Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests
When entering a new feature request, please provide:
- Description
- Why is this valuable to you?
150 results found
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Ignore Groups and Clipping Masks
I lost about a Year of My Life double-clicking on objects within a group, inside of clipping masks. A less repetitive and MUCH faster way would be an option to "Ignore Groups and Clipping Masks" (i.e holding some key while clicking).
The option would temporarily (select-wise) treat grouped and clipped objects as normal objects, allowing direct click on an object through a clipping mask and ignoring groups. An "If you can see it, you can click on it!" approach for instant color and other adjustments.
This alone would speed up the workflow and, combined with wireframe view, it would be…
3 votes -
Make Document Color Mode menu available to set up as an action
Make Document Color Mode a recordable action. I have to edit lots of files and they all have to be CMYK. If I forget one, it will look horrible on our website and we might never notice it. It would help a lot if color mode could be set up as an action.
3 votesYou can insert the 'Document Color Mode: CMYK' command into an action using the 'Insert Menu Item' from the Actions panel’s flyout menu
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Find approximate/closest Pantone from a process color
If you choose a color from the color picker in Photoshop, it will show you the nearest equivalent in the Pantone library.
3 votesYou can do it for a single color. Open the Recolor Artwork dialog (full one), then limit the color to a desired Pantone palette, by pressing the button at the bottom that says ‘None’ and choosing the book you need.
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Shortcut for the SMOOTH tool please.
N brings the pencil... I need something for the SMOOTH tool.
3 votesYou can assign your own hotkeys to different tools with Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.
Also, you can pick Pencil, hit Enter )or double-click the tool’s button) to open the Pencil Tool Options dialog and check 'Alt key toggles to Smooth Tool' — this will allow to quickly temporarily access Smooth on the go while you are working with Pencil.
Same applies to the Brush and Blob Brush stools by default.
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Keyboard Command for Expanding Objects
Please. It's so much more intuitive to press ctrl/cmd+a and expand using the keyboard. I work with other peoples files all the time so being able to easily expand their files to make them work is critical.
3 votesYou can assign your own hotkeys via Edit > Keyboard shortcuts, including Object > Expand, Expand Appearance, and object-specific Expand commands (Blend, Shape, Envelope, etc.)
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Zoom Tool Controls (Fit to Screen)
Can we make the Zoom Tool have the same Control settings as the Zoom Tool in Photoshop? I design in Large Scale Canvas Files. I like to design Art for Shirt Prints/Broadcasting Graphics for Entertainment Usage/Graphics for Sports Teams.
This means a lot of Re-Scaling Images after put into the documents. When I Re-Scale the images and go to position them. I need to Zoom In onto the destination of the image's positioning.
After I position that image. I can go back to Full-Size Image. But, I have to go to my Magnifier % at the bottom of my program…3 votesIndeed, Illustrator does not have 'Fit to Screen' option in the context menu for the Zoom tool.
But it provides other ways to do that:
View > Fit Artboard in Window (Cmd/Ctrl + 0)
View > Fit All in Window (Opt/Alt + Cmd/Ctrl + 0)
If you are interested in Zoom to Selection command, please vote here: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/31427962-zoom-to-selection-fit-selection-on-screen-with
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Eyedropper needs to sample the flattened color, not the object that I click on
Many many times, when I use the eyedropper, I wish that it was sample the actual color of what I am seeing on the screen, rather than whatever the top object is that I have clicked on. For example I might have a number of layers of transparency, or I might want to click a particular value in a gradient, but the result only gives me the color of the object that I clicked on. Is there a way that you could hold down a modifier key and the eyedropper would instead select the color of the displayed pixel that…
3 votesYou can hold Shift to to sample the flattened color. -
Disable Snap to Path
Can someone please explain to me why you can turn off "snap to grid", "snap to pixel", and "snap to point" off, but you can't turn "snap to path" off. It used to be you could just easily turn off "snap", which would turn all forms of snap off. Now, when I'm trying to adjust points on a path, the anchor handles still snap to path. The only way to get it to not snap to path is to zoom very close in. This is problematic when you can't see your entire curve, because you're zoomed in, and you can't…
3 votesDo you have Smart Guides turned on?
Just turn it off and Ai won’t snap handles to paths. -
Rich Tool Tips in Illustrator
currently, photoshop has a feature where the user can opt for rich tools tips. Why doesn't illustrator have the same feature??
3 votesRich tooltips added in the most recent versions by default. YOu can disable them off in Preferences.
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Screen resolution of Illustrator 23.0 - Not recognising retina display?
Just downloaded the new Adobe Apps as an update. All fine except illustrator. It looks massive on my screen. Seems it's not seeing retina display or can't work out the size of my display. Attached are two screenshots. One is illustrator window looking massive and Photoshop looking as it should.
3 votes -
The ability to save a direct selection
Sometimes geometric transformations require a complex selection of certain vertices on one or more objects. Losing the selection because of a misclick is so common and frustrating... One should be able to save current selection to recall it if lost. This little buffer can be really very temporary, i.e. stop working if object topology has changed in the meantime. It would already prevent frustration on many occasions.
3 votesIllustrator allows to save, load and managed partial and full selection with Select > Save / Edit Selection commands.
UI is archaic, but it does the thing you want.
Please leave any comments regarding this feature here.
As for having a selection operation as an undoable operation — there is a separate feature request for this you can vote for: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/34934953
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the ability to zoom in on the gradient panel for complex gradients
the ability to zoom in on the gradient panel for complex gradients. If I am creating a gradient some time I feel like I need to zoom into the panel so I can ensure I get the color pointers as accurate as possible
3 votesYou can grab the edge of the Gradient panel and resize it, making the gradient strip larger.
Please comment back if the solution is not sufficient for you.
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Fix blending of strokes
As described in this discussion (from 4 years ago!) - https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1291256 - in most cases when you apply a blend to two strokes with any profile other than uniform, the intermediate stages of the blended strokes do not have any profile applied to them. I believe this has been a problem at least as far back as the introduction of variable width strokes, and has still not been resolved. This seriously hampers the usefulness of the blend tool and massively increases the amount of time required to produce the desired effect.
3 votesBlending paths with different stroke profiles, created with Width tool or picked from the panel, now works as expected — intermediate steps all have correctly blended profiles applied.
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Unlink assets from Creative Libraries
After I drop an asset from the library in a document, I want to be able to unlink it, and remove dependencies to an external library.
In my case, I'm using library to build products that I'm selling, so when I export the products for sale, I need to remove the dependencies to these libraries.Any designer who sell his products, or share with people external to a team, would have the same need.
We need to keep the flexibility of using a library (to update changes through multiple documents), but we need to make these documents self sufficient.
3 votesAs stated in the comments, one can place a library item as an unlinked copy with Opt/Alt+dragging on canvas. To embed linked copies, a user can press the Embed button in Control / Properties panels, or choose Embed Image(s) command from the Links panel's flyout menu.
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Illustrator - Trace image and turn in to an editable path instead of shapes
I would love to be able to take my drawings and use the live trace feature (or maybe even a feature within the Illustrator app??) that would allow me to trace my hand-drawn sketches (on paper) and turn them into line paths instead of outlined shapes. This way, I don't have to trace my images again, once they are in Illustrator. It would be a huge time saver!
3 votesThere are options for image tracing in AI. Extended panel gives you an ability to select Strokes instead of Fills. Tweaking these can help you with that. Please comment back if you think these should be refined.
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Keep edit Intertwine editable after pressing Ctrl+z
When Ctrl+z is pressed to undo an intertwine, the whole object is unselected as an intertwine and cannot be edited as an intertwine, without pressing edit in the intertwine menu.
This does not occur in other tools like live paint, after pressing Ctrl+z, the object remains selected as a live paint object and remains editable.
If possible, please add this feature.
This is valuable to me, because it speeds up my workflow, as it makes Illustrator more consistent.
2 votesAn Intertwine object no longer gets deselected when you undo an operation, and now behaves more like Live Paint. Please reply if it does not match your expectations.
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Recolor Artwork Swatch Replacement
I would like a simple interface where I can see what colors are being used in my document and have the ability to select colors and replace them with swatches (either from the swatches panel, a cc library, or by entering values). The current process of merging/replacing swatches in the swatch panel is time consuming and frustrating. Seems like the recolor artwork panel should have this functionality. I don't want to scale tints or use color groups. A use case for this is making sure an illustration only uses brand colors, or if you need to update an illustration with…
2 votesYou can do this using the Recolor panel (the full one, that is under Advanced Options). It’s quite straightforward, although not obvious.
Double-click the small color chip under in the New column, and the Color Picker dialog appear. Then click the Color Swatches button and choose a swatch you need. No hustle with the scaling of tints or putting your swatches in color groups, it’s that simple.
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alt click swatches to add colors to a selected gradient
With a gradient object selected, it would be much quicker to alt click swatches from the swatch panel to add to current selection
2 votesThis is exactly how it works now — Alt+clicking a swatch applies it to selected gradient stop. Please comment if it’s not what you had in mind.
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artwork over canvas isolation toggle
Toggle function that changes the view between showing all artwork in a drawing, and only showing everything that is actually over the canvas. basically, a quick and easy toggle to see what an exported pdf would look like. Exactly like the toggle built into InDesign (toggled by "w").
2 votesThis can be done with View > Trim View command.
You can assign any hotkey you want to it.
There is also a Presentation mode, but it does a slightly different thing.
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Bring back menu highlighting feature in 'HELP' menu
Please bring back menu highlighting feature for Illustrator and Photoshop! In previous versions, you could type a word in the HELP dropdown (i.e. "offset path in Ai"), and the menu where the item is located would drop down and highlight the item. This is very useful because designers sometimes remember the name of a feature, but not where it is located. Also for learning it is very useful.
2 votesDiscover panel now highlights the location for all commands you search for with it. Call it with Help > Illustrator Help or with F1 hotkey.
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