I hate illustrator

[jamese48059965]

Simply put: The fact it makes erasing anything a mission and a half shows how much of a ripoff this program actually is. The sheer fact that you expect me to pay for a program when a free trial is hair rippingly awful is straight up hubris on Adobe's part. There's no reason I have to search through twenty videos and a hundred tutorials to FIND and GET the erase tool to work properly.

It's pathetic you ask for a monthly rate on any of your programs when your update do everything to RUIN it and make it extremely difficult and impossible for the consumer. Adobe, like many cynical businesses' in the 2000s, love to "mess" with their paying customer base due to the same defiant quality and distain that most companies have for their cilents.

Not asking for anything idiot proof, but I shouldn't have to go through a stress test EVER to make sure I'm getting my money's worth. Needless to say, I have no respect or pride using your products, nor do I have any (at all) respect for your employees.
[ removed by moderator, please note the forum rules ]

F. 

[pixxxelschubser]

Hi @jamese48059965 

this is a User-to-User forum.

You cannot address Adobe directly here. Staff members and/or Employees rarely visit the forum. Adobe only provides the platform for exchanging ideas and solving problems.

What problems do you have with Illustrator exactly? Maybe you can be helped.

[Therealalfregeo222]

Same. I have had illustrator for about a month now, and I still can't work out how to make a simple design. It is so hard to learn, and is a bore to use. I am definetly considering going back to canva. The integrated help function does nothing, while the two hour youtube tutorials provide little assistance. While it may be industry standand, I do not have the time or the energy to spend hours and hours learning how to colour things.

[creative explorer]

@Therealalfregeo222 @jamese48059965 learning new software can be fun or frustrating. @Therealalfregeo222 you mentioned Canva, well, Adobe also has an app that is comparable and that is called Express. If you want to colour things, you select it, and pick a color from the color picker, swatches, or slider. My students are literally learning how to use Illustrator and are creating logos after 2 afternoons (3 hours each). So, after 6 hours, they can actually create a logo, image trace or ask AI to make one for them. 

It's like driving a car. Did you know how to drive a car without getting into a car accident or parallel parking? No, you needed to practice, and now you can probably get into any car and park that baby into a tight spot. 

[Therealalfregeo222]

Thanks, I think I was overreacting a little. You are right, all I need is a little practice to get used to the new software. I hope I can make some good designs in the futre.

[pixxxelschubser]

... and if you have any questions, just ask them here in the forum. Sometimes it takes a while, but with a bit of luck you'll get a quick answer.
😉

[Bobby Henderson]

I think one of the things that throws new users is the predominately vector-based artwork environment. It is fundamentally different from the pixel-based paradigm where Photoshop and other image editing applications live. Many people handling graphics files don't even understand the difference between pixels and vectors.

[d0nut247]

Hey keep plugging away, keep learning, and keep asking for help. I've loved illustrator for over 30 years, and am constantly finding new ways to do things, one of its strengths but also something that makes it harder to learn. Even people that are fairly advanced users of other apps like photoshop can find illustrator hard to get on with initially, but it really does so much more than many other apps. So many times people I work with say 'how do you know how to do that?' and the answer is pretty much always 'I read the manual'. - do the tutorials, read the help files and within a short time you'll love the app as it really allows you to produce what's in your mind, and you can continue within Illustrator beyond the content of charts and logos and backgrounds, to go right through to the layouts for printing anything from business cards to exhibition stands. it's a really versatile program and much loved as you'll see from the huge numbers of users who come on here just to help people who get a little stuck, I think it's really because we all love the App! 

[Bobby Henderson]

While Illustrator is a great vector-based graphics application and arguably the best in that software genre, it still does have continual need for improvement. One good thing is Adobe at least has a decent setup where users can offer feedback and suggestions for improvement. I don't think the developers behind Illustrator's rivals are as good at fielding bug reports and feature requests.

Some of Illustrator's rivals can do certain specific tasks better while stumbling at others. I think it's important for software developers to do "oppositional research" to see what their competitors are doing wrong and what they're doing even more right.

[Eccentric_Sunflower8723]

I just spent 3 days drawing something, clicked outline and destroyed it all and cant undo, also erasing things is the worst i dont understand why i cant just click a point to start, where to end an it cuts between. The eraser never works and warps curves for some reason, I spend so much time just trying to cut parts with all the mind bending obsticles i the way its insane

[d0nut247]

maybe too late for you... but I keep all my live work on dropbox on machines that I dont have 'time machine' (mac) running - so you always have a back ups to fall back on. they have a free tier that still gives 30 days of history. if you havent closed the broken design yet, 'save as' and you can get back to the last saved version at least?

[Eccentric_Sunflower8723]

Im just pulling my hair out trying to cut lines, its like the designers thought "lets have absolutely no easy or straight forward way to remove lines and have lots of ridiculous buttons that do nothing or dont work because we invented loads of insane rules to stop ppl removing anything". This should be the most basic and simple thing to do, it makes my projects 5 times longer i wont be paying for this anymore im going go back to autocad and just pay more. No point telling me to save now, i just pressed it to see if i need to thin down the lines, thinking i could just undo. It blocks you from undoing this lol. Madness. You get a thousand pop ups teloling you scissors doesnt work here, cant cut here bla bla, and no warning youre aboit to press something that can destroy your entire design with no come back

[d0nut247]

I appreciate you're having a bad time of it but is there any help I can give you today that can make life easier? you want to share the file and let us know what you're trying to do? there may be other ways to get it 'done' flatten transparency / export to pdf / mask it etc..

[pixxxelschubser]

Maybe a better way (instead of pulling your hair out): Show what you want to cut, upload a sample file to a hoster of your choice and post the link.

There is a very good chance that you will be helped.

[Eccentric_Sunflower8723]

I replicate patterned etched glass, this programme blocks everything. Even when I replicate something, draw it, copy it, it doesnt let me convert the whole thing to lines. I mean why cant I erase lines on a drawing programme? Who decided I cant cut from the end of a line, why does this progreamme not let me chose where i can and cant cut. Theres so many "no you cant do this" everytime you try to do something. Whats the point then? If i cant control where i can draw a line and where i can erase it i mean whats the point!?

[Bobby Henderson]

When you mention "the eraser never works" it has me wondering if you are trying to use Adobe Illustrator in the same manner as Photoshop. I remember how I was thrown for a mental loop the first time I started using vector graphics applications; I was used to painting pixels.

[Eccentric_Sunflower8723]

Draw a load of lines, select the scissors tool and try erasing random lines wherever you want, it blocks you. Draw a few circles overlapping and use the erasure tool on a few parts and see how the remaining parts of teh circle kink and warp. Its not me.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Illustrator is not an easy program to learn "out of the box". It takes time and, while it could definitely do some things easier and have additional/updated features, it is very powerful. I suspect most of the people having problems with it could definitely benefit from a hands-on class. Unfortunately, Adobe has killed the Adobe Certified Instructor program, so it's difficult to find a trainer that actually knows there stuff. 

@Eccentric_Sunflower8723 It's hard to tell what your problem is with the lines, but there are multiple tools to cut/erase lines. Knowing which one to use at any given time is the trick. (Technically, the Scissors tool does "erase" lines, it just cuts them. For the overlapping circles, I would tend to use the Pathfinder panel. (There's a Shape Builder tool too, but I perfer the panel for the control.)

[Bobby Henderson]

The Scissors Tool doesn't work the same way as the eraser tool. In order to break an open line path into two path segments the Scissors tool has to be clicked on the path in the desired location of the cut. It doesn't work by click-dragging across the path. Another version of the Scissors tool appears on the Control Panel in the upper part of the workspace when the Direct Select tool is in use; it can break open existing anchor points on paths to turn them into separate path segments.

I'm not seeing the same problems with the Eraser tool. I can drag it over a group of overlapping circles and it cuts through them precisely without any distortions in the remaining portions of the shapes.

[d0nut247]

I'm pretty competent user since version 3.0 (I know eraser is relatively new), but definitely agree the eraser tool messes stuff up. If you use it with the alt key as a block eraser is 50/50 as to whether it makes a better or worse job than just using the tool as standard. It leaves some messed up unnecessary edits in its wake. 

[Eccentric_Sunflower8723]

Im qualified in autcad but new job has this, I mean I just  1/4 of  section, flipped it t3 times made the full pattern. The other 3 parts i created basically dont exist, I can select them but everythings blank, cant send them to the plotter, cant convert to lines its like they dont exist. I mean this is a programme to stop you doing anything, it seems to have a million ways to stop you doing anything

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Re: AutoCAD to AI...

Of course AutoCAD and AI are to radically different programs with different purposes. I think that Adobe feels that Illustrator is an "art" or graphics program and always will be. That's why it seems to take so long to get CAD-like features, such as auto-dimensioning, added. Can't really compare the two. 

Imagine an Illustrator user picking up AutoCAD--they would be completely lost...

[Eccentric_Sunflower8723]

Also why when drawing a shape then moving it, does it decide to copy the outside of the canvas as sqaure that i didnt draw. So it stops you cutting, adds parts in you didnt draw, you cant click undo after outline detroying it all... I just want to be able to draw lines, cut them where i want and for them to exist afterwards and this programme wont let me do this

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

@Eccentric_Sunflower8723 Are you trying to edit a file exported from another program, such as AutoCAD or a PDF? It sounds as if you have a series of compound objects. 

[Bobby Henderson]

Yeah, that was one thing I was wondering.

It's always a challenge bringing elements from CAD-based applications into Illustrator and then working with them further. The artwork may technically be vector-based, but the objects are defined in a very different manner. They'll arrive into Illustrator (or any other competing vector graphics app) as mostly broken open line segments. A pattern such as a brick wall will be drawn as a bunch of open lines rather than a series of closed rectangles. We'll have clients who want to see a proposed channel letter sign on a full color rendering of the building. I'll end up having to lock the original CAD artwork down on one layer and re-create clean, closed paths of the building shapes on another layer, just so they can be filled with color.

CAD applications don't support Bezier style curves; they just use arcs and lines and (maybe) B-splines. Bezier curves are a fundamental feature in graphics apps like Illustrator. Those differences create extra challenges for moving artwork back and forth between those two environments.