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Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests

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184 results found

  1. Artboards should have a purpose

    1. What is the purpose of having an artboard if anything drawn beyond it shows up as part of your drawing? I exported an artwork as a png file and everything beyond the artboard showed up as part of the artwork. The workspace around the artboard should be able to be used for ideas that may be relevant to future versions of your art or to assist in creating your art.
    2. When I drew the attached image, I expected that anything beyond the artboard would not show as part of the artwork.
    2 votes
    How important is this to you?

    Illustrator can respect artboards when exporting a raster image, if Use Artboards option in the Export dialog gets checked. In this case everything beyond artboards’ boundaries will get trimmed.

    Export for Screens method will respect either artboards or assets, depending on the user’s choice.

    Also, there is a view to just hide these excess temporarily with View > Trim View command, but this won’t make changes when exporting.

  2. Extended Tools Panel

    Less frequently used tools (in my case: Scissors, Paint Bucket) are hard to find in the standard Tools Palette. Wouldn't it be great when Illustrator had a preset to show all tools at a glance (on my 30" screen...)?

    I know that it is possible to create custom tools panels - but especially when creating those, it's nice to have a view on all tools at once!

    2 votes
    How important is this to you?
  3. Angled Guidelines

    I'm working on a typography piece right now and my guidelines look like this (see attached.) The black lines are straight strokes. I think it would be really neat to have an option for angled guidelines, so I don't have to mix vertical/horizontal guides with strokes.

    2 votes
    How important is this to you?
  4. No strokes on linked files

    Illustrator CC 2017 (up to date) Windows 64bit
    Place a linked file, eg. a jpg
    Add a stroke to the linked file object in the appearance panel
    Try and change the stroke weight.
    Expected a stroke. like any other.

    2 votes
    1 comment  ·  Strokes  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    To have strokes around your linked images, you should do some additional steps:

    1. Apply a stroke (obviously)

    2. Open Appearance panel

    3. Focus the applied stroke attribute

    4. Apply Path > Outline Object effect

    It should be placed 'inside' of the stroke attribute, not the object itself. You can always drag-n-drop it if you missed.


    Why does it work?

    The image does not have a path for a stroke to be applied to. If you aplly the effect to the image directly, its pixel data is replaced by a path around the bounding box. Applied to stroke, it give it 'rails' to be stroked along.

    Not easy to grasp, but once you get it, Appearance panel becomes your best friend.

  5. I wish there were a guide window in the illustration showing where I am right now.

    It would be helpful if the illustration had a guide or indicator showing my current location.

    1 vote
    0 comments  ·  Tools  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?
  6. Make the font selection panel less intrusive by making it editable and moveable

    The font selection panel currently takes up a large portion of the center screen, making it difficult to see the font changes on a large scale. It would be nice if the panel could be editable and moveable, like other panels on Illustrator. Also, it could be positioned on the right side of the screen by default and made slightly transparent, to see through.

    1 vote
    How important is this to you?
  7. Please bring back the scrolling in the image tracing resource’s preset area on the top bar

    Please bring back the scrolling in the image tracing resource’s preset area on the top bar

    1 vote
    How important is this to you?
  8. Mockup Feature not showing in my Illustrator

    In Object menu Mockup tool not showing. plz add

    1 vote
    3 comments  ·  Tools  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?
  9. Illustrator 26.5.2 The new Lock object tool is terrible

    Go back to previous old version of the object lock. I do not like the gray border of a locked object. I cannot click through the object on other objects around or near the locked object. The OLD way of locking objects was better. It just sat there visually and did not affect neighboring objects.

    1 vote
    3 comments  ·  Other...  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?
  10. Eyedropper doesn't include the arrow heads on a line

    If I have a line selected and I use the eyedropper on a different line with a stroke and arrow heads, it only copies the stroke not the arrow heads.

    Please make it include the arrow heads.

    Also, the most useful arrow head is number 27, it should be number 1 not number 27.

    In fact, if there was a checkbox you could click in the stroke properties window that automatically changed a line to a measurement label so it put an arrowhead 27 on each end, changed the stroke to like 4pt yellow, and a text box half way…

    1 vote
    1 comment  ·  Tools  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?
  11. Do not include objects outside artboard when exporting to jpg or png

    When I export Illustrator files to jpg or png, it includes all shapes and objects sitting outside my artboard area. This is impractical, especially when working on a range of concepts and you just want to send the work to the client that is on the artboards and not all the working files sitting outside the artboard area.

    1 vote
    How important is this to you?
  12. too hard to change text size

    it's too hard to change text size in the small boxes in the character window. Hard to select all the content. Hard to select the number part only. And both of these are the only way to make it work. Please just change behavior so that clicking in the box selects all the content.

    1 vote
    How important is this to you?
  13. Disable Text Auto-Formatting

    In Illustrator 2023 came the addition of auto-formatting being applied to text.

    Specifically bullets, hyphen bullets, etc.

    This should have an option to permanently disable, as it is a nuisance and an efficiency problem to have to turn off every single new text block.

    Seriously, Adobe looked at one of Word's most broken features and decided to ram it into Illustrator? The least you could do is look at a good implementation of it like on Google Docs!

    But nope, we get terribly formatted, non-customizable, defaulted bullet auto-formatting.

    At least give me a preference setting to turn it off permanently.

    1 vote
    How important is this to you?

    There is a way to disable this feature: Preferences > Type > Automatic Bulleted and Numbered lists while typing.


    However, the fact it’s that obscured and is not given to a user when a conversion happens is a bad UX indeed. In some other apps this choice is given, even when it’s not the first one.


    If you want to change this, please keep adding votes and comments.

  14. Add more gradient varieties, including rainbow, purple gradients, blend of different color gradients

    Add more gradient varieties, including rainbow, purple gradients, blend of different color gradients

    1 vote
    1 comment  ·  Gradients  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?
  15. Colour Book/Pantone Swatches to remain in Custom Workspaces

    Hi - is there a way to have custom colour books/Pantone swatches to save in a custom Workspace? I have to keep adding them again each time I restart Illustrator, and it's a bit of a pain! Thanks!

    1 vote
    How important is this to you?
  16. 1 vote
    1 comment  ·  Actions  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?
  17. ダイレクト選択ツールについて

    ダイレクト選択ツールでオブジェクトの上からアンカーポイント以外からドラッグでアンカーポイントを選択したいのですが、オブジェクトが移動してしまうので使いにくいです。移動しないようにしていただきたいです

    1 vote
    1 comment  ·  Other...  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?
  18. Option to Reset Character & Paragraph Panel

    Provide an option or a button to reset all the values of the character and paragraph panel.

    1 vote
    How important is this to you?
  19. unlimited artboards for storyboarding to scale

    Storyboarding at 1920x1080 and I can only get 48 artboards. My computer can easily handle more. Why the limit - more please.

    1 vote
    How important is this to you?

    If you need to have a larger canvas, you can force Illustrator to enable the 'large canvas mode' by entering the size larger than 227 in (or 16383 px). Ai will warn you the scaling mode gets enabled. Commit and change the size of your artboard to 1920×1080. Done, you now have a larger canvas (actually it means it’s scaled internally and you loose one fractional space, but for storyboarding it’s just fine).


    Read more about this here:

    https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/large-sized-artwork.html

  20. Masked object within a masked object?

    Is it possible to put a masked object (with clip) inside another mask? When I do this - the masked object within gets its clipped path released.

    1 vote
    How important is this to you?
    One can apply a new opacity mask to an object that already has it, if you group this object first — then apply a mask to this container. However, if your object is a single group already, Illustrator won’t allow you to create another group (for obvious reason, to prevent an accidental 'group wrapping'). You can workaround it if you group it with a dummy object and delete it after, or use a free Group Anyway script: https://onthehead.com/ais/group003/
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