Got an idea for Illustrator???

[Mordy Golding]

This forum was set up specifically for users to request features they'd like to see in future versions of Adobe Illustrator.

The truth is, everyone can come up with cool ideas for Illustrator -- whether your an expert, a novice, or anywhere in between. It's an open discussion so feel free to chime in with your ideas!

🙂 Mordy

[cosmic_fridge]

Hi Mordy...

another major pain inside illustrator is the GUIDES...or should I say SNAP TO GUIDES feature which is not there...

I understand that when you have smart guides switched on objects do snap to other object & guides...but this is not always the case and can be  a nightmare when there are multiple objects on your artwork...the object you want to snap to the guide just becomes confused with all the other object around it...and seems to start snapping to everything EXCEPT the guide you want it to...

this is made much worse when trying to snap text or words to a guide...it just does not happen...it's almost like text that is not outlines is invisible to guides in illustrator...

In freehand text or words have a text or bounding box when not converted to paths.  this allows words that are still text to snap to a guide very easily...

if you're out there mordy...please help

please make snapping to guides more reliable, please Introduce paste inside, please make groups more visually obvious (as explained in previous posts), please make shapes & polygons editable after they are drawn, and selecting certain objects without selecting everything the marquee touches would be nice...

many thanks mordy,

mark

[bluefire777]

I find snap to guides does not work consistently as well, when I drag an anchor over another anchor, and the objects are zoomed out, smart guides shows that it is overlapping the other anchor by reading änchor" or path", but when you zoom into that anchor it is not actually on the other one, it  misses it.

[Suarez, Atilano]

What about getting a "Package for Service Provider", as in FreeHand or, for crying out loud, in InDesign?

I'm fed with having to do with heavy PDFs...

[sigmadog]

I've been with Illustrator for about 10 years now, and I don't have any major issues with the program, with one big exception. I upgraded to CS4 Design Premium early in 2009 (to go along with my new Mac Pro with dual Quad-Core Intel Xeons) and have been generally satisfied with Illustrator - I think partly because having used it for so long, I understand its quirks and I generally know how to make it do what I want.

That said, I most likely will NOT be upgrading any Adobe products in the Design Suite unless and until they become multi-threaded 64-bit apps. This isn't out of spite, or intended as a protest statement. It's simply not worth it for me to upgrade software that doesn't take advantage of the latest in multi-processor computing. Those of us with multi-core processors and 64-bit operating systems (and I think it's safe to say this is probably most of us Illustrator users) deserve an application that takes advantage of the inherent power of our systems. We'd like to use more processors, and more RAM because we have them available. I don't know what the situation is for Windows users, but for Mac, we seem stuck with 32-bit, single processor apps.

For a long time it was the hardware that lagged behind the software. These days, the case is reversed, and the software needs to pick up the slack. From a work-flow and time-management standpoint, it's no longer worth it to upgrade applications that don't acknowledge and utilize advancements in hardware.

So please, step up, Adobe.

[Alainv02]

2 features that come to my mind right now:

- Cone gradients ('angle' gradients in Photoshop)

- Inner shadow

[Scott Falkner]

Will people PLEASE stop adding to this post. This is a waste of time. The forum itself is called Illustrator Feature Requests. Grab-bag discussions within the forum help nobody, especially Adobe (if they are listening), see what features are requested and how they are being discussed.

Rather than add yet another feature to this long a pointless post, create a new post requesting the feature where the discussion can focus on that one feature and where Adobe engineers can see it without diving into this discussion (which they will not do).

Mordy, you know better. Why did you start this and why haven't you killed it, or had your friends at Adobe kill it?

[GoMariusz]

Scott — I am a different opinion. What is needed is such a simple wish-list (Top needed By number of votes cast).

I miss the simple indication of the deficiencies or defects in my work tools Illustartor.
But instead of adding only his own and those same response should be added an option to vote YES for the post - I want to. NO - I am opposed.

A simple number of votes will indicate what is most important to work longer in the new version.

Discussion should be in addition to items from the wish list.

Few versions of the top lists Illustrator:

1. Amendments to existing tools

2. Additional extensions for existing tools

3. Ideas for new tools

[Scott Falkner]

art.Mariusz wrote:

Scott — I am a different opinion. What is needed is such a simple wish-list (Top needed By number of votes cast).

I miss the simple indication of the deficiencies or defects in my work tools Illustartor.
But instead of adding only his own and those same response should be added an option to vote YES for the post - I want to. NO - I am opposed.

A simple number of votes will indicate what is most important to work longer in the new version.

Discussion should be in addition to items from the wish list.

But this is not a “simple wish list.” It is a complicated, meandering, redundant, and convoluted wish list. People posting new requests are unlikely to read through from the top to see if their feature has been requested, something that would be much easier to do if feature requests were kept to separate posts. Also, since there is no polling or voting feature on this forum, there are no votes to count.

Few versions of the top lists Illustrator:

1. Amendments to existing tools

2. Additional extensions for existing tools

3. Ideas for new tools

Go ahead and request those features. In. A. New. Post. But try to be a little more specific than, “Ideas for new tools.”

[GoMariusz]

"People posting new requests are unlikely (...)"

— Yeah, "probably". In my opinion, the current formula kills initiative users this forum, simply take the work and organize such freeheand.org

And it is blind to Aobe way - I do not know whether or not it is better for our users. To discourage people like you, the inertia of their entries.

It is known that ideas will always be very much and know that discussing about them may be mad because wish-list allows you to take the discussion only the most popular.

That is why I miss the idea that http://pleasefixtheiphone.com/

— "Also, since there is no polling or voting feature on this forum, there are no votes to count.(...)"
And again. That I was missing the...

" Go ahead and request those features. (...)

— You probably do not understand my opinion. As discussed earlier by me, it makes no sense to discuss ing, a new idea until it has been supported by any particular number of votes of users. Opening such topics as the new posts by me quickly zatoczy near the impractical absurdity of the current forum.

Mordy Golding probably started this thread to drown here any ideas on Illustartora not to litter him in the main thread. After all, nobody will read from the beginning all posts ... ;( ( sorry Mordy a lack of faith)

[JosefBjerlin]

Hi!

I've been missing one big thing for me as a cartograther. It's about smart guides.

When I'making a map over a city for example, the streets are often linked together in a 90 degree angle. The problem is that the roadnet are not always in a straight angle to "up and down" in illustrator.

What I'm looking for is a smart guide that gives me a sertain angle (for example a 90 degree angle)  from the last drawn line. See pict.

[medicineheads_no]

If you select the last line (road) you made, and use rotate (press r on the keyboard) and hold down shift and alt on the keyboard you are able to make a copy at 90 degrees angle to the selected line 🙂
tip: before making the copy, place the mark for rotating at the endpoint of your previous line (road)

[rcraighead]

Yeah, Mordy. If you have any clout with Adobe, see if they can fix AICS 6 so I can use it on a daily basis. I bought into "Adobe Creative Cloud" and lucky for me, I already had version CS5, or my work would be grossly impaired. I cannot drag global colors on gradient sliders. Without that feature, editing gradients is at least 3 times the work and I do that constantly in my workflow.

It's things like this that cause me to wonder which direction AI is headed. I'm very disappointed and feel I have wasted my money on "Creative Cloud".

[StephanieAKing]

GROUPING FEATURE FOR FONT PREVIEW DROP DOWN MENU:

This applies to all of the Adobe  Creative Suite Design Premium:

Currently, if you go to the font drop down  menu, you see a preview list of all fonts installed on your computer.   Supposedly, if you turn some fonts off in a seperate font manager  program, you ca control which fonts display or dont display.

But there is  no way to efficiently group fonts so they are easy to get to:

for example  if i am in illustrator , photoshop or indesign,  i should be able to go  to ...

Type  > fonts > favorites > helvetica neue

or

Type >  fonts > web > verdana

or

Type > fonts > hand  written > "chicken scratch"

You get the idea....

It would be  great if this function were integrated into the personal workspaces  feature

and  panels maybe ?  you could open up the "san serif" panel which would  have previews of everything you put in that category displayed like  brish strokes preview panel.

[Guest]

Hi.

I'm working with SCADA systems, like Siemens Wincc, Cytect, Cimplicity, and so on.

There is a problem with every single one of them. Their graphic editors are extremly poor.

I wish there some day could come a HMI/SCADA system with the Adobe Illustrator as a drawing tool, and you would be able to take advantage of all the cool effects and posibillities Illustrater gives you, when drawing HMI projects.

Is this something you ever have concidered to make?

It's hard to be used to working with cool effects in Illustrator, and you suddenly have to deal with the poor drawing tools in SCADA systems....

Why don't you bang your heads together with the guys in Siemens, and make a f... nice Scada system with Illustrator Drawing engine? 🙂

I hope it will happen one day 🙂

[scripsafe]

Yes, PLEASE put the halftone pallete (or something that will allow us to do the same things) from Freehand in illustrator!

I need to be able to assign specific screen angles and frequencies within one document (without changing any colors).

[Frank Heller]

I love the new Shape Builder tool in AICS5. However, in practical use, I wish the thing would work over un-selected objects. Imagine how much speedier things could go if, it could pull that little trick off?

At present, with the tool selected, Shift/Command will let you select an object or drag select  objects as a group....so it's almost there. But if it were to let you select and merge (or subtract) in one fluid motion with only the Option key in play (toggling Subtract) I think it would be a lot faster and more intuitive to use.

[Scott Falkner]

Frank,

That is a good idea and I suggest you submit it as a feature request. Adding your request to this useless grab-bag discussion is pointless since it does not show up as a requested feature when viewing the topics on the forum.

It is generally a bad idea to start such grab bag discussions and also to submit ideas to them. If you want your feature request to get noticed and spark interest, make it a new post instead of burying it where it will not be seen.

[Guest]

Hi Mordy,

I wish the developers could find something to replace the scribble effect.  There used to be a 'hatch' filter in version six of Illustrator that was scrapped because it was considered to be too complex, I think.  However, when you got the hang of it, it was great!  The hatch you created could even be applied to a gradient. It would be good if something like it could be created as an effect.  Just make it less complex!

I've never heard of a single Illustrator who's found the scribble effect useful or had a good word to say about it.  Ditch it, Adobe.

Best wishes,

Trevor

[John Stanowski]

I like the Scribble effect just fine when it's not abused. Keep it.

[bluefire777]

problem with scribble is it loops the scribbles, I would like a straight hatch or slightly varied hatch as single straight lines, as an effect to save on anchors, perhaps as an option in the scribble dialog.

[Onnozel]

I have a few easy to realise ideas. I teach fashion designers all over the world Adobe Illustrator for seven years now. They really need a few simple things. When you create a Brushes library, it would be helpfull if you could give each Brush a color. I mean inside the Brushes panel and Graphic Styles panel as well.This way, users can find a brush more quickly. Also, it would be helpfull when you create a library that it does not have to go into alphabetical order automaticly. Maybe there is a way that users can specify them selves in which order the library will be saved and shows when you open the library.

Then, a huge miss is large previews inside the Symbols panel. In fashion the Symbols could be used to store stuff like buttons, zipper pullers etc. But it doesn't work good enough because the previews are way to small. I mean they need BIG previews. For instance when command / control clicking on a Symbol, showing a huge preview.

Another great great help would be if it would be possible to instantly add something to a library like Brushes, Swatches, Symbols or Graphic Styles. Now you have to open the library file as a regular document drawing. Then add or edit content, save it. And open it as a library again. The result is, at almost all my customers, designers do not make their own libraries, because they think it is to difficult, or to much work.

In fashion lots of designers came from Canvas. They constantly keep asking me if it is possible to crop a picture inside Illustrator. I would not encourage Photoshop editing inside Illustrator to much. But, cropping a picture would be a huge time saver. Also files can stay smaller in size, because now they still have to use a clipping mask to do the job.

I have to create installers for designers which installs all my libraries, actions and workspaces automaticly. But that's difficult because each computer is different in screen size etc. Maybe it would be cool if there would be some kind of preferences manager where designers can install libraries, pre-saved workspace, shortut files etc etc. Lot's of designers find it to difficult to remember where to store all this stuff and make al this stuff. That's how I make a living doing it for them. But still it would be cool if all this stuff could be done from one sort of wizzard / manager. And even cooler if I could automaticly save a file that installs all this myself created stuff at a users computer automaticly. The biggest pain is that to much IT departments do not realize the users need to be able to edit their 'Presets' folder. Often they get no acces to that so they cannot work properly. You could say, that's ignorent IT work. In fact that's true. But you can solve the problem making one manager from where you can install all these personal preferences. And off-course this stuff should be stored at a place where you are sure users will allways have acces to it. Even if an IT department locks down almost the whole computer.

I know a well devloped IT department should work with clients properly pre-installed and configured. But in reality that's hardly the case. I work for the biggest fashion brands in the world and I only know one company in the Netherlands who are almost doing it right. And then, it becomes even harder because I need this IT department if a user want's to make changes in the standard library structure.

Good luck developing Illustrator. Since CS4 Illustrator finally became te most interesting tool for the fashion industry. Thanks to the multiple artboard feature.

Onno Rijpstra

http://www.ecorn.nl

[Rob_from_Mustang_land]

I do have several ideas for Illustrator which I have been using since version 10 and now I have CS4. I have started using it more frequently, since my main vector based graphics programs (Harvard Graphics and Harvard Chart) are not supported in Windows 7. They are still shipping the product but there is no clue that it will not work under the new Windows.

I do a lot of scientific graphic work and need what are known as population pyramids which are paired histograms back to back.  I helped design the HGAP version and they did a lovely job, but this was in the 1990s when software companies really did listen to their clients.

I also use SPSS which does produce population pyramids but their graphic editor is a real dog and slow to boot.SPSS is unable to produce high quality production ready graphs, so I am obliged to draft my pyramids on the virtual machine version of HGAP, export to .wmf, and place them into Illustrator to fix them up.  In short, I know Illustrator can produce the desired quality of output, but every element has to be reformatted.

I have examined the entire graph mini feature in Illustrator and confess I am disappointed both in the range of graphs it can do and the entire interface of the graph feauture. It needs to be made MUCH MORE FRIENDLY.

I think Illustrator could reach the market segment that I represent, the science and general academic community with a little revision of a really good product.

yours faithfully,

Rob Shell

Stats

University of the Western Cape

[Rob_from_Mustang_land]

[Ngushur]

In the unit interface properties when you right click on the right hand toolbar there is a way to manipulate the smart guides.  Could the smart guides have some sort of an icon or a hotkey so you could quickly switch between the different guides?

[Forest Service Madison]

I agree with this post whole heartedly.