Stroke scaling bug in Illustrator even with “Scale Strokes & Effects” enabled
Hi Adobe team,
I would like to report an issue regarding stroke behavior in Adobe Illustrator.
Even with “Scale Strokes & Effects” enabled in both Preferences and the Transform panel, the stroke weight still changes incorrectly when scaling objects. When scaling down, the stroke becomes thinner than expected, and when scaling up, it becomes thicker than it should.
I noticed that normal strokes behave correctly, including strokes applied in the Appearance panel. However, the issue occurs when I group two or more objects (text/shapes) and then apply a stroke via Appearance on the group. Once the group is scaled, the stroke scales incorrectly.
This behavior did not happen in earlier versions. On Illustrator v29.5, everything works fine — this issue started to appear in v29.6 and above, and continues in v30.0.
Troubleshooting steps I’ve already tried:
- Verified “Scale Strokes & Effects” is enabled
- Reset Illustrator preferences
- Cleared cache and restarted the app
- Tested on multiple files (new and existing)
- Tested both GPU and CPU preview
- System reboot
The issue still persists and affects my workflow, especially when working with icons and UI graphics that require precise stroke consistency.
System details:
- OS: Windows 11
- Illustrator version: 30.0 (v29.5 works correctly; issue starts in v29.6 and above)
If needed, I can provide a screen recording and sample file to help reproduce the bug.
Thank you.
btw. the video attached already enabled ''scale stroke and effect''
Almu Kmrdn
shared this idea
-
Can replicate this easily now, and unchecking "Real-time drawing and editing" indeed helps
-
monokano
commented
The workaround for this bug is to disable "Real-time drawing and editing" in the preferences. It's clear that this feature is the cause.
---
このバグの回避方法は、環境設定の「リアルタイムの描画と編集」を無効にすることです。この機能が原因であることは明らかです。 -
Mike
commented
Sorry it took a while. Here is a file and video. It's basically just a new file where I created a black box in the background to easier see the artwork. In the video I'm pasting the artwork in, then you can see me dragging the corners to enlarge. You can see it messes up. Then I hit command Z and it's still pretty messed up after undoing.
-
Allan Jorge Batican
commented
I have no problem in the previous update, but I noticed with the current, strokes and effects won't scale based on the original thickness even if the preference setting has been ticked.
See attached image for a sample. In "scale to small" you can see that the stroke is thinner than the original, and in "scale to large" the stroke gets thicker than the original.
It gets frustrating as I have to manually scale all the elements just to make it consistent/cohesive :(
OS: Windows 11
Adobe Illustrator: v 29.8.1 -
> To be honest I've never found it useful to not scale strokes.
Trust me, there are numerous examples where this is useful. More of it — this is my personal preferred mode of treating strokes. Workflows differ and Ai is versatile.Apart from this — I get the stroke gets scaled twice as it shoul... but I can’t reproduce this. I presume there is something peculiar with the artwork itself...
If you can, please make a duplicate of the artwork, strip details until the bare minimum required to reproduce the behavior, and share the this test file here.
A small video showing the exact approach to resizing it would be helpful as well. -
Mike
commented
Yes, scale strokes and effects is checked. To be honest I've never found it useful to not scale strokes. I mentioned on another post that sometimes it becomes unchecked by itself but I did check before I created the example I included. Maybe I didn't explain it well enough. The left logos still have strokes specifically around the background H. The logos on the right the strokes are converted to outlines. They are all reduced down from a larger size. The top two were reduced by numerical value typing in 50% then enter. The bottom two were reduced down roughly 50% by dragging from the upper right corner holding option shift for constraints. You can see the bottom left logo's stroke outline is roughly half the size it should be. Both of the logos on the left are still strokes. I'm on a M1 Mac Pro and Illustrator is the latest version (not beta).
-
Mike, not sure I follow.
When you check Preferences > General, is Scale Strokes & Effects option enabled for you?
Do you check this option when using the Scale dialog? The option is global. Once checked in this dialog, it gets enabled across all the documents.
If this is not the case, please share a test file and a video recording of the workflow you are using. -
Mike
commented
When scaling artwork by dragging a corner (I used the upper right corner) the strokes get messed up. In the included image the left logo has strokes and fills. The right logo has strokes converted to paths. When I reduce the image down 50% using the numerical scale menu by double clicking the scale tool it turns out fine as the top 2 show. Below that are 2 logos I scaled by dragging the top right corner and holding option shift keys. The logo with the stroke shows the outline being much smaller. If I select the 2 the top stroke says 7pt and the bottom image shows 3.5.
