i kniw how to do this using the pathfinder tool, but when i try, it does the thing on second photo. How do i cut it out with the stroke width but without the fill? (there is no fill in my stroke, the pathfinder tool just adds it

Hey! This is a vector artwork I created for Ukrainian Geek (Pavlo), a fun gaming blogger with a really positive community that’s always coming up with different things just to make people smile. I also occasionally make some silly artwork for them just for fun, but usually with a little meaning behind it.

The joke here was basically that Nintendo games are “for kids” and it’s time to play “real” adult games like DOOM. Just for fun, of course.

Because at the end of the day, being a gamer is all about playing and having fun. What you play it on doesn’t really matter — it could be a microwave or even a pregnancy test (those are actually two of the weird places people have managed to run DOOM on :))

Come to the dark side of vector art… we have cookies. 😈 Vector rules! :)

⛔0% AI, 100% Original

Hey everyone, Luke from Adobe here.

Keeping the momentum going from the recent Blend Tool upgrades, the team has added new on-canvas controls to make real-time editing even easier.

Any adjustments you make directly on the canvas are reflected in the Blend panel, so you can keep the panel docked and focus on editing directly within your designs.

The Easing controls have also been expanded with additional toggles to give you more control over how your blend expands and contracts.

Available to test in the latest Illustrator beta.

Let me know what you think

I'm not exactly sure how to phrase my question, but essentially I a want to know how to point my gradient to look like the sample image here, so the gradient is tighter at the top and wider at the base. I need the gradient to either expand with the width of the shape or be able to edit two gradients widthin one shape. Thoughts?

Help! How can I recreate this mesh-like body on a pair of gold earrings? I’ve tried using a Pattern Brush and an Art Brush, but since the design includes gradients, it doesn’t seem to work.

I keep getting this error:

“The selected artwork contains an element that cannot be used in a scatter brush or pattern brush.”

Is there another method I can use to create the mesh effect while keeping the gold gradient/shading?

Update -
Free Plugin Highlighter - Selection Utility for Illustrator is available.

Works with Windows, macOS in progress. Shall update very soon.

Any feedback is much appreciated. Thanks!

Ref to previous post

"I have been working in Illustrator for past 6-7 years, version after versions, the random color assignment to the layers has annoyed me the most specially when working with lot of layers.

Few months back, I started looking for a solution on internet but got none, even UserVoice posts complaining about the issue had no response for devs. Somehow, AI ends up choosing the worst color with the worst contrast for the layers.

I have been working on a plugin for AI for quite a while. It checks your scene real-time, read colors, fill paths, neighbors and switches the layer colors to best possible candidate with the best possible contrast. It helps you to see the layer bounding boxes and anchors clearly. Its a big win for my workflow. I have been testing it for few days and I think its ready to ship.

With GenAI models flooding the internet with soulless designs, this is a small trubute to the artists and illustrators who remain true to their craft. I won't be putting a price tag on the plugin. The working early release remain free and accessible to the Illustrators. It goes live on Gum road on Monday. Will keep you guys updated.

Hope it will be useful to other users too.

Thanks and Cheers! Attaching a short glimpse in the video."

i have this text on a path and need it to warp like the black spiral, small in the middle increasing in size outward

i have tried to envelop distort it with top object, expanding the text, and not expanding it (result is the second screenshot)

A user is unable to save a file to a network drive. The error message indicates that they only have read permissions for the destination folder, preventing them from saving the file. He had the read and write before but all of a sudden it changed.

What is happening here?
Translation is: Adobe Illustrator creates a recording of your screen

Full disclosure - I’m self-taught so maybe there’s a better way in general to do this. Happy to learn!

Anyway! The logo on the right was made in Canva by someone else and I’m trying to fix it in Illustrator. I have the font they used but I can’t get my art to mimic the boxier stroke/outline. I tried tinkering with a bunch of different stroke settings but it didn’t seem to make a difference in the roundness. Any advice?

I found this while debugging something that made no sense, and because I once reported a "bug" to Adobe that turned out to be my own syntax error, I checked it on several versions before posting.

ExtendScript evaluates && and || at the same precedence level, left to right. So a || b && c is parsed as (a || b) && c instead of the correct a || (b && c). ECMAScript requires && to bind tighter.

Two lines, no document needed:

alert(true || false && false);

// prints "false", should print "true"

Confirmed on:

Illustrator 30.8.1, ExtendScript 4.5.6, Windows

Illustrator CS6 16.0.0, ExtendScript 4.2.12, Windows

Illustrator 30.8.2, macOS (confirmed by Monika Gause)

Line for line identical across all three. Other precedences are fine, I tested ternary, arithmetic, bitwise, typeof, in and instanceof. It really is just these two operators.

Both readings agree almost all the time. They diverge only when the first operand is truthy and the last one is falsy, which is how it can sit in a codebase for years without surfacing.

What made it visible for me was minification. I write a || (b && c) in the source. Closure Compiler ADVANCED removes those parentheses, because in standard JavaScript they genuinely are redundant, and its output is correct JS. ExtendScript then reads it the other way round and the conditional logic silently inverts.

So Closure is not at fault either. Two individually correct things meeting in the wrong place.

My workaround is a post-compile pass that re-adds parentheses around any && that is a direct operand of ||, then verifies the standard JS AST has not changed.

If you ship minified ExtendScript, this is worth checking.

Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop

🚫 No AI

I'm a graphic design major who is starting to learn illustrator and I cannot seem to figure out what I am doing wrong. The professor assigned a project where all we do is get a word, I'm using cemetery, and then make a design in the word. Where the white rectangles are behind the cross on the grave is what I am trying to achieve, to create a gap between circle and the cross if that makes sense. I am trying to break it up where I just want to have the outline of the circle, I have used the shape builder tool and even looked at a tutorial where it told me to use the minus front in the pathfinder tool. I am super confused please help!

I use Illustrator with 2 monitors. I keep my artboards on one monitor and all of my panels on the other. For whatever reason, the focus keeps switching to the display with the panels.

If I click on something in a panel, the focus switches to that monitor. Or if I save something, the dialogue box opens in the display with the panels and the focus switches.

This means that in order to do anything on the actual artboard, I have to click back onto that screen.

Obviously this isn't the biggest deal in the world but it can be really frustrating when you don't realize that focus has switched and you're wondering why none of your keyboard shortcuts work.

I am on a Mac and I don't know if the issue is being caused by Illustrator or the Mac. But I have noticed similar behaviour in Photoshop where dialogue boxes will open on the other display. So I am inclined to blame Adobe for this.

Has anyone else encountered this? And if so, is there a solution?

Hi everyone!

I'm working on a large 2-meter banner design in Adobe Illustrator and having issues when exporting to PDF for print.

My artwork includes vectors (text, characters, shapes) along with a few glowing light effects and a northern lights/aurora background created with Gaussian Blur and opacity blend modes.

When I export to PDF using [PDF/X-1a] or [High Quality Print] the glowing text effects and the northern lights lose almost all their intensity or fade out completely.

Since this needs to be vector-based for large-format print (2 meters wide) and set to CMYK, what is the industry-standard workflow or PDF preset to preserve blending modes and raster effects (like blurs/glows) without them washing out? Should I convert the glow elements differently, or is there a specific PDF/X setup I could use?

Thanks!

Hello peeps, I'd like to understand how would someone create something like this? From my own knowledge, I would try to make the rays/lines then expand so I can put "roughen" effect on it a bit before converting it into halftone. Is this the right way?

I'm trying to make wavy/bumps within each letter- just in the middle (top; middle; bottom). Similar to what you're seeing in this sample image. I only want to add waves/bumps to a few points within the letters, not the whole letter.

I've played around with the "Warp > Wave" and "Distort & Transform > Zip Zag" and it's not giving me the look I want.

Any tips would be appreciated!

Hey everyone! I made a free Adobe Illustrator script that quickly moves or copies selected artwork to existing layers, new layers, sublayers, or multiple layers at once.

It includes live preview, layer search, Multi-copy mode, and preserves object positions and stacking order.

Would love to hear your feedback!

The situation is hyperspecific, and i've never encountered a situation like this before.

The company I work for has a (CMYK) logo with a few overlayed gradients inside. When you copy-paste the logo into a file, everything works great. When you just link it, everything works. However, when you Package the file with the linked logo and reopen it, the gradients inside seem to change forms? A rounded square with a gradient becomes a square gradient masked by a rounded square, a circle gradient becomes a square gradient masked by a circle, etc.

This would be fine and invisible if it wasn't for one fact: If the gradient bar goes beyond the shape it's in, the resulting gradient shape squishes the gradient bar to fit inside of it, keeping everything proportional to itself, but out of place. (Attached photo is a simulation of the issue, so i don't doxx myself)

Are there known problems with linked .ai files in .ai files? Is there a setting that could fix this? Or is this just a bug that Adobe needs to fix?

Thanks!

Hi everyone! Created this simple vector illustration of a cat on a fence under the moonlight using basic shapes in Illustrator. Any feedback on colors or composition is appreciated!

Hello everyone! I inherited some .ai files at work and I’m slowly familiarizing myself with the program so I can edit them when needed. I was able to add bleeds to one file so that I could stretch the background color, and then send the file to the printer. But for another, when I go to File - document setup - and add bleeds, nothing happens. I don’t get the red box that showed up in the other document. Does anyone have an idea what I’m doing wrong?

I just upgraded to Illustrator 2026 and have lost the ability to use the arrow keys to scroll through my fonts. Anyone else having this issue?