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Ai2025 - The Pencil tool has become unusable again! There's no accuracy—it’s too smooth! SOLVED!

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
October 17, 2024
22 replies
15121 views

UPDATE!!!
ADOBE HAS FIXED THIS BUG

Hi folks

Adobe has been quick and responsive and fixed this bug in the version 29.0.1 update

Go to you CC app and you should see the version there under the update section.

Thanks everyone for the team effort voting and posting to solve this bug.

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I’m here to post about the same issue I did in 2014.
The Pencil tool has become unusable once again! It’s smoothing too much, even on the maximum accuracy setting (left first slider tick).

Back in 2014, when Adobe rewrote the Pencil tool, you removed the previous numeric settings and replaced them with four ticks. All of them were too smooth and took too much control over the path, leading to imprecise bubbly and smooth drawings.

I made a post about this back then, and Adobe was super nice to respond by adding a fifth lowest left tick with the previous lowest accurate settings, which I’ve been using for nearly 20 years now: "fidelity[0.5px], smoothness[0%]".
Here is the post I made in 2014:
PLEASE PLEASE adobe. The new pencil tool has become unusuble to me

Now, after the 2025 update, the pencil tool once again is smoothing too much, even on the lowest accuracy setting. This is making mine and my colleagues work impossible because the tool doesn’t generate enough anchor points to create the detailed and organic edge illustrations we need. Not everyone is looking to draw smooth, bubbly shapes!

This is crucial in an free hand drawn operation such as the pencil tool because anchor points act as the resolution of the path, determining the type of edges you want to express in your drawings. The character of the edge is essential for the final look.

Why shouldn't we have more control over the path resolution, allowing for higher values? Currently, Illustrator seems to be leaning towards reducing the resolution of our paths, limiting our creative control leaning towards more smooth bubbly or geometric style.

Inkscape is fantastic in this regard as it doesn't limit the resolution the artist gets to add to the path. It has a numeric setting where you can set what you need. Unfortunately inkscape falls short on other aspects of the freehand pencil drawing process, for instance you can't redraw over and over again and sculpt your path with the pencil tool as you can in illustrator.

With this post I’m requesting:

(1) To fix the bug and bring back the ability to generate more anchor points on the path for accuracty on the lowest tick with "fidelity[0.5px], smoothness[0%]"

(2) I'm also making an additional feature request for the ability to add even more anchor points than that by adding an even lower sixth tick that generates even more anchor points, with a setting like "fidelity[0.2px], smoothness[0%]"

Alternatively, and idealy, please bring back the numeric values like you had before that allow us to set the path resolution more precisely, similar to how Inkscape still handles it.

This won’t slow down the application in any significant way—today's machines can handle it. I've pushed Illustrator to its limits for many years, and higher resolution paths have never been an issue. There's no reason to hold back on giving users more control over the paths and the style of their illustrations.

I would love to assist in testing it out.

Please Adobe.

Thanks

MacBook Pro Apple M1 Max PRO 64GB RAM.
macOS Sonoma 14.7 (23H124)

Here follows some comparisons of anchor point generation to show the bug and the feature request on the bottom:

(Please click the images to see the anchor point amount better, thanks)

BUG IMG 1:1

BUG IMG 1:2

BUG IMG 2:1

BUG IMG 2:2

BUG IMG 3:1

BUG IMG 3:2

ADDITIONAL FEATURE REQUEST IMG 4:1:

Correct answer Anubhav M

Hello everyone,

Our product team has tried fixing this problem with the latest update for Illustrator v29.0.1. Would you mind updating Illustrator to check if it helps resolve the problem?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

Show previous replies

M

mhdw5543585

Participant

The only best solution for now is to subscribe to AstuteGraphics for their suite of plugins for Illustrator and use the DynamicSketch tool they have. Way better than Adobe's now ruined pencil tool, lot more options as well.

N

ncicAuthor

Known Participant

Thank you, @mhdw5543585 @, for the suggestion.

Unfortunately, DynamicSketch isn't a viable option for us because of two reasons:

1) DynamicSketch is the opposite of what we’re requesting with the Pencil tool fix.
DynamicSketch is designed to control the path by reducing anchor points even further and smoothing the path so that the user can draw smooth and even shapes swiftly with less effort. This might work well for those who need that but for those who dont, its giving very little control over the path and its expression and thus produces a stylized undesirable outcome. That being said, if I’m mistaken, please feel free to share your settings in Dynamic Sketch that allow for many anchor points and no smoothing of strokes that produce an torn like uneven edge as in my BUG IMG 3:1 "organic" or "organic + high resolution path".

(2) Depending on plugins for essential drawing functionality in an illustration program isn’t a sustainable solution for us.

From our perspective, the only option for now is to avoid updating and stick with the last version of 2024, before the Pencil tools undesired bug/change got introduced. This wont work forever of course. At some point down the road one must update their software for a number of reasons.

Cheers and thank you for your engagement sir.
Please consider to upvote this topic in hopes of Adobe seeing it and taking action as soon as possible.

M

mhdw5543585

Participant

in the Dynamic Sketch panel set everything to 0 and the pull-down menu to None…With this setting I'm able to get very accurate curves, small & big, points and all…

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi @ncic,

Thank you for your detailed feedback on the Pencil tool. We’ve shared your concerns and feature requests with the product team, and they are actively investigating the issue. We understand how crucial precise control over anchor points is for your work, and we appreciate your patience.

If there are any updates or further improvements, we’ll make sure to keep you informed. Thank you again for your insights and for helping us improve Illustrator!

Best,

Anshul Saini