Illustrator team, your ALIGN is the absolute WORST (Speak to your XD team)

[waynek11689103]

Guys... how can your Align tool be so bad... its the worst align tool I have ever used (it always has been)

Its soooooo frustrating guys... the Align feel like it produces Random results, I have to spend my whole time trying to realign key object to their original position after align. I send to back, bring to front and OMG eventually give up.

Align to key object need to be the biggest object not some random object.... we cant have the whole design element moving over each time you align. XD and Fireworks do the job well

[Jacob Bugge · Accepted solution]

Wayne,

Apologizing for possibly suggesting things you have done, what happens if you:

1) Select everything to be selected, then click the desired key object, then Align?

2) Turn off Align to Pixel Grid / Pixel perfect art?

For the latter:

From CC 2017 on, you can see the options and behaviour here:
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/pixel-perfect.html

For earlier versions, you may select everything and then untick Align to Pixel Grid in the Transform palette, and also untick Align New Objects to Pixel Grid in the flyout options. It is crucial that the box is completely unticked, not just a - which also counts as ticked.

It may be noted that even if Align to Pixel Grid is unticked with all objects selected, as long as Align New Objects to Pixel Grid is ticked the creation of new objects will result in those new objects being aligned, even when they are created from existing objects as may happen with Pathfinder operations.

You may avoid document types with that as default (RGB for web and the like) or change the default for such documents.

Here is an exquisite screenshot made by Ton in the first post for older versions:
https://forums.adobe.com/message/7841770#7841770

[michelew83603738]

Perhaps you can explain the problem you are having with an example. There is no random key object, it aligns all selected objects unless you specify the key object. After selecting the objects you want to align, simply click on the key object with the selection tool. You have complete control.

[Ashutosh_Mishra]

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about your experience with Align functionality, I agree with @michelew83603738 here, would you mind sharing your workflow with us? You may share screenshots or a small video of the process so that we can understand it and assist you accordingly.

@Jacob Bugge has also suggested great instructions. You may also check out this help article to know how alignment works in Adobe Illustrator. For any improvement in the tool, please post your suggestions or feedback on Adobe Illustrator UserVoice. This UserVoice forum is monitored by product team and they'll be happy to look into it.

Looking forward to your response.

Regards,

Ashutosh