PLEASE, for the love of all that is good, remove this evil or at least give us an option to toggle this feature on or off. It's literally giving me a migraine working on multiple objects with large shadows, forcing me to separate them on multiple layers and locking the ones I don't want to select.

Why, why, why would anyone who has used illustrator ever suggest such an addition? It makes me wonder what the Adobe team is thinking when they rolled this out. Ridiculous. Fixes nothing, adds 10x the frustration.

I'm also having this kind of "feature" in Illustrator CC 2020 (24.0.1) on Windows 10.
I don't know but recently I'm having a headache over Illustrator "features" that doesn't let me do the simple basic task such as selecting objects.
I'm hoping that in the future release they remove these "features".

still no hope I suppose. this is getting annoying...
okay, looks like I'm downgrading version...

Stop selecting objects when I click on an effect.

I have a rectangle with a long, soft drop shadow. I now can no longer select anything that is technically 'under' the drop shadow, because clicking on the drop shadow selects the object casting it. This is really really bad and extremely counterintuitive.

I'm smart enough to know which object is casting the shadow because I put it there. If I wanted to select the object casting the shadow, I would have clicked on it. Now I can't click on the thing I really want to click on — all the shapes' clickable areas are wildly overlapping and I need to re-order my layers just to click.

All this feature does is let me move an object by ~not~ clicking on it.

Awful.

I've just updated Illustrator and this is killing me. What a strange strange feature to introduce. Needs to be removed ASAP.

It's horrible. It's like scroll-jacking, where some JS won't let me scroll the way I want to scroll. This feature won't let me click where I want to click. An effect is just an effect — it shouldn't be a default selectable object, especially given how long and soft our shadows are these days. Need this one resolved ASAP!

Select tool preferences are limited to only two basic options - select by object or select by oath only. I suggest a third.

It would make life so much easier if there was option in preferences that would allow users to choose “select ignores raster effects". This would enable the selection of an object fill without being concerned with overlapping shadows, transparent images, text effects or scans containing clear elements or objects white areas of objects with multiply effect applied.

When working with complex detailed illustrations contains multiple overlapping shapes the ‘select by path option’ tends life harder still – like threading spaghetti with chop sticks.

Other workarounds include forever locking / unlocking objects, isolating objects or creating more layers. However, when you start counting in excess of 40+ layers.. you just end up fighting layers too.

Please Adobe... end this needless suffering of fighting to select object fills bellow shadows and raster effects.

Select tool preferences are limited to only two basic options.

Option 1: Select tool's default option selects object's shadows, text leading and transparent raster images instead of just the object shape. This is hugely aggravating when working on highly detailed illustrations utilising multiple overlapping objects and layers with shadows or raster items.

Options 2: is to "select by path only". When working with highly complex and detailed illustrations, this is actually a far more fiddly and aggravating option. Especially. when trying to click on individual paths where there's many paths overlapping.

It would make life so much easier if there was a third option in preferences allowing "select ignores raster effects". This would allow the user to select an object fill without being concerned with overlapping shadows, transparent images effects (e.g.. multiply) or text leading effects.

Please Adobe... I'm so tired of fighting with shadows an raster effect selections every day.

100% this. Took me a while to even figure out what was happening, as I couldn't see that I was clicking on a drop shadow – I was just like 'why am I selecting that object over there, when I'm literally 30px away?! WTF'. So, yes please to making this a preference!

Yes this is utterly dumb. Probably one of the top Illustrator behaviors that I'm prepared to be downright mean about, which is not a normal thing for me. I'm a very nice person. But I can't think of an instance where I've thought "oh, thank goodness, I can select this object by it's shadow/glow/whatever!"

+1 - The current function has never been helpful to me, only annoying.

You had me at hello!

Would love that!

Tired of forever fighting over object selection in detailed files. Gets to a point where too many layers just works against you. Forever of/on process. Advanced selection preferences would make such a difference to speed of work.

Transparency in raster images is completely other thing and I afraid would be much harder.

But if yes, let's go further:
'Selection raster alpha tolerance slider'
Background sometimes is not exactly transparent, so 5% (or 13 units for 0-255 range if RGB), for example, would be enough to eleminate 'almost transparent as well'.

Agreed 100%.

Often I use .psd files embedded for tracing and adding textures. This also eliminate the same problem encountered with transparencies and scans. Excellent suggestion!

I would say 'Select ignores raster effects' would be better.

Select tool selects object's shadows instead of just the object shape. This is hugely aggravating when working on highly detailed illustrations utilising multiple objects and layers with shadows.

Only other option is set preferences to "select by path only". Again on detailed illustrations, this is a much more fiddler and annoying option. Especially. when trying to click on individual paths where there's many paths overlapping.

It would make life so much easier if there was also preference option for "select ignores shadows".

Fingers crossed!

That's right - it can get fairly complex and un-predictable. An appearance (effect) overlapping the basic fill / stroke can come in the way. And some appearances like dashed-lines, inside-stroke, variable-width, etc. get applied from outside of the Effects menu.

No, selecting object by path' only is not 'the same as 'click-through raster effects'.
Make at least option 'don't select by external appearance', please. I would prefer even more complex way, by separating raster and vector effects to be sensitive for clicking, but this will get things to complicated, I afraid.

There is a setting in that may help in case of large glow/shadows. Preferences > Selection & Anchor Display > Object Selection by Path Only.

Enabling this option will disable clicks on appearances (fill/strokes/effects) from selecting the object. Only paths can be used for selection.

I agree that this needs to be implemented as a preference to turn it on and off.

I like the option.. maybe just set it as a preference to turn it on and off