Create and option to use a default Alingment type

Question

I HATE "key object" alingment so much, but I hate selecting all of the things I want to align and then having to select the right mode of alingment (it's always selection by the way) AND THEN THE BUTTON to align the objects EVEN MORE! BY DEFAULT you should have just shown me  :1.) All of the options of alingment2.) All of the modes by which I can align the selected objects and saved me a click every time I want to use alignment or distrubtion before you save me another by not having to specifc I am once again using the only one that makes sense as I have litterally every other time I have used it. It should be like scale protection, just something you can switch on and never worry about again with the shift key in that moment acting as a way to revert the setting if you should ever need it.

Bobby Henderson · Answer

Adobe Illustrator requires an least one extra mouse click to define a Key Object (an object that stays locked in place while other selected objects align to it). The Key Object behavior is not the default. If you simply marquee select or shift click objects into a selection the alignment operation will align to the chosen edge of that selection. One of the objects in the selection has to be clicked again to lock in place.

Most other vector graphics applications will automatically lock in the place the first or last object added to a selection (when holding the shift key and adding additional objects to a selection). The same goes for aligning anchor points.

The anchor point alignment setup in Illustrator needs improvement. For instance, I can't select a simple two point path and align the anchor points; the anchor points option in the Align palette disappears when all anchor points on a path are selected. Manually moving the points via Smart Guides is a work-around, but not a good one.

Smart Guides is also the only way how I can align text objects to other objects using the text object's baseline. I submitted a feature request a while back in the UserVoice forum for proper align/distribute via baselines functions.

CorelDRAW has plenty of flaws, but (in my opinion) that application has the easiest and fastest to use align/distribute system of any vector drawing app. Key object behavior is automatic for the last object added to a selection. The R, L, C, T, B & E keys are shortcuts for align operations. Add the shift key to those letters for object distribution operations. That allows the align/distribute palette to stay hidden most of the time (the align/distribute palette has to be opened to align a text object to another object via its baseline). So far I haven't been able to come up with an effective custom keyboard shortcut recipe in Adobe Illustrator to mimic the one in CorelDRAW. I run into too many conflicts; or one or more of the shortcut combos doesn't work.

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