Right-click Contextual menu with Layers panel (same as in Photoshop)
Wouldn’t it be nice if Illustrator had a similar contextual menu as in Photoshop?
It would be much easier to e.g. duplicate a layer, using right-click, than via tiny-hard-to-point-at hamburger menu at the layer palette.
Please…
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Van Sedita commented
I cannot right click on a layer to get to the layer options.
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Paul Roper commented
I think the chances of this being implemented are slim...look at how long it took to fix things like the distort tool (25+ years) or hyphenation defaulting to "on" (again, decades). It's not an "Adobe MAX headline-grabber" (or so Adobe think), so these requests will sit languishing at the bottom of a pile that "marketing" keep adding stupid gimmicks that nobody will ever use to the top of the pile. In reality, if Adobe ditched all the silly AI/Firefly stuff, perspective stuff (remember that?), 3D stuff etc. in Illustrator, and concentrated on listening to what real-life, professional users actually WANT, we could look forward to an upgrade to a halfway-decent bit of software. As has been reiterated in EVERY software forum for ever, what we always want is these three things:
1. Fix bugs
2. Basic improvements to existing tools
3. Better performance
...and absolutely no new, pointless "features". I can't count the number of times I've seen people comment (for a wide variety of software, but especially the near-death-experience that is Illustrator) that they look forward to the day when a company has the balls to announce "NO NEW FEATURES AT ALL BUT EVERYTHING'S FIXED AND BETTER"* at a press event.*As far as I know, this did, amazingly, actually happen once, when Apple launched its greatest OS ever - Mac OS10.6:
"The goals of Snow Leopard were improved performance, greater efficiency and the reduction of its overall memory footprint, unlike previous versions of Mac OS X which focused more on new features. Apple famously marketed Snow Leopard as having "zero new features"." and "sales of Snow Leopard were significantly higher than that of its predecessors". Proof if you ever need it, Adobe, that this can be done very successfully. -
Eugen N commented
Agreed. This design flaw makes it difficult to use several Adobe's apps. It doesn't let users to form one consistent workflow when using Adobe's apps like Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects. The right-click menu is available in Photoshop and After Effects But not in Illustrator for some reason.
This post was created in 2017. Now it's 2024. It's been ≈7 years but developers did nothing to solve this issue. 😞 -
jonniecharles commented
Such a fundamental flaw (just because people are only complaining here once a month - Adobe don't realise the hours hundreds of Adobe Illustrator users waste moving over to click on an icon, when an Adobe coder could include this incredibly simple functionality with about a days work (I design apps too, so I know) (it wouldn't even need to be buggy, haha, most of the code is already there) Essentially it is gob-smacking (another reason it feels lazy, is because there is this functionality in adobe photoshop and indiesign)
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Karen Judelyn Fernandes commented
When I select all the Layers to group them together, it won't happen. Right click doesn't show up.
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Craig commented
Unbelievable honestly. No wonder so many people are switching to Affinity Designer. I am fluent in Designer and decided I should be also in Illustrator....no thanks.
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Anonymous commented
Illustrator 2020 - Still no right click in Illustrator. Hard to believe really.
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Derek commented
Agreed. Just one of many oversights and stupidities with Adobe apps.
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Maris "MIntrovrt" Alicke commented
Allow us to right-click in the Layers panel. Photoshop has had it for ages, why doesn't Illustrator?
Overall I would like it to be more like the layer window in Photoshop i.e. a Transparency option, better drag and drop and Groups.It's such a pain how unresponsive it feels.
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Maris "MIntrovrt" Alicke commented
Allow us to right-click in the Layers panel. Photoshop has had it for ages, why doesn't Illustrator?
Overall I would like it to be more like the Layers panel in Photoshop i.e. a Transparency option, better drag and drop and Groups. -
Paul Roper commented
I assume this is because Illustrator was originally written for the one-button-mouse Macintosh, and I'd imagine the core code has not been updated since then. It certainly feels like a 31-year-old app.
It is infuriating to have to do everything in the layers palette via the stupid top-right menu, and ridiculous that right-clicking a layer does absolutely nothing. Same with other palettes such as Links and Styles.