Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests
When entering a new feature request, please provide:
- Description
- Why is this valuable to you?
180 results found
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Find approximate/closest Pantone from a process color
If you choose a color from the color picker in Photoshop, it will show you the nearest equivalent in the Pantone library.
3 votesYou can do it for a single color. Open the Recolor Artwork dialog (full one), then limit the color to a desired Pantone palette, by pressing the button at the bottom that says ‘None’ and choosing the book you need.
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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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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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We need, again, Custom Bevels in 3D-Extrude & Bevel, please!
Illustrator used to have the ability to create customer Bevel profiles ( in the Bevels.ai file in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator 23/en_US/Symbols ). HOWEVER, the feature is now gone! Please give us the option to create custom Bevels, again! Thank you.
Last year, 2018, I created a object and gave it a 3D custom bevel, and now I can do nothing with that object. Whenever I try to do something with it Illustrator crashes. I couldn't figure out what was going on until I tried creating a custom Bevel again. There is no way to create a custom Bevel! When I…
8 votes -
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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Chinese text hyphenation alignment for punctuation marks in Illustrator text box
Punctuation marks justified alignment on textbox.
Need to automate the text alignment in the textbox for Chinese characters.
Because it is very time consuming to do manual kerning for each characters reiteratively, whenever there is amendment to the text in the box.15 votesAs per the comment within, this can be resolved like this:
1. In Preferences > Type > enable Show East Asian Options
2. In Paragraph panel choose Avoid Head and Tail, Strict
Please comment back if it works or not for you.
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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. -
Keyboard Shortcuts for Select > Same > Fill; Select > Same> Stroke; Select > Same> Appearance
Requesting Keyboard Shortcuts for Select > Same > Fill; Select > Same> Stroke; Select > Same> Appearance; Select > Same> Stroke Weight.
Graphic designers and pre-press use these all the time and I am surprised there are keyboard shortcuts for these very vital features.
From a fellow pre-press production specialist.... this small little tweak would skyrocket workflow efficiency! Would love this!
Also, Adobe rocks!
8 votes -
Fix the help search function
Help used to work fine but since illustrator 18 cc the help function always takes much longer to load (5/10 seconds every time I type a singl letter). Make a short cut to type in help, as seen on c4d, would speed up workflow considerably
1 voteThe Help option is completely reworked in recent versions, into the Discover panel. It’s rather fast now. If you have feedback on it — please comment.
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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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view Anchor Points
View Anchor Points selection under the view tab. I'd like to see Anchor Points anytime I click on an object if I have this view selected, not just a barely there blue line that is hard to tell what is clicked as it currently is when you select Show Edges under the view tab.
1 voteYou can enable this with 'Show Anchor Points in Selection Tool and Shape Tool' option in Preferences > Selection & Anchor Preview
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When I try to type something it is shown with some prepared text
When i try to click the T button to create new text, it is shown already made some text example with a tag. This tag is hidden and if I click "show hidden character" it is shown with #.
Can I start with completely blind text function without this suggested pre-made alphabet arrangement looks like some word (but doesn't make sense, it is just look like preview of the text)?1 voteThe # symbol marks is included into any text at all, to help designers to see where text ends. There are other hidden characters that mark column breaks, paragraph returns, line breaks, special space symbols, etc.
The text that gets inserted when you create a new text helps to quickly see how text would behave on canvas with set font parameters. You can disable this option in Preferences > Type > Fill New Type Objects With Placeholder Text, if you find this irritating.
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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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Would like to be able to entries in the Appearance Panel and perform Pathfinder functions to them
Example: Select 2 strokes in the appearance panel, one transformed some distance from the other, and apply the pathfinder Unite function (Fx) and have them become functionally one entry on one layer of the selected object. This could eliminate some what are sometimes complicated procedures when outputting files to various RIP/machines/printers.
2 votesYou can group objects first and then apply an additional stroke to this group using the Appearance panel
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Zoom Tool Controls (Fit to Screen)
Can we make the Zoom Tool have the same Control settings as the Zoom Tool in Photoshop? I design in Large Scale Canvas Files. I like to design Art for Shirt Prints/Broadcasting Graphics for Entertainment Usage/Graphics for Sports Teams.
This means a lot of Re-Scaling Images after put into the documents. When I Re-Scale the images and go to position them. I need to Zoom In onto the destination of the image's positioning.
After I position that image. I can go back to Full-Size Image. But, I have to go to my Magnifier % at the bottom of my program…3 votesIndeed, Illustrator does not have 'Fit to Screen' option in the context menu for the Zoom tool.
But it provides other ways to do that:
View > Fit Artboard in Window (Cmd/Ctrl + 0)
View > Fit All in Window (Opt/Alt + Cmd/Ctrl + 0)
If you are interested in Zoom to Selection command, please vote here: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/31427962-zoom-to-selection-fit-selection-on-screen-with
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Eyedropper needs to sample the flattened color, not the object that I click on
Many many times, when I use the eyedropper, I wish that it was sample the actual color of what I am seeing on the screen, rather than whatever the top object is that I have clicked on. For example I might have a number of layers of transparency, or I might want to click a particular value in a gradient, but the result only gives me the color of the object that I clicked on. Is there a way that you could hold down a modifier key and the eyedropper would instead select the color of the displayed pixel that…
3 votesYou can hold Shift to to sample the flattened color. -
Allow calligraphic strokes for default fill/stroke
I regularly use a calligraphic stroke in my work. It would be good if a calligraphic stroke could be applied to the default fill/stroke settings via the Graphic Styles panel. This would save a lot of time in my daily workflow.
1 voteYou can reassign the default graphic style by Alt/Opt+dragging the path with the calligraphic brush applied to it over it [Default] style.
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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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Layer clipping mask (a bit like a paste-inside on steroids!)
I'd like to be able to convert a shape into a layer clipping mask which would then allow sub-layers to be created/converted so that they only remain visible within in the shape's boundary and would subsequently honour any sub-layer effects applied therein.
Why?
Well at the moment I have to expand any paths with effects applied to layers so that any effect is captured inside the clipping mask. This results in a destructive edit to my artwork and file duplication so that I can revert to the previous editable state when I need to make any changes.
Background:
I regularly…1 voteAs Scott Falkner says in comments, you can clip a whole layer if you select a path you want to use as a mask, then open the Layers panel and select Make Clipping Mask from the flyout menu.
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