What’s New in adobe Illustrator (2021 Release)
Adobe Illustrator (2021 release) has new and innovative features to help you produce artwork more efficiently for print, web, and digital video publication. The features and exercises in this book are based on Illustrator (2021 release). In this section, you’ll learn about many of these new features.
Illustrator on the iPad
Illustrator is now available on the iPad, so you can create logos, illustrations, and graphics anywhere. It offers powerful features like the touch shortcut, repeats, point gradients, and a comprehensive type toolkit for iPad that includes access to Adobe Fonts.
Recolor artwork enhancements
The Recolor Artwork feature has been transformed to include new tools and new ways of exploring different color variations for your artwork. That now includes sampling color from raster or vector artwork with the Color Theme Picker and applying it to your designs. You can also adjust the prominence of colors, use predefined colors from libraries and make your own with the color wheel.
Snap to glyph enhancements
The Snap to Glyph feature lets you snap your artwork precisely with the bounds of text or individual glyphs.
Cloud document enhancements
Embed Photoshop cloud documents into Illustrator cloud documents. View, mark, and revert to older versions in the Version History panel.
Other enhancements
The following are other enhancements in Illustrator (2021 release and previous):
Enhanced free distort—Free distort is easier to work with and lets you edit the object without any resetting.
Cut, copy, and paste artboards between documents—You can now copy and paste artboards between different documents.
Real-time drawing and editing—Scaling objects and applying effects are now fully rendered as you work.
100x canvas—The canvas (the gray area around your artboards) now has 100 times more space to work on large-format artwork, such as billboards, bus wraps, apparels, wall art, and more.
Align text vertically—You can now align the text in a vertical direction in a text frame at the top, bottom, center, or justify positions.
Font height variations—In the Character panel you can set the actual font height reference. It is useful when you want to align your objects precisely with the text.
Unlock objects on canvas—You can now unlock objects directly from the canvas after turning a program preference on.
Adobe is committed to providing the best tools possible for your publishing needs. We hope you enjoy working with Illustrator (2021 release) as much as we do.
—The Adobe Illustrator Classroom in a Book® (2021 release) team