Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests
When entering a new feature request, please provide:
- Description
- Why is this valuable to you?
4759 results found
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Square wave / zig-zag 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…
11 votes -
Select objects to then apply auto selection criteria
Once objects are selected apply the auto select criteria such as "same fill color" or "same outline". If this is possible, I can't figure out how to do it. I can only choose to select all of the items of a single color, because I have items already selected. Also, it would be great for quotes to be able to get a quick total of the number of items selected. Is this information listed somewhere on screen that I've never noticed?
11 votes -
Opening Multi-Page PDFs should have a larger preview or scalable preview
The Open PDF window box that comes up when you try to open a Multi-Page PDF should have a larger preview. In the Open PDF window much of the text can be garbled, which doesn't help if you are not sure which page of a 49 page document you need to open.
11 votes -
An option to affect fonts that are hidden or locked with Find/Replace
When finding lost fonts or replacing fonts can you PLEASE let AI change/replace fonts that are hidden or on a locked layer. Or at least give us an option to.
11 votes -
Restrict Pan to work only Horizontally / Vertically with a Shift modifier
I'd love if there was a key we could hold down to restrict the hand tool to only pan perfectly vertical or horizontal. Would make it easier to develop for web — you could quickly get a sense of how a site would work when the user scrolls.
11 votes -
Ability to export to PSD but retain folders and layers
Ability to export to PSD but retain folders and layers. Critical for taking artwork prepared for Character Animator from Illustrator to Photoshop in order to use tools such as puppet warp to create easy frame by frame animations.
11 votes -
Allow to Move All objects and adjust their Spacing from both ends in Objects on Path
Objects on Path construct has several on-canvas widgets, allowing us to quickly eyeball some parameters interactively.
One of these is the starting position of the array along the path.
If the length of the array is shorter then the path, we can grab the rhombus marker and move all the objects together along, keeping the gaps.Another one is Space widget, which is located above the construct.
We can grab and make all the gaps shorter or longer at once.For some reason both treat the array as directional.
We need an ability to be able to move the array…
10 votes -
Objects on Path needs an ability to keep orientation of objects relative to page/path, similar to blends
Objects on Path needs more options and in its current setup is very limited in its usefulness. This tool feels like it's still in beta. Whilst it's good at doing the one thing it's designed to do, it's missing a lot of useful capabilities.
What's missing is the ability to keep the baseline of the objects i.e., keeping the objects horizontal. What it needs are the same options as Type on a Path (Rainbow, Skew, 3D Ribbon, Stair Step, Gravity).
Other two requests are:
1. Allow to nudge or rotate individual elements along the path for Objects on Path — …10 votes -
Chained dimensions
New Dimension tool is designed to be good-enough, but not be way too complex to setup and use.
One of things we need to be a part of this 'good-enough' set of features it has should be a way to create consequential serialized dimensions, like the image attached demonstrates.
To do that now, we’d have to drag each segment one-by-one, and snap the dimensions line to each other (which in the current build just doesn’t happen even!). This method is generates doubled lines instead of only one, and won’t allow us to move all the dimension lines at once if…
10 votes -
Isolation tints eyedropper colors from linked assets
When using the eyedropper tool in isolation mode on artwork, the color is taken from the actual artwork even though isolation mode displays it as faded. When doing the same on linked assets, even if they are Illustrator files, the isolation mode fade gets applied to the sampled color. This means that you have to back out of isolation mode and direct-select it to sample the asset, or otherwise have already created a swatch before entering isolation.
I think it would be nicer if Illustrator could treat the sampling of linked assets the same way it does for local artwork…
10 votes -
More precision options for Dimension Tool
Please add: 0"-0 1/8" & 0"-0 1/16" to Unit precision. I really need 3/8", 5/8", 7/8"...
10 votes -
Live Free Distort effect
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 -
Allow us to choose a preferable file format on Export or keep the last chosen one
Please create a hotkey for the "Export as" function. It would also be nice if I could set AI to always remember my preferred filetype instead of always defaulting to png.
10 votesLatest Illustrator builds now remember the chosen file format in the Export As dialog and keeps it between sessions.
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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…
10 votes -
Don’t drop the current character selection in text when I switch between documents
If you select a portion of a text in Illustrator and switch to a different app and back — the selection stays in place.
But if I switch between Illustrator documents/tabs — the selection gets lost. This makes editing of two or more documents at the same time very inconvenient, effectively loosing my data about the selection made.10 votes -
Option to allow to group a single group, making it nested
Sometimes we need to group a group. For example, for complex appearances, to nest graphics styles.
But Illustrator does not allow that — and in most cases it’s a proper cautious behavior. But perhaps it can be toggled somewhere?So far we have two workarounds for this.
1. Create a dummy object, select both it and the group you want to 'wrap', group them together, delete the dummy object.
2. Use a script 'Add Group Anyway': https://onthehead.com/ais/group003/ (it also can pull children form different groups into a new one — which is a thing we want too).10 votes -
Move 'Show The Home Screen...' and 'Use Legacy File New...' options to Preferences > User Interface section
These two options are not 'general', they relate to specific UI choices.
10 votes -
Create a shortcut to toggle between 2 different tools (e.g. brush & ink)
Would be nice to have a keyboard shortcut to toggle between 2 tools (e.g. brush and ink) I'm working on an illustration and would be so much faster if I could have just one key to toggle between both tools. This is possible in Photoshop. I don't understand why isn't possible in Adobe Illustrator :(
10 votes -
Make Increase / decrease font size hotkeys to respect chosen Font Height Options
Font Height Options are amazing.
It’s almost a perfect feature to my taste... but when I hit Font Size Step Up / Down or Point Size Up / Down (Shift + Ctrl/Cmd + ./, and Alt/Opt + Shift + Ctrl/Cmd + ./,) — Illustrator adds the chosen Size/Leading value (from Preferences > Type) to the Em Box size anyway, and not the x-height or the Cap height I chose to work with.So, say, with chosen step 0.5 mm and x-height 15 mm I get 15.267 mm instead of 15.5 mm as the next size up, or 16.335 mm instead…
10 votes -
Create new documents with a 'Plus' button or a double-click in the document tabs area
Document Tabs is a well-known paradigm, thanks to browsers.
Since many of us spend a lot of time with browsers, we expect the same functionality form tabs’ headers in Illustrator.One of them is a middle-click to close a tab (https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/38150188-add-middle-click-to-close-document), another is remember opened tabs on relaunch (https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/44819065-launch-illustrator-with-the-same-opened-documents).
There are others.But the most prominent one is the Plus button to the right (in LTR world) of the last tab, which creates a new document.
Sure, one can hit Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+N, or go File > New, but sometimes we are lazy, and the other hand is…
10 votes
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