Participant

Answered

Alignment / Snapping Problems in CS5 Illustrator

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
July 7, 2010
8 replies
52419 views

I'm experiencing what I considerable a major issue in CS5 where I have points and lines that are, apparently, snapping to some unknown grid or point.

It's most noticeable when I'm working on an illustration, and then I scale it down.. all of a sudden things get wonky.

I'm a longtime illustrator user and am pretty familiar with the ins and outs of these functions... just wondering if something has changed in CS5 or if anyone else has experienced this... and obviously looking for a solution. Thanks!

BJ Heinley

howdy@heinley.com

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer 123cmec

This might have worked ..

--» Align new objects to pixel grid" (in the flyout menu of the transform panel)

... I'm going to do some further tests this evening, but I just did a quick one and it seemed to do the trick!

Clicking on the Transorm, click the flyout menu and uncheck align new objects to pixel grid works.

Thanks Jesseham

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steve5555

Participant

This has been a HUGE pain in my rear. Thanks Adobe, for wasting a couple hours of my time. You've hidden the way to turn off this alignment, which should be a default value of "off". Way to go ... not!

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coltapini

Participating Frequently

The reason this is a feature is for the saving. did you ever make a 1px straight line and have it blury when you saved it. This feature gets rid of that.

Here is a blog post by John Nack:

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/05/illustrator_cs5_has_excellent_pixel_chops.html

(it's too bad the "fix" broke other things, in my opinion it isn't illustrator but the user that needs to be aware of pixels)

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nomis123

Participating Frequently

Sorry, but that doesn’t seem to be a justification at all for the

change - in fact that makes me even more dissatisfied!

Illustrator may be bad for web work, but that’s not what it’s for;

it’s wrecking what it is fantastic at (print graphics) to cater for a

use that it doesn’t need. You might as well add a synthesizer because

it’s not good at music, or a thing for doing tax returns because it’s

no good at accountancy.

It’s a post-script programme, for creating vector art for print. I

have used it for around a couple of decades now, and if I wanted to

do pixel art, I’d use Photoshop.

Please don’t turn Illustrator into a weak web-graphics thing at the

expense of its core skill, and please don’t blame the user when you do!

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bjheinleyAuthor

Participant

Sorry Nomis, Adobe Illustrator is for illustrating with vectors in all media, not just print design. I've been using illustrator for 16 years almost exclusively for web and internet related work and while I understand what you're saying about why it was originally created, that's not necessarily it's primary function.

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mmdemeyer

Participant

I had issues snapping guides to point or to zero origins. Turned off Smart Guides, made sure that pixel and perspective grid options were off, still did not work. Drove me crazy but I think I found the issue. Under 'View' menus, under 'Rulers', select 'Change to Global Rulers'. Mine by default was set to 'Change to Artboard Rulers'. As soon as I did this, my 'snapping' worked as it did for CS3 and CS4.

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MeltingDog

Participant

This is all very well: I had the same problem with Align to Pixel Grid being checked. But now whenever I create a new object it rechecks the box so I must constantly uncheck it. Anyway to turn it off for the whole document?

Sorry disregard that. didnt read the above posts properly

Message was edited by: MeltingDog

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davidmacy

Adobe Employee

Please see setting 3 listed in my post of Aug 19, 2010 10:53 AM in this same thread.

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nomis123

Participating Frequently

I’ve still got this issue, and the fly-out menu setting hasn’t worked for me either.

Furthermore, I’ve got another related problem in working at small sizes, when objects aren’t the size they should be, further adding to aligning woes. I tried to align a small circle and square, and not only were they not aligned, they weren’t the right size either.

E.g. I created a 4mm x 4.mm cirle using the elipse tool, and a “square” using the rectangle tool dialog box, which then patently wasn’t square on screen, and bringing up the dialog box it now read 3.88mm x 4.2mm. They wouldn’t align centre to each other either.

Any other suggestions very welcome!

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psisarah

Participant

You don't use the flyout menu, there's a checkbox in the transform panel which you have to uncheck.

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davidmacy

Adobe Employee

Ah thanks, psisar, that’s good of you to get back to me so quickly, but the fly-out menu should change the pixel alignment setting for the whole document (like un-checking the tick box in the initial set-up panel when you create a new document).

I think that I see the problem may be that if you change the over-all setting via the fly-out) it doesn’t make the change to all existing objects, only to new ones (which is fair enough, but not something which was obvious to me in the middle of last night). The good thing is, once you have made the change in the fly-out menu, you won’t have to un-tick in the alignment panel any more.

Better yet, un-tick it when you make a new document, and the problem doesn’t arise.

I think having it checked as the default is an error, really: I presume it helps those who use Illustrator in web-work, but it was counter-intuitive for a print based person like me.

But thank you once more for the help - it clarified something which was puzzling me.

Simon

The setting Align to Pixel Grid is available in 4 places:

1. In the New Document Dialog under Advanced. Here it is on by default ONLY for the Web profile and Flash Catalyst profile

2. In the Transform panel. Here it controls individual selections.

3. In the flyout menu of the transform panel. Here the setting is Align New Objects to Pixel Grid and it only controls newly created objects, NOT anything that is already in the document.

4. In the Symbol Options dialog. Here it sets whether each instance of a symbol will be pixel adjusted.

There is also an option available under the Select menu: Select > Object > Not Aligned to Pixel grid. You can use this to check for alignment after creating content.

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therabbit86ed

Participant

This wasn't solved for me either after turning off the 'Align New Objects to Pixel Grid' or unchecking everything in my smart guides preferences. I am working on a small scale to begin with and this is frustrating the crap out of me because I never had this problem in Illustrator CS3.

Please Help!

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bjheinleyAuthor

Participant

I agree.. how retarded is it that it's checked in the first place! -BJ

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Anonymous

Thank God for this thread because I having the same issue. Unchecking the "Align to Pixel Grid" fixed my issue. Thanks Jess...

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Eric Livingston

Participating Frequently

Having the same problem - was trying to align a vertical line with the center point in a circle - the closest I could get the line to the center poitn was approx 1 pixel up and 1 pixel left. I've never experienced a precision problem like this in Adobe products before - very strange. Tried changing keyboard increments and transparency grid resolution ot see if anything would change it. If I make the circle and line larger, it works OK. Also, when scaling things down, they now become slightly out of alignment.