A

Anonymous

Question

Allow Free Distort like Photoshop

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
July 7, 2011
31 replies
50573 views

In Photoshop, you can pull an image's control handles around to your heart's content, and fine tune the distortion to line up with a perspective grid. In Illustrator, you can only distort the bounding box of the whole shape, so once you move a single control handle, you lose control of one or more corners of the image, making precise distortions almost impossible. The best we have right now is the Effect > Distort & Transform > Free Distort tool, but there's no preview, so again, you can't line up the shape with a perspective grid.

Please make Illustrator's Free Distort tool like Photoshop's!

This topic has been closed for replies.

TomaD

Inspiring

This thread has been open for 9 years !! ... Nothing has changed

ALL Illustrator users want this easy and efficient manual warping tool. What's the deal with that ??

Please, Illustrator developers, heed essential user requests instead of "innovating" with unnecessary stuff ("New great pencil tool" is a disaster)

A little game for the challenge and for proof of the absurdity of the situation: who will be able to deform this shape on the white rectangle in an efficient and fast way in Illustrator (V1 or v2020... same)? Go !

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Take a look at the updated Free distort tool. Your shape will be pretty easy with it: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/illustrator/using/whats-new/2020-1.html

TomaD

Inspiring

OK, thank you Monika. It's a revolution !

I'd should write "who will be able to deform this shape on the white rectangle in an efficient and fast way in Illustrator (V1 or v2019... same)?

Well.. I will update my 2019 Illlustrator version to test that new soooooo expected option for many years.

J

jordansoltman

Participant

I've wanted this feature since I started with Illustrator in 1999... how is this possibly still not a thing??? 20 years later

Z

zevendesign11197340

Participant

This is my biggest gripe with illustrator and I guarantee this is not the first time the request has been made. I've actually imported paths into photoshop, distorted them and then exported them back into illustrator. Process that for a second—I imported vector paths into a bitmapping program, manipulated them in the bitmap program and then exported them back into the vector program. Why they haven't fixed this glaring omission from the program already is mind-boggling.

PaulSmithIDS

Participant

I type up lengthy tomes each time I get the Feedback requests from Adobe each month on this very topic. I have made it explicitly clear how pathetic they are to have over looked this for so long. Clearly they don't have any of their developers actually use these tools to see if they actually works. Nor can I believe that they have real, live artists/designers/etc. use these to get feedback from them. The three different "tools" that are provided are all so deficient that it is insulting.

I've offered to fly to their headquarters to speak in person with whomever needs to be shown, and all 100% at my won expense. I'm so serious about that.

hellopaul4

Inspiring

I absolutely agree. It seems that Adobe has pretty much abandoned Illustrator, and has shipped all its development to India rather than at its US offices where the more serious work gets done. If you ever want to make an Adobe worker shut up and go away, just mention this distort tool. I have made requests, complaints, bug reports, and feature requests in numerous online Adobe-centric forums (including Adobe's pre-release forum), and the response from Adobe is ALWAYS instant silence. It is actually quite spooky. They're always going on about new, pointless "features" being added; it's like they're giving an elderly patient a spiffing new hat and shiny shoes, and ignoring the fact that they're incontinent and riddled with cancer.

The ONE and ONLY reason I use this god-awful abomination that is Illustrator is that it's tossed in for free with my Creative Cloud subscription, like some crappy free toy that's been kicking around in the back a filthy van for months that you might win at a nasty fairground - a cheap, toxic knock-off of Buzz Lightyear or something. Illustrator is that cheap, old, toxic knock-off of Affinity Designer (Affinity - Professional creative software ). It's great that, after years in a post-Aldus-FreeHand era, once again there is some competition to knock this senile old Illustrator off its wobbly walker and into the grave where it belongs.

danielm7342214

Participant

CS 2018, problem is still there, bounding box resets on each transform. It seems the dev team are out of touch with what users are actually having issues with, Like others have said here, that's not acceptable for an expensive, so-called market-leading piece of software.

J

JoaoCesar14806164

Known Participant

I've just found this thread and it seems Illustrator isn't cappable of distorting objects like Photoshop and Flash/Animate have been done for years...

I can't afford for this Stylism plugin.

Has someone found an alternative solution?

hellopaul4

Inspiring

You could try submitting multiple bug reports to Adobe. Other than that, ranting on this forum seems to help me.

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

You could try submitting multiple bug reports to Adobe.

Good one!

mave1969

Known Participant

Just launched the stupidly-named Illustrator 2015.3

The free distort tool is still just as useless as it was two years ago, so I retract my stated view that the Illustrator team were receptive and understanding.

Instead, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the people who write this software don't actually use it themselves for any actual design work. There's just too many horrendous bugs, gross inaccuracies in the way objects are drawn and rendered, and fundamentally broken tools (of which the free distort tool is just one example) for any other explanation to make sense.

Dreadful, dreadful piece of software.

hellopaul4

Inspiring

Couldn't agree more. Just take a look at After Effects and Photoshop to see how Adobe CAN develop software that is intuitive, useful and a joy to use. It really is time for Adobe to ditch Illustrator and create something new from scratch. What is going on at Adobe? Why the massive divide between these departments?

<rant>

How long does it take the average user between firing up Illustrator and their first fit of swearing at the godforsaken program? It's generally about 3 minutes for me.

I mean...just look at this, FFS:

Has this changed AT ALL since Illustrator v.1? Is this a screenshot from 1990? NO! It's 2016!

This is just one of the many, many, reasons why Illustrator is a piece of hideous junk. Shame on you, Adobe, for abusing your monopoly since the tragic demise of FreeHand. I also HATE the way that Adobe continues to add new, pointless features to Illustrator when the underlying program is fundamentally a decrepit, senile pile of stinking crap.

</rant>

daniel462medina

Participant

I use Flash for this, the only problem is that you have to merge all your objects into one single vector, it doesnt work as well as photoshop but it will do the trick. Flash is a very helpful tool for vector projects, it have many features that illustrator dont.

M

McShaman

Inspiring

Good news... The Stylism plugin by Astute Graphics appears to do this!

Stylism - Astute Graphics

M

Mariusz Go

Known Participant

Cool plugin that simplifies effects. Barwo.

Illustrator is a fantastic tool for the effects palette apperance.

In my experience it radically changed by (simplified and accelerated)

It's a shame that Adobe lacked the imagination to develop this great idea.

Instead, we have a strange new tool for the job, which is interesting, but fit to work like a fist to the eye.

In my opinion it is worth to make the thick line in the project Adobe Illustrator and create a new illustrator for today's working people who collate and organize the way you work Illustrator® with the mentality of handling 1990.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv3xl2B6yUs

M

McShaman

Inspiring

Adding my vote to this issue... Come on Adobe how hard can it be!?

H

Homebound

Participant

Adobe Illustrator CS6 Free Distort is very much a thing, if you will.

Select the object.
Up at the top of the program, click the Effect tab.
Within the Effect tab under Illustrator Effects, click Distort and Transform.
Within Distort and Transform hit Free Distort and there you go.

Adobe Illustrator CS6>Effect>Distort & Transform>Free Transform

If this helped, then that's great! If not I'm not sure how else to help.

-Tyler MacLeod
homeboundcreative@gmail.com

Qwertyfly___

Legend

Homebound, you need to read before posting.

The Free Transform in Effects has been there forever and is not very useful.

it gives you an outline view of only the selection, in a Tiny little window.

how are you meant to get a relation ship to any other object in your art?

and in such a small window how can you do very fine transformations.

I suggest you try the "Free Transform Tool"... Short cut is "E".

this is much better and nearly useful.

but still it does not have the flexibility of the equivalent tool in photoshop.

I use the free transform tool, to get ruffly what I want.

Then use Envelope Distort -> Make with Mesh to finish off.

main issue is it can distort some things in completely undesirable ways.

some times I find the Only way is to rasterize , distort to what I want and redraw.

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