Skip to content

Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests

← Adobe Illustrator

When entering a new feature request, please provide:

  1. Description
  2. Why is this valuable to you?

How can we improve Illustrator (desktop)? Vote or share a new idea — one request per entry, please.

(thinking…)

Enter your idea and we'll search to see if someone has already suggested it.

If a similar idea already exists, you can support and comment on it.

If it doesn't exist, you can post your idea so others can support it.

Enter your idea and we'll search to see if someone has already suggested it.

  • Hot ideas
  • Top ideas
  • New ideas
  • My feedback

184 results found

  1. Effect units bound to global units.

    I am working with "mm" most of the time. However, when I use effects, I have to guess the right amount, since those are in "pixel" most of the time.
    As an example, feather or blur, and many more.

    It would be nice if the units would change with the units used in the file.

    11 votes
    0 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  2. Live Free Distort

    I would like to see the "Free Distort" effect be extended to work on the actual object, not going through a tiny dialog box that feels like I'm trying to apply it to a postage stamp. It's really difficult to apply a distorted shape to a larger area when I am guessing if a 1-pixel move of a tiny handle is going to make a difference or not. It would be amazing if four independent handles were on the actual art and allow me to move the corners exactly to the spot I want to place them at. It's a…

    10 votes
    4 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  3. Square wave live effect.

    Gears. Crenelations on castles. Zippers. These are a few things whose border can be described by a square wave. Or by a rectangular wave.

    But you can't do this easily in Illustrator. Oh, you can add a dotted line to a shape - but that's an awkward workaround. How about a new live effect?

    effect->distort & transform->crenelation would bring up a new live effect where you can apply square waves to whatever object you're affecting.

    Suggested parameters:

    • size - similar to the size parameter in roughen/zigzag, this would control how far the generated path deviates from the original path
    • pulse…
    10 votes
    1 comment  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  4. Allow to color code attributes (fills, strokes, effects) in Appearance Panel

    Sometimes we create very complex appearance stacks, and navigating the Appearance panel becomes rather hard (especially given the fact it tries to unfurl the items in it all the time — look at this bug report: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447/suggestions/49257335)

    So with a lot of fills and strokes and effects given we would like to assign colors to the rows, the same way the Actions panel allows (for its button mode).

    Another similar requests would be an ability to rename them (http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/34309852) and to make folders (http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/49257353)

    9 votes
    0 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  5. Allow Transform effect applied to an object to transform its the opacity mask also

    If I apply Transform effect to an object with an opacity mask (to move or scale it parametrically, for example), only the object will be transformed — but not the contents of its opacity mask.
    This is not consistent with the destructive method, when you actually move or scale this object...

    The workaround is to apply the same effect to the contents of the opacity mask, but it does not always have the same effect, since the contents can have different bounds, and the transformation points will differ.

    There should be an 'Affect Opacity Mask' option in the Transform effect…

    9 votes
    1 comment  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  6. Can't edit simultaneously two several selected fills in Appearance

    AI allows to select several fills in Appearance, but you can only delete or duplicate them then.
    If I select two fills with Shift+click, for example, and try to apply new swatch, it would be applied to first selected fill only. If I try to add effect — it would be applied not to both, but selected only again.

    A related entry,
    Can't select and edit two effects from two separate fills in single appearance
    http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/35333764

    9 votes
    1 comment  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  7. Enhancing the Convert to Shape Effects

    The Rectangle, Eplise and Polygon tools had been updated with dynamic properties in CC 2014.

    That will be huge to have these properties added to the "Convert to Shape" Effect and to add the Polygon and Star tools to the "Convert to Shape" list.

    It will allow more Advanced Appearances and Graphic Styles.

    –––

    +Adding the Reference Point:
    https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-feature-requests/suggestions/32052073-add-reference-point-to-convert-to-shape-effect

    9 votes
    0 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  8. A way to fill shapes with brush textures (paint bucket)

    An ability to use a paint bucket to manually fill shapes with textures such as the watercolor brush, or an ability to pick swatches and textures within the fill panel.

    9 votes
    0 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  9. Warp Effect Not Working

    I've noticed that ever since upgrading to Illustrator CC 2018 (22.0.1) that the Warp Effect doesn't seem to work properly. The Arc and Arch effects will work, but applying any of the Flag, Wave, Fish or Rise effects won't change the object at all.

    9 votes
    4 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?
    Resolved (Comments Open)  ·  Ashutosh Chaturvedi responded

    Thank you to all who shared their files. We do not support flag, fish effects on a straight line with just two anchor points. The feature is implemented to work on the line segment which is not straight.
    Please refer to the attachment for supported and non supported scenarios. Should you have further query please email us on sharewithai@adobe.com

  10. Make Shadow bounds for 3D and Materials to auto-match the actual shadow bounds

    Please eliminate the shadow bounds for 3D objects, or make it infinite, or at least something more generous than 400%: 4000% perhaps? 40,000%

    8 votes
    1 comment  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  11. Allow new Smooth command (not the tool) to be a live effect also

    New Smooth is quite handy to deal with rugged shapes. But it is also introduces the new 'dialog-less' approach, when we are basically given a dialog that auto-commits on dropping a selection. Once it is dropped, the change is applied. We will get accustomed to that.

    But imagine I smoothed something, then get distracted, and returned to the smoothed path a while after. To undo and reapply this I’d have to go back in History (at least we finally have it).

    What if we can apply this as an effect to an object, rather than a immediate filter? It means…

    8 votes
    0 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  12. Please re-add 3D mapping with Symbols to new 3D functionality

    Please re-add 3D mapping with Symbols to the new 3D functionality.

    I know it's included in the "3D (Classic)" Effects menu, but it needs to be added to the new 3D functionality. Calling it "Classic" means Adobe is going to abandon it (for something worse). I use 3D mapping with Symbols ALL THE TIME. PLEASE add it back.

    Thank you!

    8 votes
    4 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  13. We need, again, Custom Bevels in 3D-Extrude & Bevel, please!

    Illustrator used to have the ability to create customer Bevel profiles ( in the Bevels.ai file in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator 23/en_US/Symbols ). HOWEVER, the feature is now gone! Please give us the option to create custom Bevels, again! Thank you.

    Last year, 2018, I created a object and gave it a 3D custom bevel, and now I can do nothing with that object. Whenever I try to do something with it Illustrator crashes. I couldn't figure out what was going on until I tried creating a custom Bevel again. There is no way to create a custom Bevel! When I…

    8 votes
    Resolved (Comments Open)  ·  6 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  14. Grayscale as an Effect

    I would like to be able to apply a non-destructive "Convert to Grayscale" Effect to Objects, Groups or Layers.

    8 votes
    1 comment  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  15. Attach Symbol Effect

    Adding a new Effect to Attach a Symbol would heavily simplify the creation of Appearances (Graphic Styles) like the one in my Screenshot.

    Of course a Reference Point and Liquid constraints like in InDesign would be amazing.

    And that will open all new horizons of possibilities!

    8 votes
    3 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  16. True vector blur / feather, similar to one Rive has

    Quite recently Rive introduced Vector Feathering: https://rive.app/blog/introducing-vector-feathering

    Illustrator uses raster-based Feather and Gaussian Blur, and — let’s admit it — we need them better: resolution-independent, infinitely scalable.
    Instead we got just 'faster blur'...

    And while you are here — there are many more blur-realted requests:
    – Motion blur: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/32403883
    – Background blur: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/36614008
    – Gradient Feather: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/31911052
    and more.

    Stop toying with text-to-raster-then-trace toys!

    7 votes
    0 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  17. Please add missing blending modes: Linear Burn, Linear Dodge (Add) and Vivid Light

    Please add blending mode 'Add', and others as well

    7 votes
    4 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  18. 3D-manipulation of grouped 3D-objects: please add this

    It would be great if Illustrator could 3D-manipulate grouped 3D objects in 3D space. All I need is to be able to group and position individual 3D objects into a grouped 3D object, and then be able to position, rotate that mass of grouped 3D objects.

    Thank you!

    7 votes
    2 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  19. SVG Timeline Animation

    Svg kann animiert werden. Warum muss ich dazu zu svgator oder snap greifen? Ist direkt weder in illustrator, Animate noch After Effects möglich.

    Ein fenster timeline zu illustrator. Keyframe Animationen und SVG Animiert müsste man dich in Adobe Produkten erdtellen können.

    7 votes
    3 comments  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

  20. Transform Effect with manually adjustable anchor position

    The current Transform Effects has a very limited anchor position setup (that 9 squares in the bottom corner). To make a custom anchor position, we must input "horizontal" and "vertical" value manually which is very ancient.

    Rotation tool with Transform Again method is an alternative when creating a mandala thingy, but it if we want to alter the shapes, we have to repeat the rotation and transformation again, which is another ancient stuff.

    Adding a simple clicking right on the artboard for placing the anchor point of Transform Effects would be great. We can just set up the anchor point…

    7 votes
    1 comment  ·  Effects, Appearance, Graphic Styles  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?
1 3 5 … 9 10
  • Don't see your idea?

Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests

Categories

Feedback and Knowledge Base

(thinking…)