Tools to edit paths to make straight lines, sharp corners, and smooth curves for faster vector trace clean up
Attached are three tool examples I would like implemented into Illustrator to speed up the process of cleaning up vector paths. A lot of times when you do a vector trace the corners of text or objects will not have a sharp point or areas with straight lines will become jagged or distorted. To clean these areas up requires a lot of single clicks on points and anchor points to get the right result. Implementing these types of tools into illustrator will allow for these changes in as little as three clicks vastly speeding up the process. On top of that being able to see the changes and adjust them before they are applied will also help in making it easier and faster to get the line, corner or curve you want. I hope this is something that can be implemented into Illustrator as it would be beneficial for anyone working with vectors.
Jotham
shared this idea
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Jotham
commented
@Brandon MacInnis Yes a remove point brush tool does somewhat work like that, Astute Graphics actually has a plugin that does something similar, but it still requires you to manually select which points you do or don't want to have effected which can be tedious at times. It also doesn't show you a preview of the line and leaves you with a curved line unless you select the last two points and remove the bezier handles just like if you did Object-->Path-->Remove Anchor Points. I've used similar tools like I am suggesting in other apps I can tell you from experience these three tools save countless hours when designing or cleaning up vectors.
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Brandon MacInnis
commented
Interesting ideas. Another way to implement the first concept would be to have a "remove points brush tool" that removes points as you brush over them (and that tool could have user definable width like other tools) . Agree that the current tedious single point method you've described above a pain in the a@$.
Though one thing I just discovered (when pondering your suggestions) is that you can select a bunch of points (by any method) and then use the menu item: Object-->Path-->Remove Anchor Points. That gets close to your end result of the first tool (though it does make a slightly curved path as opposed to the pure straight line you're looking for).