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Mike Craghead

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  1. 103 votes

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    Hello,


    We have started working on the tech that allows us to enable the following:

    • Ability to convert the outlined/expanded text back to live text.
    • Ability to lock objects to a character/glyph of a live text, allowing users to change the text (properties) while the object stays locked into the character.


    As we work through the complexities of handling different font families, font size, and other font properties, we would love to meet with you and share our thinking around it and understand :

    • Your use cases and workflows that this feature will help you with.
    • What is most essential for you.
    • The workarounds that you currently use to achieve this.

    If you are interested, please pick a time slot that works for you using this link. https://calendly.com/meetai/60min?month=2023-01

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    Mike Craghead commented  · 

    Good morning Avinash,

    Thanks for reaching out!

    I don't think the quality or quantity of my input warrants an actual discussion; it would likely amount to "a meeting that could have been an email," and I'm sure both of us have too many of those already ;).

    That said, here's my input:
    Re: "Ability to convert the outlined/expanded text back to live text."
    This would certainly be welcome for cases (like the one described by OP "Cameron"), in which a system font is unavailable. It would be nice for me when I'm remediating a "Public Health" flyer for accessibility in Acrobat and they've left the "L" out of "Public" (also an important issue I suppose), or a typo-ridden flyer designed in Canva lands in my lap, plagued by "Canva Sans" or some other foolishness.

    Luckily I usually have more options than folks like Cameron, because at work I'm part of a team which looks over any public-facing media, checking for ADA and AP style and proper branding (and sometimes overall wierdness), before it's posted to the internet or taped to a window. Because of that positioning, I can usually ask them for source docs to re-export, or even change the font myself.

    Where I run in to trouble is when I'm redesigning ad campaigns from an existing source (sometimes as little as one image), which needs to be formatted into around 20 different sizes and shapes for local print and web advertising. In those cases, if we need to add or edit text, I'm just font-hunting, usually just ending up with a free option. In a pinch I've just hacked up existing letters in Illustrator to make new ones, and round out a font that way. Labor intensive, kind of silly, but sometimes the only tool in my kit.

    Live-text-ifying outlined text does seem like a heavy lift, and would likely never be possible in all cases, but even partial success would be welcome.
    - it doesn't seem like it would be too bad for the fonts Adobe fonts can "legally" activate directly from its own cloud, and
    - perhaps our AI robot friends could fetch and install "free" fonts on-the-fly, as long as
    1. they told us what they were doing, and
    2. they credited the source: foundry/designer/etc., and
    3. they let us choose "embed for this doc only" or to fully install the font.
    - accessing pricey fonts would be great too, but I can see that as being nearly impossible unless Adobe could get in (expensive) cahoots with a lot of disparate entities, many of whom are either competitors or just cranky jerks.

    Re: "Ability to lock objects to a character/glyph of a live text, allowing users to change the text (properties) while the object stays locked into the character."
    I don't believe I'm currently frustrated by this, because I don't do a lot of "locking" in general. But here's a partially-related feature that I can't resist bringing up again, one which I would use very frequently:
    https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/31416682-allow-aligning-stroke-to-inside-and-outside-of-tex
    Ironically, it looks like I made the comment below exactly six years ago, May 30, 2018!
    "I made the leap to Illustrator after many years using CorelDRAW, and this feature is one of maybe six that I still miss."
    ... my workaround is to make a copy of the text and drag it off to the side in case I have to re-edit, then outline the text and apply the stroke to the outside. Of course, any edits from that point forward have to be re-created from the "backup" copy I dragged off of the artboard, and that's inefficient. And to add insult to injury, InDesign aligns to the outside by default, which I'm sure makes Illustrator jealous.

    I hope that helps.

    Cheers!

    Mike

    Mike Craghead supported this idea  · 
  2. 8 votes

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    Mike Craghead commented  · 

    This would be very helpful!

    How many times have we designed something requiring made formats, then found a little edit that needed to be made? That means multiple re-exports and saves. So how about one nice dialog box you cold use to overwrite a whole pile of files at once? Sign me up!

    There are of course some scripts available and we have the ability to record actions, but having this as a baked-in feature would speed everything up.

    Ideally it should be able to selectively export (or save as) to all possible formats, with more granular controls where appropriate (i.e. specify dpi for PNG).

    Cheers!

    Mike Craghead supported this idea  · 
  3. 194 votes

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    Mike Craghead commented  · 

    I made the leap to Illustrator after many years using CorelDRAW, and this feature is one of maybe six that I still miss.

    Mike Craghead supported this idea  · 

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