Rotate canvas functionality is now available in Beta. You can download this beta through the Creative Cloud Desktop app’s beta section.

You can easily rotate the canvas and change its direction. All your artboards and visible onscreen objects will be rotated according to the specified angle. Like zoom, the rotated canvas view will be saved with the document. We are working on enabling artboard guides in a rotated view and shall be available updates soon.

This has been one big missing functionality in Illustrator and we would love to hear your feedback in helping us refine it further. What do you like? What do you think is missing? Please share.

Hello Everyone!

First up, let me apologize for not giving an update for such a long time. We will try to do a better job of providing frequent updates on our top requests going forward. This is not an excuse for lack of communication from our side, but we have been discussing this request for a long time internally. Without getting into too many technical details, let me share that there is a fair amount of complexity involved in making it work within Illustrator. The number of tools, effects, plugins, etc. makes it even more challenging. However, given the fact that it continues to be one of the top requests, the team has been exploring different approaches to implement it. I am happy to share that we have finally :) started to work on it. There would be some challenges in making everything work in the first release. I will continue to post specific questions on this thread and work with you to define the first release that is valuable and works for most of your workflows. I look forward to working closely with you all in bringing this functionality into Illustrator.

Let me provide a high-level summary of what I gathered from 255 comments in this thread so far.

- It is desirable to have both, but if we must pick, we would prefer rotation of canvas over the artboard.
- Rotating the view is not helpful, we should be able to edit as well :)
- Ideally, we should be able to rotate freely at any angle. But, if we have to prioritize, stepwise rotation at fixed angles may work.
- Ideally, all tools should work but if we have to prioritize we can start with few tools that are most useful in a rotated view e.g. brush, pencil, etc.
- A lot of folks want it to work as it works in photoshop.
- Shortcuts to do easy toggle/easy reset are highly desirable.
- It would be a great productivity enhancer for people working with packaging, editing text, or even freehand illustrations.

I look forward to sharing an update and seeking your feedback soon.

Avinash Singh Kotwal
Senior Product Manager,
Adobe illustrator

Rotate canvas story has been added to backlog. We will be picking it up shortly.

Thanks,
Yogesh

Hello Everyone,

Do you only want to view the art at an angle or are would you also like to draw/edit at an angle?

Thanks,
Yogesh