Massive +1 to this - I'd love for this to behave like After Effects, in that if an object is selected then it is given priority. The accidental selection of a text bounding box is something I deal with a lot, and this would be a great solution to that.

An option to prioritize selected objects.
This has many use cases, here is one examples to - hopefully - make the function more clear:
If you have a stack of objects which overlap, the selected object will be prioritized, meaning you can move and scale it until you »deactivate« the prioritization or you deselect the object. You don't deselect this object if you click move the object with your mouse, even if another object is in front if it.
This can also be helpful when you work with type, where a transparent bounding box around the type often leads to accidental deselection of objects which are behind the text.

It's comparable to an object in photoshop when you're in transform mode (hitting command + T to transform). The object can be moved and scaled while it's in the transformation mode without you accidentally selecting another object = deselecting the current one.

Also very helpful when you work wirth text. If you work with text and it's selected, you don't accidentally deselect because you clicked 1px next to the bounding box of the text.

Egor, I think Russ had the perfect solution. Dulling is not neccessary. It doesn't need to be isolation mode. Just a setting that requires you to deselect objects to edit other objects. Essentially it's a quick lock focus feature without the need for groups, lock layers, or isolation.

It's elegant and I would love to see it happen.

Also, since I'm here... can you adjust how hiding layers vs locking layers works?

Lock should prevent edits of any kind.

Hide should allow edits if the master group or layer are adjusted.

Example: Character Animator makes us hide Illustrator layers for various poses, mouths, etc. All the mouths are in a head group. If I move a head group with hidden layers, those layers don't move with the group. They should move. They should just not be seen while doing it because they are not locked.

If hide works this way, can you explain the difference between lock and hide?

I find this to be a big oversight.

This would save me hours weekly and also reduce stress and frustration when working with complex files. Nothing more frustrating than clicking into a group, selecting the object, then going to select a handle and accidently selecting an object above it.

The current solution is to either lock alot of layers, make a really unnecessarily complex web of groups, or just cry in the shower. It's an awful experience.

I would like to add that it would be awesome to be able to select 2 bezier handles at the same time and change curves to maintain symmetry. This is a feature in a lot of design apps by companies with 10% of the budget Adobe has.

A huge thank you for the details you provided.

Makes a lot of sense and I’d personally would love to have something like this. 'Prefer selected object' would be especially useful for Curvature tool, because now it gladly starts editing another path when you just want to place a new point over the existing unlocked path (which should be just fixed).

I use Ctrl+> to enter the isolation mode, and a custom hack via Autohotkey (Windows only) to be able to to exit one level back with a Ctrl+Backspace hotkey as well. I know the team is going to make it actually available. I am used to these, exactly because I want to edit stuff without a risk to spoil the other stuff, to be able to marquee with the Direct Selection tool. I’d also wish the stuff outside the mode was ignored by Smart Guides (if I choose to!), but’s that’s another request.

However, it seems unlikely to me another way of isolation, effectively the same, is going to be added :( But let’s see how much votes it gets! I add mine.

The way I see it functioning is this.

Within the selection options of the preferences there is a toggle for "Prefer selected object". This could also appear on the "Control" bar in the main workspace.

The extra steps (I personally use a keyboard shortcut to invoke "isolation mode") adds friction when doing a lot of quick changes, so I envisioned it more like a "soft isolation mode", which doesn't prevent you selecting other objects, but requires you to tap off (thus deselecting everything) and leaving you with nothing selected. The prefer selected object option is then essentially reset and ready for the next object to be selected.

The main reason for this option is to allow for lots of quick changes, (adding/deleting points, Corner manipulation etc) without something like the pen tool creating a new point that deselects the current path (because it wasn't zoomed in close enough to register) and then just creates a stray point that you then have to find and delete.

The only issue I can see with this is when people prefer the object selection method rather than path selection. However it would be more of a power user tool so having it as as sub-section under the "Object selection by path only" would work well and prevent a feature being perceived as a bug. Much like the "Animated Zoom" function as a toggle under "GPU Performance".

Russ, so if there was an option to tweak the isolation mode so it doesn’t pale the art outside, it’d be OK for you?
Or you need both pale und this new non-pale modes at the same time?
Please tell more.

When an object is already selected, allow for a soft isolation by preventing objects on top of the stack (or below and nearby) getting selected or adjusted when using path/point modifiers.

This should be separate to isolation mode as that alters the appearance to objects on the artboard.

Marco, sorry for the late reply, but you can do this with
Object > Lock > Other Layers.
Does it solve the issue for you, or there is something more?