Pencil tool now smooths way to much, ignores details
Please enable the former way of working with the pencil tool again.
The tool now smoothes far too much on its own, even when set to "smooth as little as possible", it is now really inaccurate, small movements are ignored.
Real free drawing is no longer possible , that is making this wonderful, intuitive tool partially unusable. Only roughly usable for creating character designs, for example. where we need tiny details. Such a shame.
Karine Salomon
shared this idea
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Gonzalo La Rosa commented
Hi, I’m adding my voice to this request because I'm experiencing exactly the same issue in Illustrator 2025. The Pencil tool no longer offers the precision and fidelity it used to. Even with smoothing set to the lowest setting, strokes are auto-corrected and small, fine movements are ignored — which is a big problem for those of us who draw freehand with a high level of control.
Previously, Illustrator respected natural hand motion, even if that meant more anchor points. That was a huge advantage for detailed illustrations, character design, or custom lettering. Now, strokes feel artificial and overly simplified. Please allow us to use the previous behavior of the Pencil tool, or at least give users the option to switch between the old and new model.
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L Coyle
commented
The highest accuracy setting still seems a little too smooth in 29.0.1. You can still get an extreme number of points if you draw really slowly, and I think it may also depend on the device - tablet vs. mouse.
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Karine Salomon
commented
Hello, the Pencil tool works again!!! The only change: I updated the operating system on my Mac. That's crazy but I am happy.
Thank you for your help -
Karine Salomon
commented
Hallo Egor, thanks for answering. I am using version 29.0.1 and I still have this problem, what makes me really sad, because I loved to use the Pencil tool.
(Edited by admin) -
Karine, what build do you use specifically?
This problem was recently fixed with 29.0.1 patch — do you still have this problem after this latest update? -
Karine Salomon
commented
Bitte die alte Reaktionsweise des Buntstift-Werkzeugs wieder ermöglichen. Das Werkzeug glättet jetzt eigenständig viel zu stark, auch bei Einstellung auf möglichst wenig glätten.
Ein freies, genaues, detailliertes Zeichnen ist nicht mehr möglich, somit wird dieses wundervolle, intuitive Werkzeug in Teilen unbrauchbar. Zum Entwerfen z.B. von Character Designs nur noch grob brauchbar. Ich möchte Details und es dürfen auch mal mehr Ankerpunkte sein bei komplexen Zeichnungen. Was zuvor mühelos gelang ist jetzt schwerfällig, ausweichen auf Kurvenzeichner oder Zeichenstift wird notwendig . Sooo schade.
