My Illustrator wishlist

[abieg87797785]

I wish Illustrator can tell the length if any path

I wish the canvas size was unlimited

I wish you could specify the height of letters

I wish the document info panel can list all the colours present in a file.

[Monika Gause]

1: see the Document Info panel. Set it to "Objects" in the panel menu and select a path.

3: You can somehow do that by applying "outline Object" as an effect and select the option "Use preview bounds" in Preferences > General. Text stays live. Before creating a PDF you need to delete the effect from the object.

[abieg87797785]

Thank you

[Doug A Roberts]

The second wish is being worked on:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-feature-requests/suggestions/20395555-re...

[abieg87797785]

Thank you. Cannot wait

[stevebrig]

I would love to have the ability to make the stoppers on a gradient step like in Cinema 4D. So each colour doesn't blend between each other.

[Monika Gause]

Please post feature requests to https://illustrator.uservoice.com 

[stevebrig]

Tried but when I setup the account and go through the steps it tells me my email isn't valid. I cant login to do so.

[Monika Gause]

It's a new account that you have to set up for it. Did you do that?

I could post it for you, but I don't understand how you want it to work.

[stevebrig]

Yes I did setup a new account and verified my email but then when I try to sign in it says my email is wrong, lol.

Here is an example of the C4D gradient...

[Monika Gause]

You can do this in Illustrator: https://youtu.be/CFy2um3QP-8

If you want it on a stroke, a brush would be the better option. Even for a fill, a pattern might be a better option.

[stevebrig]

I am completely aware this can be done but if you want to move these things around its incerdibaly cumbersome.

There is no proper reason for this in Illustrator this is why I am wishing for it.

Being able to change the interpretation of the gradient would be fanatastic!

[Monika Gause]

Here's your feature request: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/477... 

Only thing you need to do now is get people to vote for it 🙂

[stevebrig]

Thank you!

[Bobby Henderson]

I have to agree the Gradient Annoator in Adobe Illustrator is a pain in the neck to use. Rotation is allowed only by a control on one end of the annotator and length can only be adjusted on the other end. Changing the position of the annotator above objects can be flaky. By comparison, the equivalents to the gradient annotator in Affinity Designer and CorelDRAW are more simple and easier to use. Just grab either end and move it to change the length and rotation. The gradient ends can be snapped to other objects or guidelines. This is handy for applying similar gradients across objects stacked on top of each other. It's more time consuming doing this in Illustrator. These days if I'm doing such a task in Illustrator I'll use Astute Graphics' Gradiator panel as a cheat.

While it's easier to position gradients on objects in CorelDRAW, the print output isn't as good. But the artwork can ported over to Illustrator and then saved in PDF format for printing.

[stevebrig]

I agree the controls in general could be much more elegant 

[Egor Chistyakov]

One can specify the height of the letters in Illustrator using Font Height Options.

Enable them in Character panel’s fly out menu and choose one of many options there, like x-heigh or Cap height.

[Bobby Henderson]

The original post was from 2019, years before the Font Height Options and Large Canvas Mode were added. No vector drawing application has an unlimited size canvas (regardless of the occasional claim I hear).

I still wish it was possible to align text objects to other objects via the baseline or distribute multiple point text objects via their baselines. One of Illustrator's competitors has been able to do that going back to the 1990's.