This is my list of things I’d like to see in Illustrator. Everyone who uses it probably has one; this is mine.
Everything is ready to be cut and paste into Adobe’s feature request/bug report form; I keep these in an Evernote note that’s slowly expanding over the years as my usage of Illustrator changes.
*******Enhancement / FMR*********
Brief title for your desired feature:
View rotation.
How would you like the feature to work?
I would like to be able to rotate my view of the working area. Similarly to Photoshop’s ‘Rotate View’ tool.
Why is this feature important to you?
Sometimes you want to draw stuff upside down or sideways. You can rotate everything in the image but that’s kind of a pain in the ass when you’ve got a complicated piece with a bunch of locked layers and whatnot.
*******Enhancement / FMR*********
Brief title for your desired feature:
Layer freezing.
How would you like the feature to work?
Currently, layers can be locked, or unlocked. I would like to have a third mode: ‘frozen’, where the layer is locked, and a bitmap of the entire layer is cached. This bitmap is then used for rendering the preview, until such time as the layer is unfrozen.
I imagine this being invoked by shift- or control-clicking on the layer’s visibility eye in the layers palette; the eye would be replaced by a snowflake or some other indication of it being ‘frozen’.
Why is this feature important to you?
When doing very complicated artwork, sometimes Illustrator’s live preview starts to become impossibly slow. Distorted dense fill patterns, lots of art brushes full of translucent shapes, complicated high-res bitmap effects… these are all things that I would like to explore in my work, but don’t, because I need to have fast response time in my drawing tool.
*******Enhancement / FMR*********
Brief title for your desired feature:
Assignable keyboard shortcuts for EVERYTHING.
How would you like the feature to work?
In the ‘keyboard shortcuts’ dialogue, I would like to have a section that contains the flyout menu items and buttons of every palette.
Ideally this would be automatically populated when a palette is created, so that palettes created by 3rd-party plugins would be able to take advantage of this without a new version.
Currently there is an ‘other panels’ section in the assignable menu commands that lets you assign keystrokes to ten seemingly-arbitrary palette menu items.
Why is this feature important to you?
I run Illustrator with one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the stylus. There are things I’d like to be able to assign keystrokes to hiding in those various palette flyout menus.
*******Enhancement / FMR*********
Brief title for your desired feature:
Brush Groups.
How would you like the feature to work?
I would like to be able to select several brushes in the Brush palette, then press a ‘make brush group’ button on the palette.
I would then be able to choose this brush group as if it were a brush. Drawing with this brush group would choose a different brush in the group at random for every new path I created.
I might have a ‘brush group options’ dialogue box wherein I could choose the relative frequencies of the different brushes in the group, switch it between random choice and cycling between brushes in order, give it a name, and… whatever other features seem to need to be in there once it starts taking shape, really.
Ideally, I would be able to have a brush in multiple groups. I would also be able to have brushes of different types in one group – if I wanted to mix an art brush with a scatter brush, for instance, I could.
And ideally, altering the brush group would alter existing paths drawn using the brush group. This might be a choice similar to how changing the settings of a brush that’s in use asks if you want to apply the changes to all existing paths that use it.
Why is this feature important to you?
I’ve been dabbling with a more ‘natural media’ look in Illustrator. For my purposes, art brushes seem to be working best, but I’ll often start to notice the same repeated features of an art brush sticking out of my drawings. If I could make, say, ten “dry brush” brushes, and have Illustrator constantly swapping between them, this would make the illusion of real media a lot easier to keep up.
Similarly, I use a lot of scatter brushes for things like trees or grass. It would be useful to be able to have several different ‘leaf’ scatter brushes and just scribble in a few overlapping strokes that automatically pick between them.
I would also be able to create Graphic Styles that call for the use of a brush group on a stroke instead of a single brush.
*******Enhancement / FMR*********
Brief title for your desired feature:
Scatter Brush ‘scatter magnitude’ slider.
How would you like the feature to work?
I would like to see a new pair of sliders in the scatter brush options that controls how ‘powerful’ the scatter is.
Each instance of the brush image would have its distance from the central path, as defined by the ‘scatter’ slider(s), multiplied by this value. So if it was at 0%, any effect of the scatter sliders would be completely nullified, if it was at 1000%, the effect of the scatter sliders would be multiplied by ten.
Why is this feature important to you?
I would like to create scatter brushes whose overall width profile varies with the pressure of my stylus.
*******Enhancement / FMR*********
Brief title for your desired feature:
Auto-generate an opacity mask from the Appearance palette.
How would you like the feature to work?
I would like to be able to add strokes and/or fills to a path via the Appearance palette, and have these paths show up in an auto-generated opacity mask for the path instead.
Possibly this might be done by having a ‘create opacity mask’ live effect, with the ‘clip’ and ‘invert mask’ options available, that I could then place additional strokes and fills within.
Alternatively there might be a way to say ‘this fill/stroke goes in the opacity mask’ – probably also a live effect.
Multiple strokes/fills set to go into the opacity mask should all end up in the same mask.
Why is this feature important to you?
I’ve been experimenting with ways to create soft edges and stylized natural textures in my work. I find myself wishing for this to be able to quickly and easily create, say, an erratically faded and mottled edge to a filled path by giving it an opacity mask made up of a jagged white-to-black fade pattern brush, plus some black spots from a scatter brush.
******BUG******
Concise problem statement:
Selecting multiple fills/strokes in the appearance palette, then changing settings in the other palette, only changes the first one in the list.
Steps to reproduce bug:
1. Set the fill color to red.
2. Add a new fill, make it blue.
3. Shift-select both of these fills in the Appearance palette.
4. In the Color palette, choose green.
Results:
One fill changes to green; the other remains its original color.
Expected results:
Both fills change to green.
(This is a trivial example; in actuality I find myself swearing at this bug when I have a couple of gradient fills stacked in the appearance palette, or a couple of strokes with different dash patterns and want to change their colors. It also extends to pretty much every setting you can manipulate in other panels – transparency, brushes, stroke, whatever.)
******BUG******
Concise problem statement:
Every text object I create is C0 M0 Y0 K100 regardless of what I have set as my current appearance.
Steps to reproduce bug:
1. Open the ‘neon effects’ appearance library. Choose the ‘thin red neon’ style.
2. In the Appearance panel’s menu, turn off ‘new art has basic appearance’.
3. Draw a shape of some kind; admire the neon effect.
4. Choose the type tool.
5. Drag out a text box or click to create point text.
6. Type some stuff.
Results:
Black text.
Expected results:
Red neon text.
This happens with simpler appearances too; I chose the ‘neon’ effect because it highlights the fact that any and all appearances are dropped.
******BUG******
Concise problem statement:
Illustrator does not record entering/exiting an opacity mask when creating an action.
Steps to reproduce bug:
1. New layer; draw a grey shape.
2. Target the layer in the layer palette, and begin recording an action.
3. Copy the grey shape. Create an opacity mask for the layer. Switch to the opacity mask. Paste the shape. Leave the opacity mask.
4. Make another layer and draw a grey shape in it.
5. Target the layer in the layer palette.
6. Run the action you recorded.
Results:
The opacity mask created by the action is empty.
Expected results:
The layer opacity mask created by the action should have a copy of the shape drawn in step 4, just as the layer opacity mask created while recording the action has a copy of the shape drawn in step 1.
*******Enhancement / FMR*********
Brief title for your desired feature:
Ponies.
How would you like the feature to work?
Illustrator should make a pony magically appear in my front yard.
Why is this feature important to you?
What girl doesn’t want a pony?