Direct Selection tool used with the gradient mesh

[Guy34358746woy6]

Dear Madam/Sir,

I have recently purchased new versions of Adobe illustrator and photoshop and
I am basically pleased with the software, but with certain very serious reservations
about your latest editions.

I am an amateur digital artist, but I suspect that the particular difficulty that
I am experiencing with the direct selection tool, when editing a gradient mesh
object is objectionable to professionals as well.

The problem is that I might spend several hours effectively colour tracing a
photograph and need to see what I am doing to the mesh and yet when
I use the direct selection tool on mesh points, the mesh ‘wires’ are disappearing
from view.

On occasion I might edit the mesh with the opacity set to zero for up to an hour
before I look at the actual gradient transitions but I simply cannot do this very
easily with your current edition of Illustrator.  I can see that you can use the gradient
mesh tool itself to do this but that you cannot select multiple points in the mesh
with it and that you run the risk of adding rows or columns to a very detailed area
of your design which you might not immediately notice.

I think at the very least, you should be able to make the mesh visible or invisible
in ‘preferences’  when using the direct selection tool, which as far as I can see is impossible.

I attach an example relevant to the points above and apologise if I am in error
and that you can somehow adjust your direct selection too/gradient mesh views.

I look forward to your resolution.

Yours faithfully,

Guy Abbott

[Kurt Gold]

Hopefully, I'm not misunderstanding your request, but if all you want to do is to temporarily show/hide the mesh, you can just use the Show/Hide Edges command from the View menu.

The default shortcut to toggle is Cmd-H (or Ctrl-H).

[Guy34358746woy6]

Dear Madam/Sir,

Thank you kindly for your swift response.

I actually meant if you want to move mesh
points around with the direct selection tool
with the mesh object set to zero opacity
and yet still want to see the mesh wires,
on top of a photograph for example.

I think this is crucial if you like your mesh
designs to roughly mimic a polygon mesh,
and therefore look three dimensional in
themselves, which of course you cannot
do with very complex meshes. I tend to
feel that this is actually a better approach
if you want to sustain notional 3d moulding.

Thank you for sending me into the view
commands as the answer is simply to
use the direct selection tool with "outline"
selected when the mesh object is set to
zero opacity - so problem solved.

Every best wish,

Guy

[Kurt Gold]

Thanks for the clarification, Guy.

Obviously I misunderstood your request. To get the behaviour you're looking for you can either switch to CPU Preview in the View menu (instead of GPU Preview) or disable (!) the "Real-Time Drawing and Editing" option in the Performance section of the application preferences.