A built-in add-on under Object › Plug-ins › Smart Pen:
- The Smart Pen Tool draws and edits Bézier paths without switching
tools: a click adds the next segment straight or curved (a panel
toggle; Tab flips the segment being placed or the last one), a drag
makes a smooth point (Alt breaks the handle, Shift snaps to 45°, Space
moves the point), a curve after a straight segment joins it tangent.
- On existing paths it selects and moves points, removes a point keeping
the shape (Alt-click), toggles smooth/corner (double-click), drags
handles, reshapes a segment by dragging it and inserts a point on it
(Alt-click); it closes, continues and joins open paths.
- The Smart Pen panel: next segment straight or curved, remove points
keeping shape, make smooth, make corner, retract handles, close or
join.
The tool stays out of both toolbars as shipped; the All Tools drawer
lists it under the add-on's heading. Commands are addon.pen.*; the
existing Pen tool, commands and menus are unchanged.
A built-in add-on under Object › Plug-ins › Path Precision Tools:
- Anchor Eraser Brush: painting over selected paths removes the anchors
under the brush that the outline can do without within a tolerance,
refitting the handles beside them (Alt ignores the tolerance, Cmd/Ctrl
deletes without refitting, pen pressure can scale the brush); one undo
step per stroke.
- Extend Path tool: dragging an end of an open path carries it on
straight, by stretching its last curve or along the circle it curves
on, or shortens it back along itself.
- Measure & Inspect tool: drag to measure distance and angle; hover a
path to read segment and path length, area, curvature, tangent and
anchor angles and handles, in the document's units.
- Anchor Inspector panel: the selected anchor's position and handles as
numbers, with Make Smooth (auto-smooth rule), Make Corner, Equalize
Handles, Remove Points Keep Shape, Add Points and three ways to close.
- Add Points at Crossings and Split at Crossings.
The tools stay out of both toolbars as shipped; the All Tools drawer
lists them under the add-on's heading. Commands are addon.pathtools.*;
the existing commands, tools and menus are unchanged.
A built-in add-on in Effect › Color Effects and Object › Plug-ins › Color Effects:
- Exposure (stops of linear light, offset and gamma), Desaturate and
Invert Colors as live colour adjustments, evaluated in stack order with
those of Effect › Color Adjustments.
- addon.color.filter applies any colour adjustment to the colours
themselves, through the Edit Colors pass, as one undo step.
- A panel picks an adjustment and its values, then adds it as a live
effect or applies it as a filter.
The add-on lives in its own modules (effects, engine and ui-egui addons
folders) and leaves the existing effects, commands and menus as they
were.
A built-in add-on under Object › Plug-ins › Artwork Cleanup:
- Simplify Anchors (Keep Shape) removes anchors while the outline stays
within a tolerance, optionally keeping sharp corners.
- Document Health Check finds and fixes 16 kinds of problems in the
selection or the document (stray points, duplicate and collinear
anchors, tiny handles, nearly closed paths, needless groups, compound
paths and clipping groups, unpainted and invisible objects, duplicate
objects, art off every artboard, empty artboards…), with Show, Fix
Selected and Fix All, each fix one undo step.
- Deep Ungroup and Rejoin Path Pieces.
The add-on lives in its own modules (pathops, engine and ui-egui
addons folders) and leaves the existing commands, tools and menus as
they were.
Every Preferences dialog option is read by shipped code, by its field or
its key, except five, each waiting on a subsystem of its own: Open
Documents As Tabs (documents in floating windows, G7), Units > East Asian
Type, Hyphenation > Default Language, Scratch Disks, and the legacy vector
clipboard. Highlight Alternate Glyphs, Real-time Drawing and the Devices
options, still listed as stored-only, act. Docs only.
Two ways the next launch came back with settings from before:
- The workspace, panels, toolbars and other settings kept only in the UI
state were written only on quitting (Preferences OK already saved at
once, #1747). A session ended any other way lost them. The app now
saves within 2 seconds of a change, and only when something changed.
- Each launch is its own process, so two windows are common (opening a
second file from the file manager). A window wrote back the whole
state it started from when it quit, so the one quitting last put back
the settings it read at its start, even with nothing changed in it.
A window now saves only what it changed since it last read or saved,
merged into the file as it is: each UI field, and each engine
preference on its own. A setting both windows changed takes the last
save.
The status line, open dialog and other fields a start resets neither
trigger a save nor replace another window's.
With the Direct Selection tool active (after the bar's Edit Path, or
switching to it) and a path selected whole, the Contextual Task Bar kept
the Selection tool's Edit Path, Offset Path and Simplify: its anchor
actions showed only for anchors picked out one by one.
The public overview lists, for a path the Direct Selection tool selects,
Simplify and the anchor actions. A path selected whole now offers Corner
and Smooth (path.convertAnchors converts every anchor of a fully
selected path), Connect for an open path, and Simplify. Remove Anchor
Points and Cut Path need anchors picked out and still wait for them.
Edit Path, which only switches to the tool already in use, is left out,
for compound paths too.
Art dragged off the canvas reached the panels (Asset Export, Graphic
Styles, Swatches, Symbols) only from the Selection tool: drag_art_out
checked for that tool by id. With the Direct Selection or Group
Selection tool the move stayed on the canvas, so nothing dropped.
Those tools now hand over a move too when every selected object is
selected whole (a press on its fill). A drag of anchor points or
segments, which they also call Move, stays a reshape and isn't handed
to the panels.
Merges kept prepending each side's whole summary as "previously: …", so
target-app-parity.md's status line had grown to 66 MB (839 copies of its
Target clause), gaps.md's and ui-parity.md's to over 1 MB. Each status
line now names its latest change only, as the progress-docs standard has
it; the revision histories keep the earlier ones.
The reference app switches the units of measurement with
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+U on Windows and Option+Shift+Command+U on macOS.
VectorCraft could set the document's units with document.setUnits or
a right-click on a ruler, but no command stepped through them and no
key did it.
document.switchUnits (Switch Units, default Cmd+Alt+Shift+U) sets the
document's units to the next one in the order a right-click on a
ruler lists them: Points, Picas, Inches, Millimeters, Centimeters,
Pixels, Feet & Inches, Meters, Yards, Feet, and from Feet back to
Points. Each press is one undo step, and the reply names the new
units. Keyboard Shortcuts lists it under Document.
The precise cursors shortcut-editor test used Cmd+Alt+Shift+U as a
free key; it now uses Cmd+Alt+Shift+Q.
Docs: docs/mcp.md, docs/ui-parity.md, docs/target-app-parity.md.
With the Selection tool, a single selected grid repeat shows a handle below the grid (rows), one right of it (columns), one past its bottom-right corner (both) and sliders between its first two columns and rows (horizontal and vertical spacing), as the public Set grid repeat options page describes. Each drag previews object.repeat.options and commits as one Repeat Options undo step; Escape cancels, and a drag that ends where it began leaves no step. Bounding-box handles keep priority where they overlap, and the controls hide with the edges or the bounding box. Before, a drag there scaled the source or started a marquee.
Part of #2691.
With Preview off, changes made in the Image Trace panel for one Image
Trace object were lost when another object was selected: selecting the
first object again showed its stored settings. The panel now keeps the
waiting changes for each object and shows them again when that object
is selected, unless the object's own settings changed in the meantime.
When Preview was turned on while another object was selected, the
object is traced with its changes when it is selected again.
Preview is now the UI command imageTrace.preview ({on?}: on, off or
toggle), and both the panel's checkbox and ui.set's imageTracePreview
run it. The command label has a row in every catalog.
* Build: craft-libs at 2869b8cc
Pin craft-pdf, craft-print, craft-docpath, craft-ui, craft-keymap,
craft-window and the patched hayro/krilla backends to craft-libs
2869b8cc1077530bd07a7e192fb2b0e1304a1354, with the pdf-deps gate,
NOTICE, ASSETS.md and docs/pdf-backend.md at the same revision.
PDF: no modification date beyond the creation date, DeviceN images
are not JPEG-encoded, and clipping text draws nothing (its outlines
arrive as a clip path).
* Docking: compile against craft-ui at 2869b8cc
Floating windows are trees of groups: window_panels and window_active
read one as a flat group, and windows rebuilt from the legacy groups
keep their ids. Unknown dock actions are rejected, the new ones are
checked like the old, and every panel a close action removes keeps its
return location.
* Docking: panels and canvas on craft-ui's docking area
* Docking: tests for the dock area, flyouts, floating panels and the Tools panel
* Docking: catalogs without the old dock's strings
* Build: craft-libs at 8a503cfe
* Docking: floating panels in OS windows of their own on the desktop
* Docking: modal dialogs block panel windows; their keys and dropped files reach the main window
* Docking: art dragged onto a panel in its own window drops there
* Docking: module doc names the OS windows
* Build: craft-libs at a042cf26
* Docking: onto, above, below, collapsed, icon and column places on Float and Dock Panel; ui.docking
* Docking: command descriptions of Float, Dock, Move and Collapse Panel for the craft-ui layout
* Docking: control protocol describes the craft-ui layout, its commands and ui.docking
* Docking: rustfmt
* Docking: layouts saved before the canvas joined convert on load
Saved ui.json files and workspaces from before the shared layout held the
canvas (a dock-only tree plus floating_panels, docking_icons,
docking_collapsed, dock_collapsed and dock_width) convert into one layout:
the dock tree's groups in the main column, the icon column with the panels
dropped on it, floating groups and sets, sets docked as columns, collapsed
groups, the dock width and the places of closed panels. The legacy fields
are read, never written. A ui.json read only in part is copied to
ui.unreadable.json before anything saves over it.
* Docking: catalogs without the old collapse message
* Docking: converted floating sets start at most 720 points tall
* Docking: closed icon panels convert into the icon column; old floating rects, set heights and a copy of the file before conversion
* Build: craft-libs at 27e60765
* Docking: dock column places and icon count from the icon column; a docked column moves to a later place
* Build: craft-libs at d24e4bcc
* Build: craft-libs at 5bbe9f62
* Docs: floating panels in OS windows of their own close the other-monitor gap
* Docking: keys forwarded from a floating panel's OS window run shortcuts while the main window is unfocused
The old pen glyph was a crude pentagon with a floating dot and a stray
stem. Redraw it as the precision instrument it is: the pen-tool icon's
nib — sharp point on the hotspot, shoulders flaring to their widest
two-thirds back, a narrower flat heel, a slit widening into the round
breather hole — swung round onto the selection arrow's midline
(arrow_axis), so holding Cmd/Ctrl to swap between the Pen and the
selection tools no longer rotates the cursor under the pointer.
Badges keep their meanings (*, +, -, o, /, j, ^, ~) and multi-stroke
ones now draw all halos under all ink via strokes(), so neighbouring
strokes no longer cut each other into blobs.
With Shift or Alt held (Alt only while Alt key toggles to Smooth Tool
is off), a Pencil press on an end of a selected open path draws a
straight line that continues the path, but before the press the cursor
was the plain straight-line cursor. Draw straight lines with the Pencil
tool says a path-continuation icon appears on the Pencil over that end:
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/desktop/draw-shapes-and-paths/draw-shapes/draw-straight-lines-with-the-pencil-tool.html
Over such an end the cursor is now PencilContinue, the straight-line
cursor's line leaving a small filled square.
The check is the one the press makes (Edit Selected Paths, the same
end lookup). Away from the ends, with Edit Selected Paths at 0 pixels,
with nothing selected and while the line is drawn, the cursor is as
before.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md and docs/ui-parity.md, where the
duplicate Pencil lines and rows left by earlier merges are cut to one.
A Pencil or Paintbrush stroke released within Close Paths When Ends Are
Within of its start closes, but the cursor gave no sign of it. While the
pointer is where a release would close the stroke, the cursor is now
PencilClose (PaintbrushClose for the Paintbrush), the crosshair with a
ring, as Draw straight lines with the Pencil tool describes:
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/desktop/draw-shapes-and-paths/draw-shapes/draw-straight-lines-with-the-pencil-tool.html
The check is the one the release makes, on the end the stroke would
take (snapped for the Pencil). A straight line (Shift or Alt held at the
press), a stroke that continues a selected path, a stroke that redraws
one and a smoothing drag show no ring.
Docs: docs/target-app-parity.md, docs/ui-parity.md.
Live Paint builds its faces and edges from path outlines alone. Make,
Merge and the Live Paint Bucket put every selected object among the
group's hidden sources, so type, an image, a symbol, a blend or a group
holding one of them vanished from the canvas. They now refuse such a
selection before changing anything ("Live Paint takes paths and compound
paths: convert type, images and other objects to paths first"), as type
and raster images can't go into a Live Paint group directly
(https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/desktop/paint-and-fill/learn-painting-basics/create-live-paint-groups.html).
One predicate, vectorcraft_tools::builder::live_paint_takes (Live Paint
groups, paths, compound paths and groups of them), decides it for Make,
Merge and the Properties panel's Merge Live Paint, which no longer shows
for a selection Merge refuses. The message has an @msg row in every
catalog.
Tests: tests_build::live_paint_refuses_type_and_images_and_changes_nothing
(Merge, Make and the Bucket with type, an image or a group holding type:
refused, document, selection and undo history unchanged; a group of
paths and a path still merge) and
panels::properties::tests::merge_live_paint_is_a_quick_action_for_a_live_paint_group_and_more
(hidden with type selected). Both fail without the change.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
bflatastic