Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Here is something to get mad about. Handles no longer snap to grid intersections in Adobe Illustrator.

  1. Download the Adobe Illustrator CC 2014 release, the most current version of Adobe Illustrator as of this writing.
  2. Under the "View" menu pick "Snap to Grid." I think the grid itself will be visible by default when you spin up Illustrator for the first time but if it isn't you may pick "Show Grid" from the "View" menu to see it.
  3. Draw some lines that have vertices that line up at the grid's line intersections.
  4. Get the "Anchor Point Tool." This is the tool that looks like a letter V which has been rotated 145 degrees clockwise to sort of point both upwards and leftwards. It may be found under the set of tools which at first startup has the "Pen Tool" showing which is the set of tools five positions down from the top in the default "Tools" panel. Alternatively, you may just press Shift-C to switch to the "Anchor Point Tool."
  5. Click on a vertex and drag outwards. The vertex will expand two handles. Try to make the immediate handle snap to a grid intersection. You cannot. You could do so in previous versions of Illustrator, but now this ability is lost.
  6. Let go and try to drag just one of the handles by its endpoint to a grid intersection by itself. You won't be able to snap to the grid this way either.

This tells the old lie: "It's not a bug, it's a feature." ...like so: "For the 2014 release, the anchor handles are disengaged from snapping to a grid or a point, so you can have fine control while editing your paths." And yet this, raises the suspicion that the new freedom is really just a defect. I hope the suspicion is the reality. I hope there is another version of Adobe Illustrator coming to us that reverts back to the old way of doing things or at least allows us to toggle the old snapping back on. I have read online some arguments to the contrary of my disgust here which suggest that it is just peachy to have the freedom to drag handles without the angst of having them snap to grid intersections or the overhead of toggling "Snap to Grid" on and off while working, but I am not swayed. Imagine making a circle with four vertices at the topmost point, the rightmost point, the bottommost point, and the leftmost point. Imagine you wish to deform the circle at the leftmost point with the "Anchor Point Tool" and then turn around and deform the circle at the other side, the rightmost point, in a perfectly symmetrical way. You can't. While I'm on a rant, I am not in love with the image of a lion with a vagina in the middle of his forehead that I see when spin up the latest Adobe Illustrator.

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