Mike Craghead
My feedback
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104 votes
Happy to announce that we have introduced 'Preview Missing Fonts' functionality to improve your experience when working with files that contain unavailable fonts.
If you open a file with missing fonts, Illustrator will now render the text correctly on the artboard in Preview Mode, even if the fonts are not installed on your system. This ensures the files appear as intended without requiring immediate font installation.
How does it work?
1. When you open a file with missing fonts, the Missing Fonts Window will appear, listing fonts that are in Preview Only Mode.
2. Close the Missing Fonts Window to view the text rendered accurately on the artboard.
3. You can optionally select the text, go to Objects -> Expand… to convert the text to outlines.
4. The text in Preview Mode is not editable. If you attempt to edit the text in Preview Mode, a warning will appear, notifying…
An error occurred while saving the comment Mike Craghead
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8 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment 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
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195 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment 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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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