This tool really should work the same way as in Photoshop. Having the bounding box reset to an outer rectangle every time you drag a handle makes it completely useless!

Yeah, Astute has some great stuff that we shouldn't have to keep asking for. $45 is not bad if you are using it every day. But if you're not, then plugins start to accumulate and might not carry over to AI updates.

Excellent video. I cannot believe this hasn't been fixed yet. I've been using a plugin called Stylism for the last year (https://astutegraphics.com/software/stylism/) which adds the distort controls we've been waiting for but it's not cheap, $45... which seems outrageous to pay to make software work as you'd expect it shold, but it does get the job done. It does come with other features/tools but I haven't used/tried any of them.

Ian Davies : Yes! Thank you for your video! I didn't even know about the secondary "free transform" tool but yeah, unless you constantly reset your bounding box, you can't free transform in Illustrator like you can in Photoshop. When the shape builder tool came out, a presenter made it seem like it was the fix we needed but then I never got it to work like the presenter's.

Yes!

The merging of ideas has actually made this issue less clear. Here is a video explaining what is wrong with the various versions of "free" distort in Illustrator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc5noORtWe4

I agree 1000%

If you are talking about this ridiculous, postage stamp-sized dialog with 4 poor handles at each corners of the selected objects... then there's more to request here! This VERY BASIC transformation operation should be extremely refined for all the years of development Adobe has had with AI!
Like:
- make a proper, resizeable window
- make its contents a real preview
- make the positions of each of the 4 handles numerically controlable
- put a switch allowing to choose whether the objects should be transformed after rules of conic perspective (where scale diminishes with "distance") or after affine transformation (no depth-to-scale relation)

Ha ha ha....I've been harassing Adobe for this basic fix to a fundamental bug for many, many years, and their complete silence on the issue is weird. Sadly, I think we can all assume that it will never, ever happen.

Free Transform currently only shows an outline window but not a proper preview.

totally agree.

Free Transform tool (Free Distort) resets the handles to the rectangular bounding box after each handle drag.

That renders the tool useless since the handles should stay where they are until I finished the full transformation (considering I can only drag one handle at a time, so I want to move each handle individually until satisfied with distortion).

@JamesProvost Yes I totally agree. If the AI team are incapable of programming such a simple thing as a free distort, and they are not liked enough in the offices of Adobe to ask the AE or PS team to do it for them, they should totally license Stylism. Not that they will ever do that...they'll just add even more pointless bloaty junk to the app and ignore the thousands of users crying out for bug fixes.

Astute Graphics has figured this out with their implementation of Free Distort effect in Stylism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1PcomIcl3Q

Would love it if Adobe licensed this for Illustrator's Free Transform tool

It totally IS a bug. Just because it hasn't been fixed for probably well over a decade doesn't make it OK.

Free Distort is currently the opposite of free. It opens up your object in a separate ultra mini low res window for you to simply guess the shape and placement of your handles with out seeing how it will look on the art board. Let's make it a tool that keeps the object right where it is (no separate mini window) so handles can be placed with other paths and intersections in the project.

Please, it's long past due for the Illustrator Free Distort tool to work directly on your artboard, and not in a tiny pop up window. I often use it to add perspective to objects that need to match perspective with something on my artboard. Having a tiny pop up window makes this useless.

yes...

Would love this.. its a waste of a tool otherwise.. Or add a live preview on screen.. anything but this..

It would be much more useful if FREE DISTORT appeared live on the artboard, rather than in a small preview window, so that I could adjust an object in real time.