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Hi,
I have developed a plug-in called ArtBlue which consists of a path editor I used in placed of Direction Tool for a few years now, it also has a snapping engine that I used in placed of SmartGuide. Would you please check it out and let me know if it meets your need? I am eager to hear any inputs, any kind of inputs.
Hmm, nope, I have been using CC for months, and the fidelity controls are much cruder on this new drawing tool.
Maybe seaneee is talking about another problem? Illustrator CC is the program that has the problem: crude fidelity control on drawing and painting tools, less accurate than CS6's tools.
Please fix this Adobe.
First id like to thank adobe for listening and addressing this issue.
It shows Adobe listens to what users say. The team even called me up on the phone and we had a nice chat.
Ive been doing testing on and off since the release of the update fix so here is my feedback.
Its true that the pencil tool has been adjusted to generate more points on the lowest setting, thank you!
...but its just almost there. I dont see this as being resolved. Because for me I still can't do my work with it.
settings for tests
1)
In Illustrator the amount of anchor points (point density) generated along the path is dependent on how fast you draw. The faster you draw the less points, the slower you draw the more points are generated.
In this current (cc) version of the pencil tool this threshold is veeery aggressive and sensitive to the acceleration of the hand movement speed. Much more so than in previous versions.
(see images 1a 1b and 1c)
In earlier (cs) versions I could just quickly block out my shapes and then only need to fine tune it on certain parts of the path to get my desired drawing. This is because i would have enough anchor point density overall and on the parts i needed more density the pencil tool would produce the amount of points i needed.
In the current pencil tool (cc) I constantly have to slow down my drawing to get more points. Then I have to work the entire path all over, over and over again to get closer to my desired results. It feels like im faking an uneven edge and it takes so much time never really ends the way I want.
Another situation where the acceleration problem is so aggressive that it hinders the workflow is that sometimes when drawing over a selected path to adjust its shape it behaves almost like the old smooth tool if i draw just slightly too fast.
(see image 1d)
It removes points and simplifies the path more than what i initially drew. For example if i drew a path that produced 14 points, and after drawing over it leaves it with 7 points and a very smooth path. unpredictable and undesirable
This is also something that Ive encountered many times when vectorized a photoshop drawing in illustrator and wanted to adjust some edge with the pencil tool and it ruins the edge instead by removing the points.
2)
While theres more anchor points added than last CC version its still not producing enough anchor points.
The "old" CS pencil tool you had the ability to get higher, it seems twice the amount, anchor point density in places you needed it like where i would make a turns or move vibrantly with my hand.
I have estimated that its like it produces half the amount of points of what the cs pencil tool did on its fidelity 0.5px setting. the new cc is more close to a 0.8-1 px fidelity. this might not sound like a great difference to many but I notice it to the point of not being able to draw with it anymore.
(see image 2)
The space between the points is always too even and big and forces the look of the drawing to be smoother than desired.
Could it be so that even if the lowest settings has been are the same as the old 0.5px fidelity the fundamental rewrite of the pencil tool algorithm does something behind the scenes to still make behave differently?
This question leads me to the third point…..
3)
…..i don’t know if this is only in my imagination only but it seems to try to force producing an even space between the points as often as it can which adds to less vibrant strokes and harder to do sharp directional changes of an edge. This functionality was maybe a part of the rewrite. I don’t know Im just speculating at this point
(see images 2 and 3 and lower right corner of 1d)
4) MISC THINGS
There are other smaller issue that feel just strange and cumbersome while drawing.
When modifying the already drawn selected path the tool seems miss the selected path very often when i want to draw over to edit it. I find myself missing it very often and instead drawing weird double overlapping paths over and over again. Even when ive set edit selected paths within 20px.
This didn’t almost never happened in earlier versions now it happens all the time. Im using a wacom cintiq i dont know if its could be related to that but it isnt there in CS verisons.
Something different with the "keep selected" option.
In CS and CC if this option is disabled and you draw a path it is not selected. This is correct. But in CS when you finished drawing and you selected the path afterward you could draw on it and it stayed selected for the time you were modifying it until you actively choose to deselect it again. The CC version keeps deselecting the path constantly after each stroke i do over it so you have to reselect it constantly. Or enable the "keep selected" option for which i will then need to actively deselect the path after each stroke not to have the selection color inte way while drawing. I could stop select when i needed to modify a path a few times til i was happy.
Drawing very short strokes quickly seem to produce short straight/stiff two point strokes most of the time in CC where in CS it used to produce short curved strokes as I desired.
The interface is still very slow when it coms to zooming and panning around. This is very noticable when working on a retina display. When disabling the retina support on mac this becomes much better as it does when working on the cintiq because the cintiq is not retina.
Some of these experiences are hard for me to explain in writing.
Unfortunately all these issues in combination add up to make the pencil tool a much different tool than it used to be.
I don’t want to be rude but in my opinion in its current state it's a very low quality tool compared to the CS versions.
Even the smooth tool acts very undesirably compared to its predecessor, but i don’t have the time and energy to write an essay on that too.
I’ve started to rely my illustration workflow on pixel technology like photoshop and there are more alternatives out there to fall back on when specialized tool functionality like this suddenly change.
Illustrator used to be my go to tool for everything drawing. It used to be a joy to start working in it every morning.
Knowing the pencil tool is in its current state I find myself avoiding using Illustrator as much as I can and it has become just a tool necessary in the end stages of my process to live trace my photoshop drawings to vector. How suddenly things can change.
I hope the illustrator team continues to listen to these points about the pencil/brush engine and decide to further fix and refine it.
Maybe even develop something around this natural or traditional way of drawing aspect more in illustrator. Its been so focused on clean few point edged graphics for so long.
Computers are fast enough today to handle large amounts of points without slowing down the computer.
Thanks for reading.
Absolutely agree. It's a horror to work with the "new" pencil tool. To edit drawn pathes it's like a concentration game.
And to auto close pathes it simply doesn't show the close option 50 percent of all pathes. And you can't force it anymore....!
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