Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests
When entering a new feature request, please provide:
- Description
- Why is this valuable to you?
202 results found
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Open New File with Limited Color Palette
Include an option in the New File dialogue box to open a file with only black and white color swatches. Currently, new files open with a large palette of useless color swatches, and it's a time waster to have to delete all those colors each time to have a clean and functional palette.
1 voteYou can set your own document profiles that have only what you need.
Trash all swatches, styles, brushes and resave this new document as a default profile (in a separate folder first), add your own, and then copy the file over existing one (or add a new). Access the folder by clicking Browse option in Profile dropdown in the extended New Document dialog window.
Just remember to backup these files, because Ai overwrites defaults each update! -
Object position should be able to be locked.
When aligning multiple objects to each other, all of them translates. There's no option to make one fixed (position locked) and then align all the other object to that fixed one. E.g. a content to a box object.
1 voteThanks for the response Endre.
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Rounded corners on crop tool
When crop tool is selected, add the live corners option to crop rounded corners or circles. Please and thank you.
1 voteThere is an intended way to do it.
Once your image is cropped, you can do Object > Clipping Mask > Make and Ai will create and select a rectangular clipping mask for your image.
Then you have to convert it to a live shape, with Object > Shape > Convert to Shape.
Then you can round its corners in Transform panel, typing in a value in one of the Corner Radius fields (if they are linked) in the Rectangle Properties section.
All of these can be recorded as an action and applied later with a click in Actions panel or a hotkey.
Please test how it works for you and comment back.
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Transform options with clickable arrows all the time
Is there a way to always have the transform options like this (see "Transform with arrows.png" attachment) with clickable up and down arrows? The feature disappears unless you are grouping one or more objects (see "Transform no arrows.png" attachment).
1 voteIt’s not about arrows. It’s because for some object Distribute commands are displayed and they takes the space Transform controls would take instead. What you can do is to press Control panel menu (rightmost button with three stripes) and untick Align and/or Distribute controls to make sure that Transform will always visible. Also, for now this is the only way, Illustrator doesn’t allow to change the order of controls for Control panel :(
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Knife tool with Bezier curves like Pen tool
I like the idea of the Knife tool and I try to use it. It is worthless because it has no control... If it used Bezier curves or like the Photoshop's Polygon tool that would be awesome.
1 voteWhile the Knife tools definitely lacks precision (and there is a request about it), but there is a way you can use any path as a cutting path, the same way the Knife does.
Draw a path over the objects you want to cut, select it and use Object > Path > Divide Objects Below.
Please comments back if it works or doesn’t work for you.
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Option for object size to take priority over corner radius
When resizing an object, corner radius should be automatically reduced to accommodate the new size rather than blocking the change until you manually reduce the corner radius
(toggle in the options?)1 voteThere is an option to toggle this behavior, in Preferences > General > Scale Corners. You can also tick it in the Transform panel.
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Search filed is focused by itself
Every time I go back into Illustrator, the current version, my cursor automatically appears in the search area in the upper right hand corner. This was never the case in the past. This is problematic because, when I go back into Illustrator, I may want to select a tool or paste an object and unless I click on the artboard first, it pastes into the search window. Just one more simple glitchy thing that SLOWS DOWN WORKFLOW!
1 voteIn the latest release this search filed is gone, and it now has a button instead. Most probably it does solve the problem. Please comment back if it does not.
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Search items on canvas within Layer panel
Hi, it's hard to find a certain path/vector art assets from the layers menu if the list is super long. My suggestion for the search function is when you click the asset on the art board, you can simply hover your mouse over the layer's list and click e.g. ',' (comma) and it shows you the right art asset from the layers' dropdown list.
Thank you
1 voteIllustrator offers a way to locate a selected object on canvas in Layers — with the Locate button at the bottom of the panel (the magnifying glass icon). If you have several objects selected, the topmost one would be scrolled to.
There is a separate request to make this function work automatically.
Another request asks for a hotkey for the button.
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make one layer from more layers like in photoshop
Hello, I would really like it if different layers could be used to create one layer, just like in photoshop.
(so if you work with a lot of layers, and you repeat the design on the same page, or want to create a pattern, this doesn't work)
I very much hope that this will be possible in the future1 voteYou can do that using Layers panel’s menu (a hamburger icon in top right corner). Select layers you need and choose one of three available commands: Merge Selected, Flatten Artwork, Collect in New Layer.
Also, you can operate with a selection of object on canvas. Select object you need there, focus a layer you want you objects to be in and apply Object > Arrange > Send to Current Layer.
Finally you can drag a square marker of a selected objects in Layers to another layer to move them.
Please comment on how it works for you.
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Crop Image tool
With the Crop image tool, it would be nice if the initial crop bounds were to the exact size of the selected image. Right now when you select an image to crop, it creates a random selection, that requires more work than if the crop selected the outer bounds of the image instead of a small selection.
1 voteEric, this behaviour is regulated in Preferences > General > Enable Content Aware Defaults.
Notice that checking this off will also disable auto-placing of color stops in Freeform Gradients and of, pins in Puppet Warp.
If you want to be able to regulate these separately, perhaps you might want to vote for this request:
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Ability to set line width based on the angle of the line
I'd like to be able to set the line width based on the angle of the line, so if the line width is 10 pt on horizontal lines, and you set it so it's 90% of that on vertical lines, it automatically sets it to 95% on 45 degree lines etc.
In the example image you'd just have to draw a circle, set it to a 10 pt line and then set the thickest point (vertical) to 400% of the thinnest part (the horizontal).
The controls for this would be simple, all you need to be able to do is…
1 voteThis effect can be achieved with Calligraphy brushes. Set one up in Brushes panel, use angle 0, change the size to be the thickest weight you want, and use the roundness value to change it at thinner horizontal parts. If you want 4x difference, set it to 25% of the set size. Done — apply it to any path you want.
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Change the opacity of a layer or directly in the tool
Hello, it would be nice if you could change the opacity of a layer without a mask. I like to draw the shadows with the Blob Tool and have to reduce the opacity of each path after each step. It would be easier if each path automatically had a previously set opacity. Alternatively, you could make this setting in the options of the tool itself. Thank you
Gabi1 vote1. Draw a stroke with the brush and select it.
2. Change the opacity of it as you want it to be
3. Open Appearance panel
4. In the panel’s flyout menu, disable New Art Has Basic Appearance option — this would make each new object created to inherit all the appearance settings (including the opacity set).
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Allow Eyedropper tool to copy/apply different things
Guys, the Eyedropper is an incredibly important tool, whether or not it's "****" by virtue of its age. You haven't updated it in, what, decades? Among the things that it is incapable of copying are:
- multiple strokes
- stroke profiles
- transparency
- blend modes
- graphic styles
Those are extremely common usages/needs. And that's off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more. Obviously there's no reason this tool shouldn't be able to copy these things! Almost every aesthetic effect that gets added to AI should be reflected in that tool's pickup abilities. Please make this happen already.
1 voteThe Eyedropper tool can work in two modes: basic and extended: basic picks/applies only colors and text. extended allows you operate chosen appearance attributes.
If you open the tool’s options (by doube-clicking the tool button or hitting Enter while it’s picked), you’ll see that you can check/uncheck two top ‘Appearance’ options and customize attributes to be processed.
This is not intuitive, but very powerful once you get the concept.
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Fix the help search function
Help used to work fine but since illustrator 18 cc the help function always takes much longer to load (5/10 seconds every time I type a singl letter). Make a short cut to type in help, as seen on c4d, would speed up workflow considerably
1 voteThe Help option is completely reworked in recent versions, into the Discover panel. It’s rather fast now. If you have feedback on it — please comment.
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view Anchor Points
View Anchor Points selection under the view tab. I'd like to see Anchor Points anytime I click on an object if I have this view selected, not just a barely there blue line that is hard to tell what is clicked as it currently is when you select Show Edges under the view tab.
1 voteYou can enable this with 'Show Anchor Points in Selection Tool and Shape Tool' option in Preferences > Selection & Anchor Preview
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When I try to type something it is shown with some prepared text
When i try to click the T button to create new text, it is shown already made some text example with a tag. This tag is hidden and if I click "show hidden character" it is shown with #.
Can I start with completely blind text function without this suggested pre-made alphabet arrangement looks like some word (but doesn't make sense, it is just look like preview of the text)?1 voteThe # symbol marks is included into any text at all, to help designers to see where text ends. There are other hidden characters that mark column breaks, paragraph returns, line breaks, special space symbols, etc.
The text that gets inserted when you create a new text helps to quickly see how text would behave on canvas with set font parameters. You can disable this option in Preferences > Type > Fill New Type Objects With Placeholder Text, if you find this irritating.
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Allow calligraphic strokes for default fill/stroke
I regularly use a calligraphic stroke in my work. It would be good if a calligraphic stroke could be applied to the default fill/stroke settings via the Graphic Styles panel. This would save a lot of time in my daily workflow.
1 voteYou can reassign the default graphic style by Alt/Opt+dragging the path with the calligraphic brush applied to it over it [Default] style.
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Layer clipping mask (a bit like a paste-inside on steroids!)
I'd like to be able to convert a shape into a layer clipping mask which would then allow sub-layers to be created/converted so that they only remain visible within in the shape's boundary and would subsequently honour any sub-layer effects applied therein.
Why?
Well at the moment I have to expand any paths with effects applied to layers so that any effect is captured inside the clipping mask. This results in a destructive edit to my artwork and file duplication so that I can revert to the previous editable state when I need to make any changes.
Background:
I regularly…1 voteAs Scott Falkner says in comments, you can clip a whole layer if you select a path you want to use as a mask, then open the Layers panel and select Make Clipping Mask from the flyout menu.
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1 vote
The way tool panels get customized was changed since the report, and it’s no longer possible to accidentally drag-n-drop tool without enabling the editing mode. If this still happens for you, please comment.
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Another way to colorize our illustrations.
As we all know, Adobe Flash is no longer part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. But there is one very useful feature of Flash that should be part of Adobe Illustrator and that is the way that we where able to colorize vectors on Flash.
With Illustrator we can put a color inside an object, but if i want to put some colours into a surface between some handdrawned vectors that crosses I can't do it.Even the way that we were able to select a part of a vector when they crossed each other.
Those were very practical ways…
1 voteThis is exactly what Live Paint does in Illustrator. Introduced in 2005 on CS2, it allows to convert objects into special groups that allows to fill closed regions and stroke segments.
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