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Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests

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4666 results found

  1. Press Alt while creating a radius / diameter dimension to toggle these two mode on the fly

    Currently Dimension tool requires you to orient your cursor when creating a radius or diameter: inside of the clicked shape to create a diameter or outside to make it a radius.

    This is very nifty, sure.
    But:

    1. The tool hardly tells you about it when you draw. The only hint Ai give us is a blue bar (that we all tired of seeing, because everything in Ai now pops and shouts and distracts — I’m speaking about use, Text To Vector!) — I attach the screenshot of it for those who blinked and missed it.

    2. If I work with a…

    9 votes

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  2. Press Shift to constrain the angle of a radius / diameter dimension

    Shift is universally used to constrain a drawn art to 0-45-90° angles when using a tool. This applies to lines, rectangles, other shapes, anything that can be clearly oriented.

    The Dimension tool breaks the paradigm — we can’t hold shift to constraint the angle of the drawn dimension line when creating radii or dimeters.

    Some standards require us to have these lines too use integer steps, like 15° or 30°... this is very hard to comply now.

    Please either make the tool to respect angles set in Preferences > Smart Guides, or make it a separate setting in the tool’s…

    9 votes

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  3. More precision options for Dimension Tool

    Please add: 0"-0 1/8" & 0"-0 1/16" to Unit precision. I really need 3/8", 5/8", 7/8"...

    9 votes

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  4. Allow us to choose a preferable file format on Export or keep the last chosen one

    Please create a hotkey for the "Export as" function. It would also be nice if I could set AI to always remember my preferred filetype instead of always defaulting to png.

    9 votes

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  5. Change the cursor for Artboard Tool when a click is going to create a new object-sized artboard

    When using Artboard Tool, you can do several things with a simple click.
    1. Select an artboard under the cursor
    2. Deselect an artboard if there is no artboards under the cursor
    3. Create an artboard which size is the same as the object you click — but ONLY if the object is inside of the already selected artboard OR if the place you click is not inside of any artboard.

    This #3 case prevents deselecting artboards efficiently in cases when you don’t have 'naked canvas' inside of the viewport. And clicking is the only way to deselect artboards, since…

    9 votes

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  6. Add First Object Above / Last Object Below commands in Select menu

    Illustrator provides two ways to access Next Object commands:
    1. From Select menu
    2. From the context menu, Select submenu

    And while the context menu provides four commands, the Select menu gives only two. First Object Above / Last Object Below — for no apparent reason — are missing, and we can’t assign hotkeys to these because of it.

    Please add them there.

    Also consider this request, to be able to select ALL objects above or below the current selection: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/34306246-select-objects-above-below-current-layer-objec

    Note that this one is basically about 'select those who intersect', while we are also interested in 'select those…

    9 votes

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    0 comments  ·  Selection  ·  Admin →
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  7. Show 'Can’t join a path' message as a soft one

    Modal dialogs are very dated. They grab attention, they interrupt workflows, they yell at you. Most times we don’t need these as loud as they are — a whisper is nice.
    And Ai actually now has these, 'soft' messages, like the one we get when we modify a live shape — 'Shape expanded', at the top of the view, in a gray rectangle. Calm, non-intrusive, with auto-destruction timer. Nice!

    But there are other, legacy warnings and screams.
    The most annoying for me persoanlly is the one I get when I try to join a closed path (just in case, to…

    9 votes

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  8. Show the exact location where snapping to grid occurs

    Snap to Grid is underrated. Illustrator makes everything to make it uncomfortable to use: no constantly available indicator, clashing with Smart Guides, the general lack of customization (https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-feature-requests/suggestions/32403847-make-center-point-visible-while-dragging-art)...

    And also it does not give enough feedback on WHERE the moved / transformed object snaps to, to which exact gridlines’ intersection.

    Something just happens!
    Look at the GIF — this 13.25×13.25 magenta square feels like it’s lagging, also I’m just trying to position it.

    Look at the second GIF, from Affinity Designer. Can you spot the difference? We can clearly see which point it snaps to, no problem. Well,…

    9 votes

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  9. Allow Transform effect applied to an object to transform its the opacity mask also

    If I apply Transform effect to an object with an opacity mask (to move or scale it parametrically, for example), only the object will be transformed — but not the contents of its opacity mask.
    This is not consistent with the destructive method, when you actually move or scale this object...

    The workaround is to apply the same effect to the contents of the opacity mask, but it does not always have the same effect, since the contents can have different bounds, and the transformation points will differ.

    There should be an 'Affect Opacity Mask' option in the Transform effect…

    9 votes

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  10. Intertwine with Live Paint objects

    It feels like a rare thing to do, but no — this is exactly what I needed recently, and it is forbidden, of course.
    I had to expand my Live Paint group :(

    Please make sure all special plugin objects can work with each other.

    9 votes

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  11. Multiline tooltips

    Plugin developers can’t make tooltips go in several lines. Extensive tooltips are forced to be one long line, and it’s hard to read in time.
    Comes along with this request: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/46645348

    9 votes

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  12. Custom exposure time for hover tooltips for third-party developers

    A narrow enough request. At the moment developers can’t customize the time each hover tooltip gets displayed. When the text is long, it vanishes too soon.
    Comes along with this request: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/46645378

    9 votes

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  13. Be able to create a finished vector repeat tile from Pattern Editing Mode.

    Currently, the only way for a designer to get a final tile from a repeat pattern created in pattern mode is a clunky workaround involving dragging the fill swatch art from the swatches panel to the artboard and then working with the bounding shape to create a cropped, repeatable tile for export. We need a button to click inside pattern mode that creates a tile from the artwork inside pattern mode that is perfectly cropped (could be a clipping mask) but will retain all the live content that typically gets expanded when you exit pattern mode. This option should allow…

    9 votes

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  14. Create a shortcut to toggle between 2 different tools (e.g. brush & ink)

    Would be nice to have a keyboard shortcut to toggle between 2 tools (e.g. brush and ink) I'm working on an illustration and would be so much faster if I could have just one key to toggle between both tools. This is possible in Photoshop. I don't understand why isn't possible in Adobe Illustrator :(

    9 votes

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  15. Make clickable areas for eye buttons in Layers and Appearance as large as their sections

    As demonstrated in https://www.instagram.com/p/CmhJOBNo-U3/
    Clicking an 'eye' requires aiming, despite the area it is located in is pretty large. What’s a point of limiting the clickable area?

    9 votes

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  16. Learn to Rearrange artboards with coinciding or nested coordinates

    Illustrator will not rearrange artboards that are completely overlapping (that is, have the same dimensions and coordinates) and will ignore nested artboards, moving them along with their enclosing artboard.
    It should be able to detect complete copies and give an option to rearrange smaller nested ones.

    9 votes

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  17. Remake the Tools / Menu Commands dropdown in Keyboard Shortcuts into two toggle buttons

    Dropdown lists just from two elements are pure evil.
    Illustrator has one in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.

    What’s a point of having it? Don’t you have enough space on the x-axis to display both items at once and improve the discoverability of both options?
    As if you were hoping to get another item in that list and never added... in30 years.

    Remake it into two conjoined toggle buttons, or at list in a radio-group (ugh), but just allow users to see both available options at once.

    9 votes

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  18. Display command assigned hotkeys in Discover panel’s search results

    When you search for a command in Discover panel, Illustrator gives you the results, but never actually tries to educate a user further with teaching him assigned keyboard shortcuts.
    Figma does it!

    9 votes

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  19. Make Properties panel to have the same width as other panels

    Properties is the widest panel among other panels in Illustrator.
    While other panels by default have the same width (and some are resizable), Properties is too wide.

    It gets specifically disgusting whet it get stacked with other panels — they have to conform the minimal width of Properties and start looking ugly.

    At the same time, the main content of Properties does not look like it needs all that minimal width — there is a huge gap on the right visible in 'properties_1.png' attached.

    Sure, when you have some art selected, it look differently, like in 'properties2.png'... but look

    9 votes

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  20. Place embedded pdf Link with Option to Convert all text as outlines

    When opening a pdf in illustrator, if the pdf contains fonts that are not installed on the system. it will ask to find the font. and substitute a system default. the vector data for that font is in the pdf. if you take the same pdf, place it as a link, then flatten transparency, you can select "Convert all text to outlines", I would like the option to select "Convert all text to outlines" when embedding a placed PDF, so all fonts will be outlines and show properly even if font is not shown. it would use pdf font data…

    9 votes

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    Hello,

    We have started working on the tech that allows us to enable the following:

    • Ability to convert the outlined/expanded text back to live text.
    • Ability to lock objects to a character/glyph of a live text, allowing users to change the text (properties) while the object stays locked into the character.

    As we work through the complexities of handling different font families, font size, and other font properties, we would love to meet with you and share our thinking around it and understand :

    • Your use cases and workflows that this feature will help you with.
    • What is most essential for you.
    • The workarounds that you currently use to achieve this.

    If you are interested, please pick a time slot that works for you using this link. https://calendly.com/meetai/60min?month=2023-01

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