Questions

Windows 11 Enterprise, v24H2 on a 13th gen Intel R Core i7-13700K (3.40 GHz), 128 Mb Graphics Card and 32 gb RAM, Adobe Illustrator V30.0. I am no longer able to edit any global or spot swatch. All options are grayed out. The only way I can do it is to copy the swatch and edit it before I save it. Once it is saved, all links to the option panel are grayed out again. I work for a financial institution so all access to Libraries and automatic updates are turned off. I can’t even delete the swatch. This is driving me crazy and causing issues. 

I have an image that has some negative cut outs in it. I’d like to fill them in/make them another color but how do I do that? Everytime I use a clipping mask it just changes the color of the object and not fill in the negative space. Help I’m new to illustrator

Using Illustrator, when saving an Illustrator file, the images placed are not being shown correctly when I place design on indesgin. For example, when I create an artboard in illustrator, place images, save the Illustrator file, and place it in Design, the portion that is showing is passed to the original artboard. Tried Crop to … None of them re-position to what I designed to  

Hi. I'm new to Illustrator. I've been trying to create lines and arrows for callouts to use over photo images. I've created one layer for an arrow with white background at 4pt (and gaussian blur) and a second layer for an arrow with black outline at 2pt. I have the second aligned over the top of the first. Now I want to be able to manipulate the two together so I can make them longer or shorter and move them as a pair. (Ultimately I'd like to save them to a library and reuse them at will - but I'll worry about that later.)No matter what I try, I can't get them to join together and work as a team. I've selected both layers in the Layers panel (shift + select) and tried Merge Selected, Flatten Artwork, and Collect in New Layer from the hamburger menu in thet Layers panel. And they still move independently from one another. I'm afraid I simply don't understand the concepts yet. I must be missing one simple step in the process.Any tips on how to accomplish this, or suggested resources that

For years, we have had the ability set the initial view for a PDF when exporting from InDesign. However, after years of updates to Illustrator, this feature still has not been added. To set an initial view for an Illustrator file, you have to save the PDF, open it in Acrobat, set it there and then re-save. Why is this not available in Illustrator?

When I'm working on the server and then save and close my artwork on my desktop, when I reopen it, many of the text and images have shifted to the side of my workspace. I can't fix this and have to reassemble it. Does anyone else have this problem or better, a solution?

Hi! Could someone please help explain to me how to work with 9-slice scale images? I have downloaded images from shutterstock and the majority of them are these files. I can not figure out how to remove the tiled background without it messing up the look of the image. Thank you!

I can’t really add anymore detail other than to provide a screenshot and ask why my Adobe Illustrator opening screen looks like this? Doesn’t happen with Photoshop, but it DOES happen with Premier. So it seems random on which programs it does it too.

Hello:How to divide all textFrames in one-character-per-textFrame?Example: the textFrame "Letters" will be divided in 7 textFrames: "L", "e", "t", "t", "e", "r", "s".Help, please.

I am having extreme issues with opening AI files - everytime  I open a specific file, I get the pop up "Illustrator could partially read this file" and then it takes me to a file where all of my content is gone and the only thing left is the message (attached below) on a single artboard. I restarted my computer, cleared storage, reinstalled AI (30.1) and nothing worked. I was thankfully able to recover some of the work through Dropbox's history - but everytime I go to save the recovered artboards in a new file, save the file that is "PDF Compatible", and reopen - it pops up with the same message. The only that that has remediated this is saving my multi-artboard project as separate single-artboard files. Those are the only ones that don't crash out. This is insane and unacceptable - is anyone else dealing with this? (This is what my file looks like after reopening)

is there any way to add a special value for a stroke value like 0.01 pt in adobe illustrator so that you can use that new value as default without writing it every time.

These hairline black/dark line appear between the boundies of patterns. They do show on export.- I've tried disabling General>Anti-aliased Artwork- Reset preferences- Made sure artwork and artboard are pixel perfect.- The line never grow or shrink, always seemingly the same relative size- Lines do not appear on transparent parts of patternRGB Color72 PPI These are default illustrator patterns on a 1080 pixel x 1080 pixel square, on a 1080 pixel x 1080 pixel artboard. Lines appear on both, more so on one.Is there any fix for this? Makes a lot of pattern related projects essentially impossible now.

Hi!First, I would like to apologize for any mistranslations. I'm from Sweden and have my Illustrator installed in Swedish.Now to my problem. This decoration (see screenshot 1) consists of several hundred shapes, and I need to make sure that all corners have a 5 mm radius rounding. The problem is that some of the parts are cut off, which causes anchor points to end up close to each other or that some parts become very small. When I then set a corner radius of 5 mm, all corners only become as round as the smallest corner allows (see screenshot 2).I've tried Effects - Stylize - Round Corners. The problem is that only the right corners actually get a 5 mm radius. Pointy corners get a smaller radius and obtuse corners a larger one. See screenshot 3 for comparison, where the black is the original shape, the green is Effect - Round Corners and the yellow and red are the result I want.Since I work for a company that does these jobs regularly, it would be nice if there was some way to automate

Vectors points that should be unrelated to rounding corners are shifting when applying corner radius. 

I am getting a message about creative cloud missing required components. WHen I hit the repair button the program closes and nothing happens. I am runnniog ArcGIS Pro 3.6. and Illustrator 30.1. Older repair forums tell me to fix a saving option but none of this seems to be available in the creative cloud or ArcGIS world. I have unloaded and reloaded both programs and the extension to try to remedy the problem. Alas, I am hitting a block. ANy help would be muich apprecaited.    

Have to rebuild this as a part of someones logo:  struggle with the workflow to have the dots distributed with equal spacing on a circle (or 3 circles on different layers). If someone could point me to a german or english tutorial would be apreciated. 

Hello, I'm encountering a new bug of sorts, surrounding the Layers pannel. Basically, if I lock the blue square and click on the "Layer 1," all three paths are still actively selected and free for manipulation. I have to manually unselect it to keep it locked from any revision. I've been using .ai for close to two decades without this problem until recently. Any suggestions? Matthew

All of a sudden, in Illustrator 30.1, when wanting to create a new document, I no longer see a screen full of choices at the top (Recent, Saved, Mobile, Web, Print, etc) and with icons indicating specific types of final use templates. (See attached screenshot from another post and my red annotation, "What I'm used to seeing". Now I just get a screen for me to set up a document from scratch with basic options. ("What I'm seeing now" labeled image.) I can usually see choices for letter, legal, tabloid too, as I remember.  I searched before posting this and the same issue appeared too many years ago for me to expect the answers to still apply. 

Hello.   I have been having a problem with CC since December 2025, and I was hoping someone could help. Basically all of my CC applications – AI, ID, PS and LRC – have been updating without my consent.   For context, I am running a Mac with the latest OS (as of January 2026), and: — I have disabled Auto Update in the CC app itself — I have turned off all Login Items and Extensions in System Preferences — I have removed the Launch Agents and Launch Daemons from the Library   Despite having done all this, every week or two I will look in the Applications folder and find that Adobe has installed updates – and sometimes even completely new versions – of some programme without my knowledge or consent.   This is not merely an inconvenience, it is a disaster. I am a book designer who often works on projects that span several months, and I need to make sure I am working on a stable system. Given how bad the last several years worth of CC updates have been, and given that

When we draw a circle in Illustrator and then export it as a DXF file, we often find that when the converted DXF is opened and checked in AutoCAD, the circle is recognized not as a true circle but as a spline (Bezier curve).However, for our workflow, the geometry must be recognized strictly as a circle, not as a spline. What methods are available to resolve this issue?We understand that this problem may occur because Illustrator is inherently a design-oriented program while CAD software is design/engineering-oriented, and they are fundamentally different in nature. Nevertheless, we would like to know if there is a way to ensure that circles are exported and recognized only as true circles, not splines.

I am learning AI.  I understand that AI uses vectors.  1) On the set up page with a new file why does it say pixels.? The instructor for an independent learning online course about AI said to use pixels but he didn't explain why or the difference.  I am wondering because even when I press shift and select the outside corner box to increase the size of a project I am working on the details change.

 Illustrator has been crashing since yesterday. I reinstalled it today, and that didn't help. Is this some kind of global outage? When will the program be working again?

Markieren Sie die Zellen in Excel, kopieren Sie diese (Command+C) und fügen Sie sie in Illustrator ein (Command+V).  Dies wird bei MAC als bild importiert und nicht als text.  Auf Windows wird als editierbare Tabelle importiert  

Hi, When I dragged in my pic/pdf as placing it in illistator. one of the pics of the document arrived unoutlined. Anyone would know why?