Kaleidoscope

[RBC5E4F]

When will Illustrator have a kaleidoscope tool, like our late FreeHand had?

😉

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

There are so many ways to get kaleidoscope effects. Many of them involve the Transform effect:

Movie made by recording the screen when changing the rotation angle with the arrow key in the Appearance panel > Transform Effect.

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/362bd671-18cc-41cf-464f-5fdd83a16c1d

The Illustrator file:

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/68f1eb87-9875-4a9e-4d29-d0b211f92cf7

[Bobby Henderson]

The Repeats function in Adobe Illustrator sort of gets there, but not quite. Objects in Radial Repeat overlap each other. Like Ton said, there are other methods that can be used to create a kaleidoscope effect. I think the most straight-forward kaleidoscope effect for Illustrator currently available is the Mirror Me plugin from Astute Graphics. It works like Illustrator's Mirror Repeat, but can add multiple axes. It can either hide overlapping paths or trim and join them.