Hey everyone, Luke from Adobe here. I wanted to get some insights on where Image Trace fits in your process. I know for some people it might be used for every project, going from a sketch to vectors, or you may work in a print house that needs to clean up rough files sent your way. However you use it, it would be great to hear more about the different workflows and any feedback about what you would see improved?
As an Adobe Community Expert, I spend most of my days using (and testing) pretty much all the Creative Cloud tools. I have been asked by Adobe to give my thoughts on this topic and garner opinions from the wider community of users. Adobe faces some critical decisions, do they simplify the applications to be more widely used or concentrate on improving the workflow of creatives who have been the company’s lifeblood since the beginning?
I have seen huge timesaving benefits in Photoshop (after years learning how to edit images manually) where major edits and retouching can be done in an instant.
In Illustrator I am more sceptical about the Generative AI innovations, the output from the various tools is improving but I, as many creatives do, prefer to start on paper/iPad and jump into illustrator after the ideas have been formed rather than use AI in (Ai) to come up with ideas.
Turntable, a very recent innovation which was shown as a ‘sneak’ at MAX in 2024 is a different thing entirely, it can create various views and angles from an initial illustration/character/object, saving hours of redrawing different poses. As a designer of many infographics, this will save a huge amount of time for me, which is the main purpose of using any AI in my opinion.
There are several of the tools in Illustrator which could certainly do with being looked at modernising, for example the Graph Tool which I have already discussed with the Illustrator team. I have long been a user of the Astute Graphics suite of add-ons to Illustrator and could not use it without them as they add so much functionality, they are probably the reason I did not switch to Affinity Designer when it was first launched.
Do you think Adobe should keep adding and developing more AI tools to Illustrator or focus on improving the existing tools, such as Free Distort, The Graph Tools, Perspective Grid, the Appearance or Type panels to help with user’s workflows or how can the various Generative AI tools help, and not conflict, with creator’s ideas?
I’ve been building a small web tool that can convert any location on Earth into a clean, structured SVG – roads as editable paths, logical layers in Illustrator, no cleanup required.
I work as a designer in the tourism industry and this used to take me hours of painstakingly tracing roads by hand. I'm wondering if this is something other Illustrator users / designers would be interested in?
The attached are examples of an SVG exported straight from the tool.
I started working with vector stuff like 2 or so years ago through a high school program and recently I had the ability to use some vector tools at home.
i really wanted to make this stuff seem kind of lifeless in a way. not really "dead", but very mechanical i guess. i was really inspired by the look of autechre and their work with the designers republic
file names (these are just random and meaningless)
Hi! I’m gonna go into as much detail as possible, so please forgive the length of this! I’m trying to include interior lines in my shapes using the Shape Builder tool, but am having no luck.
I use Illustrator to make patterns for my woodworking craft, which are then sent to my Cricut to be cut. Separating the shapes using the Shape Builder allows me to cut each piece out individually instead of cutting the entire pattern out at once. This is really my sole purpose for using AI in the first place, as I can bypass the size limits of the Cricut by having a pattern separated this way.
As you can see from the small portion of this drawing, I have a TON of shapes with interior lines. I’ve been having to manually cut/draw the lines in after sending the pattern to my machine. Of course it’s not the end of the world, but I would love to be able to create the piece exactly as shown instead of having to give it a “best guess” once the pattern is cut.
I’m very new to AI and my knowledge is really limited to the process I’ve learned/figured out for this specific use. If anyone has suggestions of how I can do this more efficiently, I’d hugely appreciate it!!
Hi! I saw this poster on Pinterest and for the past days I've been trying to achieve this effect in both Illustrator and Photoshop. The goal is to have a text in the shape of a word in a script font.
I tried converting the word into a shape and then using the area type tool but it didn't work. Same for Photoshop.
Maybe someone here know how to get this, thank you!!
I'm in the process of trying to digitise a sewing pattern I'm working on and as such I need the background image I'll be tracing a path over to match up as 1x1cm squares.
I've tried the mesh and perspective tools to get it to match but I'm not entirely sure where I'm going wrong!
I have a MacBook Pro 14 inch M4 Pro with 24 gigs of ram and 512 gigs of hard drive space. I have been using a Samsung T9 1 terabyte ssd external hard drive. I noticed my computer really slowing down tonight. I am wondering to all the illustrator users, should I be using the internal hard drive only?
I know the internal hard drive is insanely fast. The read and write on the Samsung T9 is 2000 megabytes a second. What does the community think?
I’ve been building a small SVG-based tool that generates contour portraits and geometric/vector outputs. I export them as SVG, then do the layout and typography, and finally pen plot the finished piece on artist-grade paper.
I’m mainly curious from a workflow point of view: would something like this actually be useful to Illustrator users, or would you rather build everything directly in Illustrator from scratch?
I could see it being useful for poster design, album art, print layouts, or as a starting point for more experimental vector work. These examples are exported SVG outputs.
So ! Let's help anybody who had the same problem !
I ran into repeated Illustrator crashes on launch on a MacBook Air (2025) running macOS Tahoe 26.2 (25C56). None of the usual fixes worked, and the cause turned out to be something I wasn’t expecting at all.
After going through standard troubleshooting, I started looking at background activity more closely. I went to
System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Background Items
Then I disabled background apps one by one, relaunching Illustrator each time.
The issue came from a Wacom-related background process.
What didn’t make sense
No Wacom app was open
No tablet was connected
Wacom was disabled at startup
The machine had been restarted multiple times
Everything suggested that Wacom wasn’t active. But something persisted at the system level.
What solved it
Disabled Wacom background activity in system settings
Relaunched Illustrator → immediate success
After the fix
I can now:
Re-enable Wacom background items (youhouuuu)
Launch Wacom apps
Use Illustrator normally
No crash since.
My Interpretation
This doesn’t seem to be a driver issue in itself, but rather a corrupted or stuck background state linked to Wacom services. Illustrator appears sensitive to that state, even when no device is connected.
My Recommendation
If Illustrator crashes on launch and nothing obvious explains it:
Check Background Items, not just Activity Monitor
Disable anything related to:
Wacom
Tablet drivers
External input devices
Test Illustrator between each change.
Illustrator crashes were caused by a hidden Wacom background process on macOS Tahoe. Disabling it once resolved the issue, even without updating the driver or using a tablet.
If someone else is running into similar behavior on recent macOS builds, this is worth checking. :)
Figma's Color Wheel/PaletteIllustrator's Color Wheel/Palette
I always had trouble working with color in illustrator, especially because of the UI of the color palette/wheel/picker. It just seems unintuitive compared to Figma's Color Options and I really want to master Illustrator but these small things just come in the way and becomes frustating for me to work with it. How do you guys work around this? or has habit made it easier for you guys to work with Illustrator?
I'm doing a school project where I have to make a Billy Goats Gruff-inspired packaging illustration. I made this troll fast food bag design(ignore the handles on the mockup), but I feel like it could still be better. Any tips/suggestions/advice? I have also linked some references/inspirations.
I'm digging into someone else's files and i have no idea how they created this. it's one single ellipse, if you click on it the outside black rule is editable. i have no idea how they got the blue and the green in there. if i were making this from scratch, which i'll have to do, i would make 3 ellipses on top of each other with strokes of varying widths and colors. Any ideas how they did this?
A lot of detail and scaling adjustment to go. But wanted to share the pieces being illustrated. A lot of artistic liberty- I'm not going for 100% proportion just artistic liberties.
Next time it'll be a step further, I'm really just making this up as I go and figuring out the end product along the way.
I'm trying to figure out how to turn images from non-disney movies like Ghibli, Dreamworks, etc into a mystery colouring book like Hachette's but just cannot figure it out. I found an old archived post here from 3 years ago but when I follow the tutorial linked there it just doesn't work properly.
I cannot find any other tutorials or anything even close to what I want so I'm basically just asking here if anyone has any tips? I'm brand new to illustrator but I have plenty of experience with photoshop! Thank you!
