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Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests

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4772 results found

  1. Change the cursor for Artboard Tool when a click is going to create a new object-sized artboard

    When using Artboard Tool, you can do several things with a simple click.
    1. Select an artboard under the cursor
    2. Deselect an artboard if there is no artboards under the cursor
    3. Create an artboard which size is the same as the object you click — but ONLY if the object is inside of the already selected artboard OR if the place you click is not inside of any artboard.

    This #3 case prevents deselecting artboards efficiently in cases when you don’t have 'naked canvas' inside of the viewport. And clicking is the only way to deselect artboards, since…

    11 votes

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    1 comment  ·  Tools  ·  Admin →
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  2. Buttons in Pathfinder panel should be disabled when nothing is selected

    If you have nothing selected, Pathfinder still have all buttons active, despite clicking one will give out an error message.
    What’s a point? Why shout? Why not display a shallow message (like the one we get when a live shape gets expanded)?
    Why not disable the buttons in the first place when a selection is empty?

    11 votes

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  3. Show 'Can’t join a path' message as a soft one

    Modal dialogs are very dated. They grab attention, they interrupt workflows, they yell at you. Most times we don’t need these as loud as they are — a whisper is nice.
    And Ai actually now has these, 'soft' messages, like the one we get when we modify a live shape — 'Shape expanded', at the top of the view, in a gray rectangle. Calm, non-intrusive, with auto-destruction timer. Nice!

    But there are other, legacy warnings and screams.
    The most annoying for me persoanlly is the one I get when I try to join a closed path (just in case, to…

    11 votes

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  4. 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…

    11 votes

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  5. Intertwine with Live Paint objects

    It feels like a rare thing to do, but no — this is exactly what I needed recently, and it is forbidden, of course.
    I had to expand my Live Paint group :(

    Please make sure all special plugin objects can work with each other.

    11 votes

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  6. Multiline tooltips

    Plugin developers can’t make tooltips go in several lines. Extensive tooltips are forced to be one long line, and it’s hard to read in time.
    Comes along with this request: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/46645348

    11 votes

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  7. Custom exposure time for hover tooltips for third-party developers

    A narrow enough request. At the moment developers can’t customize the time each hover tooltip gets displayed. When the text is long, it vanishes too soon.
    Comes along with this request: http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/46645378

    11 votes

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  8. Liquid Page Layout (Artboards)

    I would love a "liquid Layout" feature like InDesign has for more easily converting artwork and pages sizes simultaneously.
    There are many times I create posters on a 11x17 artboard and need to easily reduce the art and page sizes to 5x7 for flyers.
    InDesign has had this feature for a long time and I feel it would definitely be useful to my workflow.

    11 votes

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  9. Make clickable areas for eye buttons in Layers and Appearance as large as their sections

    As demonstrated in https://www.instagram.com/p/CmhJOBNo-U3/
    Clicking an 'eye' requires aiming, despite the area it is located in is pretty large. What’s a point of limiting the clickable area?

    11 votes

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  10. Learn to Rearrange artboards with coinciding or nested coordinates

    Illustrator will not rearrange artboards that are completely overlapping (that is, have the same dimensions and coordinates) and will ignore nested artboards, moving them along with their enclosing artboard.
    It should be able to detect complete copies and give an option to rearrange smaller nested ones.

    11 votes

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  11. Remake the Tools / Menu Commands dropdown in Keyboard Shortcuts into two toggle buttons

    Dropdown lists just from two elements are pure evil.
    Illustrator has one in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.

    What’s a point of having it? Don’t you have enough space on the x-axis to display both items at once and improve the discoverability of both options?
    As if you were hoping to get another item in that list and never added... in30 years.

    Remake it into two conjoined toggle buttons, or at list in a radio-group (ugh), but just allow users to see both available options at once.

    11 votes

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  12. Display command assigned hotkeys in Discover panel’s search results

    When you search for a command in Discover panel, Illustrator gives you the results, but never actually tries to educate a user further with teaching him assigned keyboard shortcuts.
    Figma does it!

    11 votes

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  13. Make Properties panel to have the same width as other panels

    Properties is the widest panel among other panels in Illustrator.
    While other panels by default have the same width (and some are resizable), Properties is too wide.

    It gets specifically disgusting whet it get stacked with other panels — they have to conform the minimal width of Properties and start looking ugly.

    At the same time, the main content of Properties does not look like it needs all that minimal width — there is a huge gap on the right visible in 'properties_1.png' attached.

    Sure, when you have some art selected, it look differently, like in 'properties2.png'... but look

    11 votes

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  14. Hitting Escape while creating a shape, an artboard, while using Rotate, Scale, etc., doesn't cancel the process

    When we marquee a selection and hit Escape — it gets canceled.
    When we hit Escape while dragging out a guide — it gets canceled.
    Dragging out a brush on the canvas — works.
    Dragging out a swatch to drop it on a gradient or the canvas — works.
    Dragging the appearance form the Appearance panel — works.
    ...and many other cases

    Escape does NOT work for these cases:
    1. Creating a shape, an artboard, an area text
    2. Rotating, scaling, shearing, free transforming...
    3. Setting up the width with the Width tool
    4. Setting up the gradient with the…

    11 votes

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    0 comments  ·  Tools  ·  Admin →
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  15. Do Not Disturb / Quiet Option

    No alerts, dialogues or any other disruptions while working.

    11 votes

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  16. Disable smart guides to some specific object/layer

    Hi there,

    After using Illustrator for quite some time, I found there has one function I need the most.
    Which is to disable smart guides to some specific object/layer.

    Smart guides are amazing but I found that they won't work well if I had a crazy vector texture background.
    When I try to align to the main object I am working on, it will just try to align to background vector textures. Which is not ideal.

    So I have been thinking, could there have a feature, that disables smart guides to some specific object/layer, like we can lock anything that…

    11 votes

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    3 comments  ·  Snapping  ·  Admin →
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    The latest Beta now has a dedicated option for this in Preferences > Smart Guides section, in Limit Snapping area. We can now choose if we want Snap within Entire Canvas (as it behaves normally) or the Active Artboard.

    This is a WIP feature, and the team desperately needs your feedback on it. Please test it and comment if it works as expected (or not).

  17. Embedding Linked Illustrator content should embed the native content instead of the PDF version.

    When you place a Linked Illustrator object (from a file or from a CC Library) and later decide to Embed it, you actually embed the PDF content of the linked file. This results in many groups, clipping masks, reduced editability (no Appearance effects, Symbols, Brushes) and loss of layers.
    The optimal editable way would be to embed the native objects instead of the PDF version, similar to Copy and Paste with the Paste Remembers Layers option turned on.

    11 votes

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  18. Enable Content Aware Defaults is an All or Nothing option: split it

    Checking the Enable Content Aware Defaults option in Preferences controls 3 features: Crop Image, Puppet Warp and Freeform Gradient. It would be nice to be able to turn them on/off individually. Now it is all or nothing.

    11 votes

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  19. Alignment options to outside (top, bottom, left, right) of key object

    I would really benefit from options to automatically align an object to the outside edge (top/bottom/left/right of its bounding box) of a key object. For example, "Align below" would put the top edge of the bounding box of the repositioned object flush with and below the bottom edge of the bounding box of the key object.

    While I can try to achieve the same results by dragging the object around and using smart guides and snapping, that may require a lot of time (and a little luck) when there are several nearby objects that smart guides are being generated from,…

    11 votes

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  20. Bring back the feature where the text stays on the screen when moving through a text block

    In the not-so-distant past, when kerning in AI using the arrow keys, the screen would move along with the cursor as you went through the copy so you didn’t have to stop kerning to reposition the cursor, it followed along and even returned to the next sentence in the text. Which is still the case with InDesign, it works beautifully. But now that no longer happens in AI. Now when you are kerning using the arrow keys the screen no longer moves along with the cursor, when you reach the end of the text that is visible on your screen…

    11 votes

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