as"
When working in AI in a native file format, then saving as a different file format (ie PDF), the new file format is now the active file. In InDesign and PS, when you "Save as," your new file is saved in a folder but you are still able to continue working on your native ID or PSD file. I wish Illustrator would work this way, too. Or am I missing something in settings to fix this?
1 voteUse 'Save a copy' command instead of 'Save as', it does exactly what you want.
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Keyboard Command for Expanding Objects
Please. It's so much more intuitive to press ctrl/cmd+a and expand using the keyboard. I work with other peoples files all the time so being able to easily expand their files to make them work is critical.
3 votesYou can assign your own hotkeys via Edit > Keyboard shortcuts, including Object > Expand, Expand Appearance, and object-specific Expand commands (Blend, Shape, Envelope, etc.)
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Bounding Box Preview Bounds
CC 23.01 Mac High Sierra
When a single object is selected, Preview Bounds is on, the Bounding Box does not reflect the Preview Bounds - it is the same as if Preview Bounds is off.
When selecting multiple objects it works as it should
8 votesThis issue is fixed in latest version of Illustrator. Live shapes (and art in general) no longer have geometric bounds’ sized bounding box with the Preview Bounds option on.
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