• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Adobe Illustrator 24.2 (CC 2020) Update

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Today Adobe rolled out the ".2" update to Illustrator CC 2020. Some improvements were made regarding performance and to the cloud docs feature. But the big thing is they have finally rolled out the new large canvas feature to the public. This allows documents up to a max of 2275" X 2275", roughly 10 times larger than the previous max canvas limit. Editable text objects can scale up to about 12960 points. The large canvas feature has been in beta testing since last year. It was introduced after many many requests from Illustrator users needing to do large scale design (like full size sign design) within Illustrator.

Many of us are used to using CorelDRAW for full size sign design work since it has long been able to support canvas sizes up to 1800" X 1800". Editable text objects max out at 3000 points. This update to Illustrator goes past those limits.

Astute Graphics is asking Illustrator users who use their plug-ins to wait a few days before installing AI 24.2 so they can finish updating their plug-ins. The current versions appear to work okay. According to Astute Graphics' web site they hope to have updated plug-ins available by June 17.
 
C

ColoPrinthead

Guest
I really hoped they fixed the issue of not being able to tab through and hit enter on the pop up menus - when doing a move if you hit enter on the keyboard for copy it doesn't, when you tab and keyboard enter that you don't want to save when closing a file it save its.
 

myront

CorelDRAW is best
This is big news. Still hate illy and still won't use it as my go to but still big news.
 

iPrintStuff

Prints stuff
Are they also updating indesign to follow suit? I’ve always wondered about their 102” (or whatever it was) artboards.

The amount of times the other designer sent me an artwork that had to be half size and never bothered to let me know it was half size
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Bly

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
iPrintStuff said:
Are they also updating indesign to follow suit? I’ve always wondered about their 102” (or whatever it was) artboards.

I haven't seen any updates for InDesign that would change its current max document size of 216 inches. I have a feeling this large canvas capability may end up being something that remains unique to Illustrator and not shared with InDesign.

I'm usually not all that bothered by having to send off files to service bureaus (like billboard printing companies) with the art set to a scale like 1" = 1'. Likewise I don't mind receiving artwork in the same manner as long as it's not a hassle to blow it up to full size. Usually if there's anything wrong with the artwork it will be more common problems like missing fonts, fonts not converted to outlines, linked objects they forgot to embed, out of gamut RGB colors, etc.
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Adobe pushed out a couple additional yet minor updates to Photoshop and Illustrator today (following the bigger update yesterday). Astute Graphics released updates for a bunch of their Illustrator plug-ins today. I assume those are the compatibility updates for AI 24.2, but they haven't clarified that on their website or social media pages.
 

mattc5900

New Member
Adobe pushed out a couple additional yet minor updates to Photoshop and Illustrator today (following the bigger update yesterday). Astute Graphics released updates for a bunch of their Illustrator plug-ins today. I assume those are the compatibility updates for AI 24.2, but they haven't clarified that on their website or social media pages.
Adobe pushed out a couple additional yet minor updates to Photoshop and Illustrator today (following the bigger update yesterday). Astute Graphics released updates for a bunch of their Illustrator plug-ins today. I assume those are the compatibility updates for AI 24.2, but they haven't clarified that on their website or social media pages.
Bobby H.. I was curious about the Astute Graphics plug-ins for illustrator.. I haven't personally used them and they look like they could be useful in my workflow.. Just wanted a quick opinion on what your thoughts were on these plugins if you have a min.. Thank you! Matt
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Astute Graphics' plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator are awesome. There are functions in plug-ins like InkScribe and PathScribe that might make anyone wonder why those features weren't incorporated into the core tool sets of Illustrator or other drawing programs before. Some of the plug-ins dramatically improve similar built in tools. For instance the WidthScribe plug-in does a lot more than the stroke width tool in Illustrator. Astute Graphics offers so much with their collection of plug-ins that it's almost overwhelming. The best thing to do is investigate one plug-in at a time. They have demo videos and offer free trials.

There is one (sort of) draw back with these plug-ins. Astute Graphics has gone to an "annual service plan" subscription setup with their plug-ins. For $119 per year you get all 18 plug-ins any updates or new plug-ins they release during that calendar year. In the past it would have cost a lot more to buy all the plug-ins separately. If you decide not to renew you get to keep the existing plug-ins.
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
Excellent news.

If you decide not to renew you get to keep the existing plug-ins.

While I love Astute Graphics plugins, this really doesn't mean much. Yes, one may get to get the plugins as they are now, but with Adobe's x-1 usage limitation, at some point, one will have to continue to update their Astute plugins in order to maintain stability of use.
 

ProColorGraphics

New Member
Bobby H.. I was curious about the Astute Graphics plug-ins for illustrator.. I haven't personally used them and they look like they could be useful in my workflow.. Just wanted a quick opinion on what your thoughts were on these plugins if you have a min.. Thank you! Matt
I LOVE their plugins!! One of the reason I keep using Illustrator.
 

ProColorGraphics

New Member
Adobe pushed out a couple additional yet minor updates to Photoshop and Illustrator today (following the bigger update yesterday). Astute Graphics released updates for a bunch of their Illustrator plug-ins today. I assume those are the compatibility updates for AI 24.2, but they haven't clarified that on their website or social media pages.
Weird. Neither my Adobe Cloud or Astute manager show any available updates yet for today.
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
That's strange. I figured the slew of plug-in updates were for AI 24.2 compatibility. However, at the Astute Graphics web site they're saying the compatibility release of their plug-ins is now targeted for the week starting Monday, June 22.
 

ikarasu

Active Member
How do you guys find astute compared to power scripts?

https://o2creative.co.nz/powerscripts.php

Been using power scripts more and more... I wasn't a fan of astutes yearly fee - o2 gives free lifetime updates. (So far... Haven't had to pay yet) and has great support. I use the crop marks, dimensions, imposition, and nesting almost everyday. Well worth the price
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
The powerscripts product is more about automating various kinds of tasks. The plug-ins from Astute Graphics are mostly very different products geared more for the creative front end side of the process.
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Astute Graphics' plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator have been updated for 24.2 compatibility. However, they recommend customers follow a procedure on this page to get the best results. It involves uninstalling the existing plug-ins, doing a reset of settings in Astute Manager and then re-installing the plug-ins clean:
https://astutegraphics.com/support/compatibility/compatibility-with-v24-2

They're also recommending users delete the existing "settings" folder for Illustrator to make AI rebuild it clean.
https://astutegraphics.com/support/tutorials-and-troubleshooting/deleting-illustrator-settings
 
Top