Illustrator Magnetic Pen Tool

[westdr1dw]

Is there a reason why Adobe has not included a Magnetic Pen Tool in Illustrator? 

Thanks

[Monika Gause]

What is a magnetic pen tool?

[westdr1dw]

A Pen which can find the contrasting line(s) of an object and attach itself. 

[westdr1dw]

Monika

A more definitive description;

Uses an edge detection algorithm to find these borders, and you can manually add anchor points by clicking to control the selection. The tool's sensitivity is influenced by settings for width (how far it searches for edges), contrast (how much pixel difference it requires), and frequency (how often it automatically adds anchor points). 

Was considering placing this as a new tool suggestion. However, am not sure if there is a valid reason why they have not added this before. I would think the technology is there. I have seen a lot of video tutorials where the user has to make several adjustments moving the anchor points to be able to align with object. I think this would dramactically reduce the level of effort required? Just a thought.

[Monika Gause]

Photoshop has it and it makes sense there, because pixels. 

In Illustrator when you draw you want a clean result and geometric precision instead.

[westdr1dw]

You mean like after using Image Trace and cleaning up the artifacts that are left behind. Not everyone can draw. However, there are far more using Ai for the Vector who could benifit with the Tool. 

Just an idea.

[Monika Gause]

No. Not after cleaning up.

When drawing in a clean way, you do not want to fight a magnetism. That makes no sense.

If you can move a mouse or graphic stylus around, you can also learn to draw with the pen tool. It's just practice.

[westdr1dw]

emmm. 

What magnetism if the tool is not active? Just a personal perception, appears there is a trend where long time Ai users fear of AI taking over their skills. Seen a lot of this when Accountants feared MS Excel, bc they were use to manual bookkeeping and job security. That was 30 years ago. 

[Bobby Henderson]

I assume you would like to see a magnetic pen tool added to Illustrator to speed up tasks like manually drawing vector paths over placed pixel-based artwork, correct?

If that's the case I think I would end up fighting with such a tool over some of the automated choices it would make. The tool would be automatically generating paths using the same principals as the Image Trace function. That's not a good thing if the goal is to create clean, production quality artwork. When I'm hand drawing clean paths over placed artwork I'm often toggling off Smart Guides to prevent it from interfering with my drawing movements (and then toggling Smart Guides on again when needed).

[Ton Frederiks]

I first thought you were talking about this 🙂

[westdr1dw]

Too funny 

[Ton Frederiks]

Actually, the Magnetic Pen in Photoshop and the Wooly Willy one are both hard to get a good result from (I have experience with both). Illustrator 88 used to have a trace tool, I cannot remember when it disappeared:

[Monika Gause]

The Trace tool existed until version CS. In CS2 Live Trace was introduced

[Ton Frederiks]

Ah, yes to replace Streamline, a separate autotrace application.

[westdr1dw]

Granted some of the tools in PS have issues. Not too digress. one of the features I have been asking for is Adobe to post a changelog on their website, Some of the Adobe apps have gone to great lengths in posting detailed changes of their apps. However, PS and may be Ai I have only seen marketing promo material on new features. A true changelog will provide technical details on changes to  the program. This would allow customers to track the changes to determine if it is worth exploring again. IOW the tool did not do a very good job 10 years ago and no changes. Well then probably wasting time trying again. Understand any change cost and there are far more pixel based users, than vector. Therefore pixel apps receive more attention than others.

Adobe has been great, providing an awesome suite of apps at a respectable price. 

[Bobby Henderson]

I remember Streamline being bundled with Illustrator 4 for Windows.

[westdr1dw]

Kudos to Adobe Illustrator team with the update for the Pen tool overnight. Although After downloading the new update I started using the Pen and what a major difference in the feel and control. Almost like a Magnetic Pen tool. Appears to be able to follow the contrasting lines and adpat to the user.

"AWESOME WORK TEAM ILLUSTRATOR"

[Monika Gause]

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@westdr1dw  schrieb:

Kudos to Adobe Illustrator team with the update for the Pen tool overnight.

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Which updated pen tool are you referring to?

[westdr1dw]

AFAIK there is only one Pen tool? May be I am having illusions. However, in using the Pen tool this morning I was moving pretty quickly with it. The update also stated the Pen tool was updated? I guess only time will tell how good it really is. At least for now I really like it. May be one of the Community Experts has more insights though. This appears to be a game changer though. 

[Monika Gause]

You are moving pretty quickly with the pen tool probably because you had some practice.

[westdr1dw]

Do you mean it is the same Pen tool, and no updates? 

[westdr1dw]

Any plans on your next video on the updated Pen tool. You should be able to pickup more Ai users? Doing cheeta flips here with the new toy, I mean tool. 

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm working with the Illustrator 29.8.1 update. I'm not really noticing anything different with the Pen tool (which isn't a bad thing).

Illustrator's Pen tool is pretty powerful, thanks in part to keyboard shortcuts that can be used to move/edit anchor points and path segments while they are still being drawn. This setup is made even better and more powerful with the keyboard shortcuts for zooming in/out and hand-panning the view. Virtually all of those keyboard shortcuts can be accessed with the left hand while the right hand remains on the mouse (or stylus/pen).

Macromedia Freehand was the only other vector drawing application that had a pen tool with keyboard shortcut operations similar to those in Illustrator. The Pen tool in Affinity Designer has some similar keyboard shortcuts, but the zooming in/out setup is different (the "Z" key has to be toggled constantly). The setup in Illustrator is just much more graceful, IMHO. The Bezier tool in CorelDRAW is pretty clunky.

[westdr1dw · Accepted solution]

May be there was a hidden issue in my version of Ai. When I updated this morning to 29.8.1 the synopsis of the changes they made showed changes to the Pen tool. I gave it a try and I noticed an immediate difference. I tried it on the same object I used over the weekend. Life suddenly got easier. I will take you and Monika's comments regarding no change to the Pen though. Thanks guys.