Fix warp type effects
This has probably be stated before, but has long been an issue with warping text. It plain sucks, especially on an arc unless you use the type on a path tool.
Many moons ago there was a plug-in called Kai's Power Tools, KPT Vector Tools. It worked perfectly with one click and than for those that know Kai the creator vanished and updates were never made. It stopped working at Illustrator 9 for me.
I am sure at Adobe there are many programming geniuses that can make the current warp effects work much better.
Jay
shared this idea
-
Kent Gardner
commented
The Warp frame was far superior to anything illustrator has -- the envelope feature Illustrator has was created by Letraset and paled in comparison to this tool that was in KPT Vector Effects. It allowed you to alter the envelope with up to 6 points (as I remember) The Letraset set up uses 4 points. The rest of the filters that were in KPT Vector Effects I could care less about.
-
Bobby Henderson
commented
Corel acquired a lot of the KPT properties, but did nothing with Vector Effects since it was an Illustrator plug-in and thus incompatible with CorelDRAW. Then Corel let a lot of the KPT stuff it was selling either languish or merge certain features into their PhotoPaint application.
I would like to see Adobe improve its Text on Path tool. Generally, I avoid setting type on curving paths (like circles) because I just can't stand how wacky the end results look. The letters' vertical stems, base lines and cap lines have no harmony with the curving path to which they're joined. To get the lettering looking reasonably correct you either have to carefully edit each letter's path by hand or even create the lettering from scratch as a drawing to scan and vectorize in the computer.
My guess as to why text on path and text warping features haven't been improved much since the 1990's is that so much of that kind of process is associated with cheesy design. I know I get triggered just from seeing people artificially stretching and squeezing fonts rather than using typefaces that are drawn as extended or condensed/compressed typefaces.
