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Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests

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4594 results found

  1. Cmd + H should hide Illustrator on Mac

    Yes, CMD-H should be standardized across all of your programs. And kindly take Freehand out of its vault, study its pen/curve tool(s), and make Illustrator's pen tool work as well as Freehand's did.

    22 votes
    19 comments  ·  Other...  ·  Admin →
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  2. Introduce reset option for shear/rotation/scaling

    Currently, having used the Shear or Scaling tool on an object cannot be undone - except by undoing ANY previous changes to a document, plus the document may not have been closed and reopened, thereby losing the undo stack.

    I'd like to suggest to add a Reset Object option to AI, allowing to reset an object's shear, rotation and scaling attributes to their original values at the time that object was created.

    The suggested Reset Object option should open a confirmation dialog containing three checkboxes for the user to check:

    Reset the following object attributes:

    □ rotation
    □ scaling
    □…

    22 votes
    7 comments  ·  Tools  ·  Admin →
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  3. Edit a Brush like a Symbol, on canvas

    To edit a brush stroke, we have to do the following:
    1. Edit the panel
    2. Grad the brush and drag it onto the canvas
    3. Edit
    4. Alt+drag it over the original brush
    5. Think about applying changes to existing art if the brush is already used

    Meanwhile, editing a symbol looks like this:
    1. Double-click a symbol
    2. Pass the warning (or disable it once)
    3. Edit a symbol
    4. Double-click on the canvas or hit Escape to finish

    Looks like almost the same length... but clicking is faster than dragging and aiming. Why no use the same…

    21 votes
    2 comments  ·  Brushes  ·  Admin →
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  4. Consider a document as 'unsaved' (dirty) when a linked image gets updated

    Illustrator think that updating a link is not an operation.
    This leads to problems with documents that use PDF-compatibility option.

    Imagine you have an already saved document that have some linked images in it. You open it in Ai and then Edit a linked image in Photoshop. Make some changes in the image, save them in Ps, go to Ai and agree to update the link...

    But Ai still considers the document as non-'dirty', as if no changes were made.

    You can’t save the document and re-write the PDF content, to see these changes appear, say, in the InD document,…

    21 votes
    3 comments  ·  Images, Links  ·  Admin →
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  5. Ctrl+click the swatch to mix it with the current color

    There is a small thing in Corel Draw, that AI could benefit of too.
    If you have an object selected and click in a different swatch with a Ctrl held, it adds a bit of clicked color to your current one, blending them.

    Like if you have a yellow CMYK 0-0-100-0 and Ctrl+click in 0-100-0-0 magenta swatch, you will have 0-10-90-0, 0-19-81-0, 0-27-73-0, getting more like the clicked swatch with each click. Same in EGB Very convenient for adding color reflexes and picking a color in general.

    21 votes
    0 comments  ·  User Interface  ·  Admin →
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  6. Allow multiple elements in a scatter / pattern brushes

    For example, you could make a brush that draws a random letter or number every pass, instead of being locked to a single element

    21 votes
    10 comments  ·  Brushes  ·  Admin →
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  7. Make live hint with color values for the Eyedropper tool

    Right now clicking with Eyedropper results in a blind result: until it's clicked, there is no way to predict what will be picked exactly. Why not to show properties to be picked in floating thingy next to the cursor? PS does it great in separate panel, why AI can't steal that?

    21 votes
    4 comments  ·  Tools  ·  Admin →
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  8. Cancel button in progress bar window

    What I figured out right now, is that you can't really press Cancel when you accidentally launched a complex process.
    Applying filter, saving, complex transforming — it just won't respond no matter how quick you are and how strong you push that mouse button.
    Is there any way that Illustrator will hold a bit of it's attention to actually letting users cancel what they want and make this button a bit less decorative?

    21 votes
    0 comments  ·  User Interface  ·  Admin →
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  9. Stop nag windows

    Provide the option to stop nag windows appearing - offering to take a tour of Illustrator, or to use the new tools instead of the old ones. I already use most of the new tools, but I would like to occasionally use some of the old ones without being reminded that other options exist. Especially after the 200th time...

    21 votes
    0 comments  ·  Documents and Artboards  ·  Admin →
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  10. Export for screens should exclude template layers

    When exporting for screens, any layers which are set as template or non-printing should be excluded from the output without having to first turn off that layer.

    21 votes
    9 comments  ·  File Save, Import and Export  ·  Admin →
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  11. Alt+click in Appearance hides all effects except clicked one

    Sometimes I need to isolate one particular effect and work on it.
    I always try to alt+click it, like I do with layers in Photoshop, but fail, of course.
    Why not to add this in AI?

    21 votes
    0 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
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  12. Allow negative value spacing in pattern brush.

    Simply allowing negative value spacing in the Pattern Brush Options, so it overlaps. Would eliviate a lot of work tinkering to make the original object right for pattern brushing as well as for allowing more interesting patterns.

    21 votes
    5 comments  ·  Brushes  ·  Admin →
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  13. USE of .CXF FILES within adobe cc

    As >cxf files will soon be the future of colour communication why do x-rite and adobe not integrate .cxf files with each other. The idea of a .cxf file is to help stabilise colour across various substrates, regardless of background hue, it allows the use of a spectrophotometer to read the colour and match it against a dE tolerance to make sure the colour is within specified range.
    Hence pantone live was born as every pantone book differs in colour, however a .cxf file never changes.

    So pantone want you to use pantone live, which is fine until the colour…

    21 votes
    0 comments  ·  Colors, Swatches, Patterns  ·  Admin →
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  14. Loaded eyedropper just like in InDesign

    I wish the eye dropper behaved more like it does in InDesign: If you pick up a type style, you "keep" that style and can apply it to several different text boxes. so if you have a text box with 4 subheads and body copy after each and you want to change all of the subheads to match the first one that you've changed, you could click on the desired style, and then click-drag over each of the subheads carrying the same style to each

    21 votes
    14 comments  ·  Type, Fonts, Text  ·  Admin →
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  15. Reveal in Finder / Explorer option for document tabs

    Reveal in Finder Option - Currently reveal in finder you "command + click" file name at top of window, however this option is not availble when window is tied to the application frame.

    21 votes
    7 comments  ·  User Interface  ·  Admin →
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  16. Add Reference Point to "Convert to Shape" effect

    When using the convert to shape effect, it would be useful to be able to specify a reference point to the dialog, about which the effect can transform. For example, the current implementation distributes the effect from the centre across the height/width axes. A reference point would allow you to add extra dimension to the left/right/top/bottom (as required) and would be extremely useful in UI construction, among other things.

    21 votes
    4 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
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  17. Option to turn Overprint Preview on as the default preview in Preferences

    I'm doing a lot of package design for flexo printing, always struggling with overprint preview accidentally turned off. This is also a massive issue in conventional offset printing, especially with white accidentally set to overprint (e.g. when changing colors of many objects from black to white at once, or similar situations). This option would be a huge relief.

    21 votes
    3 comments  ·  Print  ·  Admin →
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  18. Ellipse tool, circle pie, Shift snap to angles

    Make the pie feature of the circle support snap to angle.
    Example
    https://i.gyazo.com/bbf718e29c9eb4af8af65a8d837de353.mp4

    21 votes
    2 comments  ·  Snapping  ·  Admin →
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  19. Enable Gradient Annotator on strokes

    When we are in Full screen and Want to edit Gradient on the Stroke It would be Great to be able to Enable the Annotator on to Change/Edit or move the stroke Gradient colors

    21 votes
    4 comments  ·  Gradients  ·  Admin →
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  20. Improve Trim Mark Settings When Exporting PDFs

    Posted using Illustrator 2025 (29.4)

    In the Japanese printing industry, it is common practice to require both corner crop marks and center crop marks when exporting PDFs.

    Currently, in Illustrator’s PDF export settings, enabling the “Trim Marks” option only adds corner marks. To include center crop marks, users must also check the “Registration Marks” option, which results in registration marks being added as well.

    However, these registration marks are generally disliked and considered unnecessary in Japanese print workflows. There needs to be an option to add only corner and center crop marks without registration marks.

    InDesign allows users to…

    20 votes
    1 comment  ·  File Save, Import and Export  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?
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