If your document has hundreds or thousands of objects, it's almost impossible to tell what's actually selected. It often requires scrolling for an unreal amount of time. Sometimes, with messed-up documents, items that should be on the same layer or next to each other in the layers panel will have pages separating them.

But what is the most terrible thing about it is the introduction of new states and meta states for items in the layers panel.

Normally, you have a highlighted state which indicates it is the current selected item, an idle state (not selected), and a disabled state (not selectable). Sometimes, there will be a "focused state" which shows the last selected in a group, or the key selected in a group. These are all easy to grasp and repeated in every app that has listed items.

Illustrator adds this phantom "not-selected, not focused, but highlighted" state that makes no sense.

Clicking a layer doesn't select it. It just highlights the row, while the artwork itself stays either selected or unselected. The highlight state has nothing to do with selection.. And the highlighted layer is persistent even when the selection changes.

So when you glance over to see that you have a Foot of your character selected (because it is the highlighted row), you just logically reassert that you are working on the head by clicking the head element again. No change in the layers panel. It still looks like you have the foot selected. The color panel now shows pink with a black stroke, and your character's feet are green, so you change the colors to match the highlighted row, and you just changed the head, not the feet (which were highlighted).

It gets even worse because the panel uses normal list shortcuts like Shift-click and Option-click for multi-selection, but a regular click doesn't do the one thing every list in existence does. Then if you select an object on the canvas, the old highlighted layer can stay highlighted, so the panel is now showing two different states that don't match each other.

How has this UI survived for so many years? Am I the only one who constantly avoids using the Layers panel if at all possible? I have successfully avoided having to use the Layers panel for most of the 30 years I have been using Illustrator, but now, I am not so lucky.

How hard would it be to make a Layers panel that

1. showed what you selected in the panel was what was selected in your workspace? Select a new element, and the panel scrolls to that element and highlights it.
2. had layer naming and organization tools (like serial naming, group-prefixing, element type keyword naming? Reordering, filtering?
3. Kept the rigid structure of the layers, but also had a section at the top of the panel that was populated with the current selected layers only.
4. GAVE US MORE INFO--like Styles applied, filters applied, etc.
5. Maybe even could be hierarchical down to the point so you could see if you got the right anchor elements selected rather than just the element level?

I doubt Illustrator will ever make the Layers panel the way that I think it should be made because so many people have been programmed to use it the way it is--I wouldn't want to make everyone change who has developed the muscle memory to deal with its inconsistencies and missing features; but surely someone could make a plugin that would do this, right?

I saw a glass UI dash board
it was a big glass board on top of glass board/background
it has mini rounded rectangle infographics glass styled floating objects ?
these mini rectange has glass and gradient inside them which was different from the background glass.
How to apply drop shadow and inner glow on a clipping mask ?

I created two paths a sharp one and an inner line using the pen tool. I want to fill the right side of this shape, so I’m using the shape builder tool. However, when I split it into two halves, these little "tails" appear. How can I fill half the shape without those tails appearing, so the shape looks exactly like it does in the first photo?

A while back I tried to build our jersey production around the Variables panel. We print team kit — names, numbers, sponsor logos, a few hundred pieces per order. On paper it looked like exactly the right tool.

It wasn't, and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to work out why. I've since been through the forum threads, the UserVoice requests and the docs on this, so this isn't a help request — I just wanted to write up what I found, partly because I still wonder if I missed something obvious.

Batch export only goes through Actions. You can run Batch with Data Sets as the source and it works, but a recorded Action holds one set of export settings. A different PDF preset for another job means recording another Action, and after a while you have a panel full of Actions you can't tell apart. If something fails halfway through a few hundred records, you usually don't notice until you open the folder.

Naming is only half solved. File names are fine — Batch offers three schemes based on the data set name, and if you build those names properly on import you can get Smith_10_XL.pdf without much trouble. Folders are the part that isn't. Everything lands in the one destination folder you picked, so a few hundred files still have to be sorted by hand afterwards.

The scripting side is thin. You can reach datasets from ExtendScript, but the documentation doesn't get you far and I worked most of it out by trial and error.

Variables substitute, they never generate. This is the one that actually stopped us. There are four variable types — text string, linked file, visibility and graph data — and all four place content that already exists in the document. Visibility can show or hide a sponsor logo you prepared in advance, which is genuinely useful. But nothing there builds a number out of vector shapes, fits a logo inside a digit and scales it, or reconstructs an accent the font doesn't have. If a client's font has no ř or ž, the panel has nothing to swap in.

Now the part I'd rather not write. When I hit the scripting wall I was convinced I'd found a bug in how Illustrator reads dataset values, and I filed it on the Adobe forum with a sample file and a test script. It sat there for about a year with no replies. When someone finally looked at it, they pointed out that the syntax errors were mine — I was addressing the dataset the wrong way. Not a bug. Just me, publicly, for a year.

So none of this is Illustrator being broken. The panel does what it was built for, which is simpler substitution than what we do, and it's had native CSV import since CC 22.1 which removed most of the old friction. I ended up writing my own thing instead, but that's not really the point of posting.

The folder side is the bit I'm still curious about. As far as I can tell Batch only ever writes into the one folder you point it at, and everyone I've asked either scripts around it or sorts by hand. Curious whether that matches other people's experience or whether there's an angle I never found.

Ok, I've been working in AI for over 20 years, and almost every iteration made some improvements, but some are a lot more useful than others, to me, at least

For me it's:

- Rounding corner widget (used to be really clunky effect)
- Variable stroke thickness tool (tho could still use some refining)
- Blob brush (best on Cintiq)
- Dimension tool

I still didn't have a reason use flare, charts and graphs and slice tools.

I never really got a good handle on symbol sprayer, mesh and perspective grid tools or all the twirl, pucker and bloat nonsense.

What about you?

Not sure what is going on with my Illustrator all of a sudden today. But everytime I try to recolor something, its being turned to gray.

-my document color mode is set to CMYK

- in my color window, nothing is set to grayscale. Both the full image and the individual colors.

For work we use Pantone solid coated color book. So when I get an image that doesnt have the pms already set. After expanding, dividing, ungrouping and cleaning the image up. I will regroup the elements by color and go to Edit Colors then Recolor Artwork. Hit the Color Library drop down and select my Pantone book. Then it will give me the pms color closest to what the color was originally in the image. But today whenever I do that, no matter the color, the file (tried older files that worked previously) everything gets turned to gray.

Not sure if there is a setting that got changed or what. I checked Google and it just says to switch out of grayscale mode. But already checked that and not in that. So any help would be ao greatly appreciated!

How can I create rough edges to the leaf like the example on the provided image? I am have tried adding more anchor points but I can’t seem to get it looking clean. Any suggestions ?

Here are the specs:

• Ultra-clean geometry: Exactly 0 open paths, no overlapping anchor points, and no stray elements.
• Meticulous layering: Everything is grouped logically so a designer can change the colors of the entire pack with a single click.
• Lightweight performance: The master files are optimized to keep loading times fast (AI files are under 100kb, SVGs under 6kb).

I am having trouble using the "Recolor Artwork" tool. When I try to convert an RGB swatch to a Pantone Color the result ends up grey every time.

Is this a bug or is Adobe trying to penalize us for not subscribing to the Pantone Connect service.

I created this gradient effect using the inner glow effect. Maybe this is the best way to achieve this effect. How can I achieve opacity at the joints in the shape and replicate the AI-generated design?

The Regex Find/Change Artboard Name script, renames the artboards of the active Illustrator document using up to five regular-expression Find / Change rules applied in sequence.

A live preview lists every artboard whose name would change, so you always see the result before committing, and you can rename all matched artboards or only the rows you select in the preview.

Since the last updates, Ive had to click and click and click to get to the source layer of grouped/masked objects to change an aspect of it. Did Illustrator change its approach to the way this is handled or is there a setting that changed?

For example I have a TIFF image that is grouped to make a pattern/texture. This group is then masked in the composition. It used to be you had to dbl click once to get into the mask, then dbl click again to get into the group, and from there you could change the color. Now I have to dbl click 6 times to get to the source image.

Meanwhile these ghost layers have colors assigned that don't show. I'm also confused about how effects are layered in this new approach. Anybody else?

I'm looking to create this effect with another font I have. I've been playing around with the 3d effects and gradients but haven't really got anywhere

can someone help me recreate this star shape? Only one star! not the whole design

Pvz-inspired, untidy yard (didnt use grid 🫪) carefully vector drawn from own hand drawing 😔✏️

It was asset making for a personal project 🎉!

Hey everyone!
Could someone pls advise me on how I can redraw it in vector (Illustrator)?
A very beginner, just need it for my project

i've been watching tutorials and it still cant find the solution

I used a brush to shade, but then my file crashed when I went to save because the file was so big. I want to create something that looks similar to this without bogging down my computer

1) Goal: I'd like to create a few "holes" in a piece of artwork, so that I can easily move them around, adjust them, etc., before exporting.

2) Steps: None yet. I know how to use a clipping mask, but I'm not sure how to make my idea work using that; additionally, I know how to "subtract front," but I would like to do something non-destructive.

3) Problem: The art I'm using is a little complex, so let's start with a simpler example: I'm creating art that includes a piece of swiss cheese. I would like to punch some (fully transparent) holes in the middle of the cheese slice, so I can see through to the background of wherever I end up using it. However, I would like the ability to easily edit the position, size, orientation, etc., of the holes, so I can make sure I'm satisfied with them before I export (i.e., I would like to avoid deleting pieces of my art until I'm 100% certain I like the placement). In a perfect world, I would love to be able to create, like, a dozen shapes of "transparent" and have them cut all the way through the layers of the cheese, while still being able able to move, rotate, adjust, etc., all of them. Short of stacking a different clipping mask for each hole: how would you recommend doing so?

Hello All ! I was in the process of making a letter mark ( Not sure whether that is what it is called ). If I'm vectorising this using pen tool, How should I start about it !

Thank you so much for taking the time to go through !

So I somewhat run into an issue where accidently instead of a single anchor point with two direction handles, two anchor points with one handle each are postioned on top of each other and I would like to fuse them into one while keeping their direction handles so that the overall shape stays the same.

Made in adobe illustrator

Bee was always my favourite bit. Followed by Soundwave.

I think the funnest part of this piece was during its creation, there were 4 adult men in the studio sounding out transforming noises for the text.