I wish that scaling images proportionately was the default, that it didn’t require holding down the shift key. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not too inconvenient for me to hold down the shift key. It’s just frustrating how easily noob computer graphic designers lower the average client’s expectations about disproportionate scaling.
Which default settings do you wish were different in computer graphic programs?
I never print directly from InDesign, so this is another case of “doesn’t really affect me,” but by default, InDesign’s print dialog is set to “Optimized Subsampling” for image data, and it outputs images at noticeably low quality unless the user changes the Send Data setting to All. I’m not sure why this practically hidden option even exists, let alone why it’s set to a default that is sure to cause the unsuspecting to think something’s horribly wrong.
Scale stroke and effects should be the default. You shouldn’t have to turn it on.
Illustrator auto-recognizing clipping paths in placed files.
Illustrator color palette not changing color names when drag/dropped for color replacement.
InDesign automatically including the stroke width in item dimensions. You have to shut that off (especially if you are placing a die-line layer!)
Scaling limits on effects like inner and outer glows. You can’t exceed 2". If you already have a 2" outer glow on a 24" shape, if you scale it within illustrator to be 96", all your glows are still only 2" - sorta ruins the look…
Bleed limit in Illustrator is only 1". Sometimes I need more than that… 4-6" usually for a fabric wrapped wall flat with a 3" or 4" end return, plus 2" color to the back.
I’ll think of some more later.
reading these made me cringe a bit myself.
3 really gets to me, I use the merge swatch technique to avoid having to rename the swatch, but its such an archaic way of replacing a color.
Mostly I’ve just gotten used to what I’ve not liked when I’ve first started using it. After awhile, those defaults that I can’t change just become part of the procedure for me.
I agree with wishing that stroke widths, by default, would scale.
Another thing that annoys me is Adobe’s tendency to separate text-related settings into different panels. For example, in Illustrator, it’s possible to change the point size from the top bar, but not the leading. Call up the character panel, and it’s possible to change both, but if I want to change the hyphenation or text alignment, I need to call up the paragraph panel. To me, these things almost always go together and ought to be together on one panel.
Other things I just live with because it’s never worth figuring out if it’s possible to change them. For example, if I call up the layers panel (or most any panel), I probably want it to stay there until I decide to dismiss it. Yet when I go looking for it several minutes later, it’s mysteriously been deactivated.
Oh, yeah. I really dislike Photoshop’s color picker that forces me to manually input numerical values in those instances when I’d rather just adjust and pick a color from the color box. It’s hard to explain, but Illustrator’s color picker does not have this problem.
And I greatly prefer Photoshop’s simple, easy-to-use gradient tool to Illustrator’s clumsy version of the same thing. I don’t use gradients that often, but when I do, it always takes me three or four tries in Illustrator to do what I could have done in a sixth the time in Photoshop.