Adobe Illustrator: Favorite New Features Spring 2026

Hey everyone, welcome to the CreativePro podcast. This is where design professionals like you come for real-world insights and practical tips, and today’s insights and tips are all about Adobe Illustrator. I’m Theresa Jackson, the CreativePro program manager.

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CreativePro Week will be in Nashville this year, June 29th to July 3rd. I really hope to see you there. In this episode, I talk with two professional Illustrator users and ask them to share their favorite new Illustrator features with me.

Adobe’s been making some pretty nice improvements to Illustrator and kind of doing it quietly. We hear about some of the features like turntable, but we don’t hear about all of them. So they’ve been improving the app and they’ve been introducing new features that you might have missed.

So I wanted to reach out to some professionals and find out how these updates are helping them in their workflows. We’ll hear from Thaddeus Coates and Luke Choice. Before we get into the conversations, though, I want to set the stage a little because we talk about what’s new in both Illustrators.

There’s actually two Illustrators you can use. One is the full release and the other is the public beta. And if you haven’t used the public beta, I want to make sure that you know how to get to it.

The most common way of finding the public beta apps is to use the Creative Cloud Desktop apps. I’m going to open mine to make sure that I’m giving you the correct instructions here. So if you go to your Creative Cloud Desktop app, and this is Mac or Windows, it doesn’t really matter.

On the left hand side, you’ll see some icons. The first one says Home. The second one says Apps.

When you select Apps, then more icons show across the top of the screen. And the second one says Beta. It’s got a beaker icon.

And that’s where you will find the installs and the updates for all of the beta releases of all the different Adobe apps. Sometimes, though, the Creative Cloud method of downloading these beta apps doesn’t work. I don’t know why.

Sometimes the updates don’t show up there and you know there’s an update available, but you can’t find it. If that happens to you, log into your Creative Cloud with a browser. You go to Adobe.com and you’ll see the same thing as your Creative Cloud Desktop app.

On the left, you’ll see the Apps icon. And at the top, you’ll see an icon for Beta. And then in there, you’ll find download links for all of the different beta apps that are available.

So in these conversations with Thaddeus and Luke, we talk about some new features that show up in both of these places. And my favorite new feature that’s in the beta app that wasn’t even mentioned by Thaddeus or Luke, and that is a new alignment tool. And right now, this is only in the beta version.

You can horizontally and vertically align to center with one click. It’s a simple thing, but it’s so huge, right? How many times are we trying to center whatever our designs are? So I’ve been using this a ton and loving it. If you want to get a list of all the new features, there is a Help page.

Adobe has a HelpX page. I’ll link to it in the show notes. They update it regularly.

I just checked it today, and the latest updates are the ability to edit images inside of Illustrator. You can remove the background. You can extend the background.

So we’re talking Illustrator. These features used to be in Photoshop, and now you can also do them in Illustrator so you don’t have to jump out to Photoshop. And again, that’s in the beta release of Illustrator.

When you’re inside of the Illustrator beta version and you’re in the workspace, you can click that beaker icon at the top, and that’ll give you a long rundown of all the new features describing what they do. So that’s another way to keep up to date with what’s going on. Okay.

I’ve got two interviews for you. Thaddeus Coates is coming up first. Thaddeus also goes by Hippie Potter.

You might have come across Hippie Potter online. He’s an illustrator and a toy designer, and you might have seen his Toasty plush toy. After Thaddeus, I’ll talk to Luke Choice.

Luke Choice works for Adobe. He’s a digital artist and an Adobe community advocate. Actually, his official Adobe title is Design Community Engagement Specialist.

A bit long of a title there. All right. Let’s first hear what Thaddeus has to say about his favorite new Illustrator features, and then we’ll hear from Luke.

And thanks for being here, and thanks for listening. And I want to hear what your favorite new Illustrator features are. Leave those in the comments.

Appreciate you being here. Let’s get to Thaddeus’ interview now. Hey, Thaddeus.

It is great to see you. Thanks for joining me. Thank you so much for having me.

I’m so happy to be here. Yeah, I’m excited to hear your take on the newest features in Illustrator. There’s so much that has been improved or completely new features that have happened in the last, well, really just this year, but maybe the last six months.

So I know you use Illustrator pretty much every day in your work. You’re an expert at it. You’ll be speaking at CreativePro Week with a great session about Illustrator in June in Nashville.

So excited about that. So let’s get into it. Tell me what you love that’s new in Illustrator.

Okay. I’ve been using Illustrator for about 10 years. So I’ve been with Illustrator for a long, long time.

And I think a cool thing that they’re doing now is integrating it and making it more seamless to use other applications as well. So making the Illustrator flow a bit more seamless and almost kind of predictive in a way that is very helpful for artists. For example, a lot of the times when I’m uploading a sketch and I’m using image trace and I’m tracing and drawing my sketch with the pen tool or the pencil tool, you usually cannot tell where the anchor point is going to land.

You have to kind of draw it out and it doesn’t really have a smoothing tool. But I think what they’ve done that I’m a really big fan of lately is make the pen and pencil tool feel more native. So for example, when I’m drawing, it feels like I’m drawing with an actual pencil, an actual pen.

And what they’ve done is they’ve put on like predictive, predictive, like I think that’s what it is. They’ve used like a particular technology that shows you the stroke as you’re drawing it. So there’s no guesswork.

And you can like go into the settings and make sure that the fidelity is high enough. So that way it’s just a very smooth process for an artist. And I think it’s really cool.

Another thing that I really love is the turntable tool. This one is one of my favorite. I’ve been experimenting with it.

So since it got introduced, I’ve been experimenting with it, but it was introduced as an Adobe sneak originally in like 2024. And when I seen it, I was trying to get access to it because I wanted to use it for characters, for logos, for icons, just to add a bit more oomph and pizzazz to a presentation or to a piece that I’m working on. And so I finally got it like two months ago.

And I’ve been experimenting with character turnarounds because as an illustrator in like the industry, usually you have to draw each and every single frame to turn it around. And here they offer up to like 68 like positions of a character. So if I’m drawing a character, a boy holding a balloon, which I did, then it would show me how the turnaround would look.

And you can also animate. It also like animates and you can export it as a GIF. So if you want to spice up anything you’ve been working on and you draw like characters, logos, flowers, anything like that, water bottles, like little snacks, little treats, it’s a really cool way to bring your art to the next level without having to take a two-year course on animation if you’re into that.

And it just makes the process a bit more seamless. And it’s a bit more inspiring because now not only am I thinking about creating just 2D, I’m able to visualize it 3D. I don’t have to learn ZBrush.

I don’t have to learn all these other tools, which I’m pretty sure are helpful and useful, but Illustrator feels the most native to me. And I’ve been with it again for like 10 years. It’s like being in a relationship.

It’s like, oh, there’s a new addition to this wonderful unit. I’m a really big fan of that too. I feel your excitement for turning it into this.

Oh no, because I was trying to talk to the team. I was trying to talk to the team about it forever. And then last year they announced that it was actually going to be in Illustrator this year.

And they were showing an amazing demo. The demo was so good. And I was like, I cannot wait to have my hands on it.

And I’ve been like playing with it ever since. I’ve been having such a good time. Okay.

So this is why I really wanted to hear from actual real users, because we know about demos. Demos can be highly polished and not real world, right? A lot of times demos are the perfect use scenario, but not the ones that apply to our actual real work. So I am really, I’m excited to hear you say that it is helpful for you in your real work that you’re doing.

Are you finding that the generated results need cleanup or are they good to go as they are? Okay. So that’s another thing too. And I’ve talked to my other friends about this.

It depends on, of course, how many anchor points you have, the clarity and the detail in your specific piece. So they do require cleanup. It depends on how detailed you want it.

And there are still working on making it smoother. So that’s the only setback because you might, what may happen is you might end up having to do more work. But also I feel like if I go point by point, I’ll be saving so much more time than drawing another thing in a different angle or trying to like jimmy rig it.

So there may be some cleanup that you have to do if you want to like super clean and super pristine. But I think it’s just to get your idea going. And usually when I’m doing that, it’s for like a prototype because I’m a toy maker too, like that toy and like that toy back there.

So it’s really useful for me when I’m talking to manufacturers about how I want it to look full circle. If I want to send a little gif of the toy moving full circle, it really helps me ideate that. So it’s helping you communicate an idea in a much faster way than you could have done before.

But if you need the vector in that other position, you’re probably, you need the vector graphic. You’re probably going to redraw it. Absolutely.

You’re going to have to clean that. The vector graphic is no good in terms of like how cleanly you could like give it to a client. If I like was delivering it for a client, very different than when I’m using it recreationally.

If I’m delivering it for a client, I will probably cut down on how many iterations it’s in and focus on probably like maybe eight. I feel like that’s more feasible, but even still that’s saving you so much more time when you think about it. Because I think one of the options it gives you, if you want like a, I think they go up to like 62 different faces.

So you can like do three faces of a character turning around all the way up to 62, which is a lot. But if I really wanted to get the gist of it done and I wanted for it to look smooth, I’d probably like minimize time from giving it directly to a client. So that way it looks cleaner.

Great advice. I love that. Let’s go back to your first one that you described just the feeling or interaction when you’re drawing.

They added live preview and that’s one of the new features. And that’s what you’re describing is that you’re seeing the drawing. It used to be an old Illustrator that you would draw a path out.

And then after the path was drawn, then you would see a preview of what it looked like. Now it happens in live as you’re drawing. Now you held up, look like an Apple pencil.

Are you using Illustrator on an iPad or using Illustrator on a desktop? I am talking to you on my desktop. So I’m using Illustrator on desktop and on iPad. It just depends, but they both work pretty seamlessly for me.

And if I want a more tactile feel, especially like when I’m using the pencil tool or the pen tool, this is my go-to. Your Apple pencil on your iPad. So if you’re illustrating a new character, you’re going to start that on your iPad in Illustrator? Yes.

Yes. I usually would start it. I would usually sketch it out and then scan it and then upload it on my iPad, like AirDrop it to my iPad.

And then once it’s on my iPad, then I can like do like a base sketch with a pencil. And then if I really want to get more technical and smooth and a bit more detailed, I’ll usually just take it to the big screen and really get into it and zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom in and like make sure everything is seamless. Are we going to see any of that workflow at CreativePro Week? Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. I’m so excited. Yeah, it’s really, it’s like literally my thing.

So I’m really excited. Are you going to bring your iPad or are you going to show some of your sketches? Be cool to see that. Honestly, I should bring my iPad and show a bunch of my sketches, but they look so crazy.

They look really crazy, but I think that’s the beauty in having like sketches, sketch work. And a lot of people like seeing that. Usually I keep my sketches to myself because they’re not as clean or polished.

And I feel like I always get really complimented for like how smooth and seamless my work is. And I really take pride in that, but also I know we’re moving towards a more analog and tactile way for technology to present itself. Even though sometimes, I don’t know, I have mixed reviews about that too, because I feel like some of it’s performative, but I also do like the callback to us being more tactile with our work.

Because some of us were already tactile. It’s not a return to it for most of us. I think we’ve always been doing it.

But I think for the CreativePro audience, us creative professionals, we love seeing the process that other creatives go through. It’s inspiring. So that’s why I’m asking.

I think it would be great to see a little bit of your process, the messy start to the polished finish. We love seeing that. Yeah, fantastic.

Was there any other illustrator new features that you wanted to share? I think I could talk about the update for the swatch guide, which I think is really helpful too. Especially since this is going to be targeted towards young professionals and professionals in general. I usually do a lot of commercial work.

And when I’m doing a lot of commercial work, usually there is a certain amount of colors I could use per print. And keeping track of those colors is really important. And so when I’m sending off a print that maybe has 18 colors in it, and I need to send off the exact CMYK or RGB of each percentage of what is in it, usually you would have to go click it, screenshot the actual color swatch guide, and then type it in.

But now they have a new tool where you can just select all the swatches. And the actual illustrator will actually take the swatches and pin out each and every single metric for you to give to a client, which makes the process so much easier. I’m not spending 10 minutes screenshotting 18 colors.

Instead I could just click, drag, and they can just all have them be labeled very neatly for you. I think that is so amazing. Swatch to artboard, I think is what that feature is called.

And I love that you mentioned that, because the truth is it’s not new. But I don’t think the average user is yet aware that that feature is there. Yeah, I think it’s relatively new.

It wasn’t here 10 years ago. Yeah, I think it’s relatively new. And I feel like it’s still one of the things that I was like, oh, because usually I learned that literally four months ago.

And I was like, oh, my gosh, it’s saving me so much time. I remember it being available a year ago for CreativePro Week. I was going to include it in my illustrator color session, and I ran out of time.

So I’m really glad that you brought that up. Because yeah, it’s been around a year, but it still feels very new. Because nothing like it existed before.

Yeah, I think it’s going to make creatives’ workflow literally so much more seamless. And I think that’s really important. Yep.

Yep, that’s what we’re here for. We want to help everybody thrive in what they’re doing and share these tips that can help them do their work more efficiently. Thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your tips with us.

And I’m really looking forward to meeting you in person, in real life, as they say, at CreativePro Week. Yes, thank you so much for having me. And I’m so excited to meet the CreativePro like network and all the community.

It just seems like such an amazing place to be. And I’m so excited to meet some new people. Oh, I’m so happy you’re coming.

It’ll be your first CreativePro Week. And you will find your tribe of people and love it. I guarantee you.

So excited. Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us, Thaddeus.

We’ll see you at CreativePro Week. Yes, see you soon. Hey, Luke, it’s great to see you.

Good to see you, Teresa. Always happy to be on the chat with you. Yeah, thanks for joining the CreativePro podcast.

I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on what’s happening in Illustrator. First, let me introduce you to our listeners. Luke Choice is here.

He works for Adobe as an Adobe Community Engagement Specialist. Did I get that right? Yep. Promo design.

It’s a little bit longer, but yeah. Yeah, it’s kind of a long title. You’re in the pro design space, which is mostly Illustrator and design.

Today, we’re going to talk about Illustrator. If I’m correct in this, I think it’s probably your personal favorite. Is that your life? Yeah.

Yeah, I think I’ve always lived in Illustrator and Photoshop. Taking on this role has meant that I’ve actually learned a lot more about Illustrator in the past year than I’d probably have in the last 20. So it’s been an education for me, definitely stepping into this role.

But yeah, it’s funny because I stick to my process, but now I have to think about everybody else’s process. So it’s really expanded how I treat the program and play around in it. Yeah, I love that sometimes too.

Well, it’s one of the best things about being a teacher is that we learn. We have to keep learning. And I love that.

Luke also has his own podcast, Graphic Material. Is that the correct name of it? You can find that on YouTube? Yeah, YouTube and Instagram. So it’s pretty fresh.

Just had a few episodes so far, but yeah, it’s difficult to handle all the editing myself. So getting them out slowly, but building momentum. Yeah, awesome.

Well, I’m fortunate enough to have a team behind this, so it makes it a lot easier. All right. Well, I invited you here today so we could talk about Illustrator.

Well, I’ve noticed a lot of improvements coming into Illustrator, especially if you get into the beta version of Illustrator. There’s a lot of new features. And I don’t know that our listeners are really aware of all the work the Illustrator team’s been doing to improve the app and add new features to it.

And I’m really interested in not a rundown of every single thing that’s new, but what is your favorite? Which tools or features are you using and how is it changing your workflow and maybe improving the speed of what you can do your work? I’m really curious about that. Yeah, I mean, first off the bat, speaking to the kind of personal work that I’ve always focused on over time is a lot of typographic work. So back in the early days, it was always using fonts as a base and customizing from there, building logos.

That’s how I got my start doing DJ logos back on MySpace. So the enhanced font browser in Illustrator is actually one of my favorite new features that’s been added. I think it might have been about six months now, but it essentially expands the font browser inside Illustrator where you get these nice curated tabs to be able to go through and pick curated styles based on fun or funky, black letter, cursive.

So you get a nice, concise list to actually look through rather than I would typically go onto Adobe Fonts, search there, scroll through, click next page, and it would just be kind of like a back and forth process. So the ability to go in there now and sort of have a really short list of something that speaks to a specific mood, it really helps me sort of articulate where I want to go with it quicker. And then I actually now have the ability to create custom libraries with those fonts.

So you have specific brands. From the font browser? Directly from the font browser? Yep. Yep.

So you can go create a new library. I create ones for the podcast specifically when I was figuring out the branding for that. I had a specific style I wanted to use.

So I dropped probably like 20 fonts in there. And then when I test out logo, different options, super easy to go through and just sort of go. These are the ones I’ve pre-selected and then just playing around with combinations there.

So yeah, if you have specific projects, clients, then you can also share those libraries with any external share stakeholders, making it super easy to keep them and update them and get anyone access to them. So yeah, a particular favorite of mine at the moment. Yeah, that’s one of those maybe less sexy new features that you don’t hear people talking about, or there’s not as much marketing material around.

But it has this huge impact on our workflow because the old way was jumping into Adobe fonts, right? Going to the website, searching and searching through the website, clicking activate, going back to Illustrator, crossing your fingers, it actually activated and it’s available for you, right? And now you don’t even have to leave Illustrator for that to work. Yeah, I find that some of the efficiency tools that are getting implemented are really, like you’re saying that I probably don’t get the hype that they deserve, but I know that people who are in the programs every day, these are the ones that they should know about. And whether they’re discovering it naturally, or I try to get on Reddit or share on my Instagram, these features a little bit, because I think they actually resonate really well with the community.

And there’s a lot of these features that are getting implemented that again, I think I try and take it upon myself to make sure that they get out to the masses. That’s why we’re here. Yeah.

To share the good news. Yeah. What else do you have? Well, so there was like massive updates to snapping, like talking about these sort of efficiency workflows, snapping got a big upgrade last year.

Artboards got a big upgrade. So there’s going back to snapping, you can do tangential snapping now, perpendicular snapping. And these things all sort of feel like, oh, they should have always been there.

That’s kind of the response we get. And now it’s nice that they are. So when you have that one moment that you might need it, come in clutch, it’s great to be there.

But there’s also improvements to speed and performance constantly. So I know the team’s been making the most out of multi-threading and now there’s live editing at 60 frames per second. So scaling, transforming, rotating all happens a lot smoother now, a lot faster.

Can you speak a little bit about what that experience is with this 60 frames per second? Like that sounds like a buzzword. Like what does that mean when I’m editing? How is that going to impact my work? Yeah, I think that’s funny because we would say like five times faster and it was always like, what does that mean? So like 60 frames per second should feel a little bit more like I can conceptualize that. But you could even just see it, you know, when you go to scale something complex and you would have those blue lines that would kind of like just click in and they would drag and you wouldn’t get an actual preview of the whole artwork scaling at once.

So now you don’t have that lag with that sort of preview blue line or, you know, of the outline. So now you’re going to get like a true representation of scaling these complex artworks pretty seamlessly. So that’s kind of where you’ll start to notice it and it’s just, you know, zooming in and out, moving around the artboard a lot quicker.

Yeah, it is one of those things where, you know, I sort of explain it as like, you know, you’re driving a car, you think it’s okay, then you get a fast car and that’s amazing but you totally forget what it was like to drive the old car. So you kind of like these updates happen, you get used to them and you sort of forget that like, oh, there’s a big performance upgrade here. It’s just become natural.

But when you describe those blue lines, I got it immediately because that has happened to me so many times. Scaling something and you see like this repeated blue frame that starts scaling up. Yeah.

And now we don’t have that anymore. Yeah, because I see like the tests that the team does where they’re like, you know, going, okay, cool, this is on the old build and this is a new build and I’m just like, oh, yeah, I get it now. Like, exactly.

It’s just like, I need to see it in real time going like, oh, I remember that struggle there. Now this is what it’s doing. So, you know, especially some of the ways that we’re building now, even like with Turntable, I’ll have 74 variations pop out and I can zoom in and out on that really quick.

And they’re all individual vector outputs. So, you know, it starts to quickly actually build out your file complexity. So being able to move around and review those in, you know, lightning fast is a massive improvement.

I’m really curious your thoughts about Turntable. I mean, we hear a lot of talk and a lot of demos and a lot of Turntable is the biggie, like the big new thing. It’s in the full release now.

It was in beta for quite a while. I’m curious about it from real world. Like what’s the real world use case for using Turntable and are you using it and what’s the scenario where it’s helpful for you? Yeah, I get that, you know, it isn’t immediately obvious to certain people who, you know, unless you’re maybe a character designer or something like that, where you need to create a sprite sheet that would take you days or weeks to complete, you know, and then perhaps there’s a change to that and you’ve got to go back and do it all again.

So I think, you know, for character designers especially, it is a really like incredibly efficient way to get to a early stage of ideation iteration where you can test things. And I also know that a lot of people who do animation, you know, they want better reference for frames and maybe they’ll actually tween between them themselves. But, you know, for me where it was like, you know, I did a illustration in Fresco where I’m much better at drawing like a front-on view, you know, symmetrical, super easy to draw like a tiger’s head, sketch it out.

And then if I create that and then I want to like actually just rotate it a little bit rather than starting from scratch, you know, I can get like a little perspective shift and it’s a whole new artwork. So for me, that’s where I kind of see it really coming in handy. Like I was doing a festival poster where I was like creating a tiger and then I was like, I actually want him facing that way screaming words out.

So I just like turntabled it, rotated him a little bit and then it’s just perfect because like I needed that angle. So rather than starting from scratch, it was just a little tweak to my artwork. And I think that’s where it really resonates with a lot of people is, you know, you can use your own artwork as the base generation.

It’s not like I’m outsourcing the creativity somewhere else. It’s just taking my idea and trying to like give me better options for that. So yeah.

I’m curious about your Fresco workflow. So are you using the vector brushes in Fresco? No, just very rough. Yeah, just yeah, I just keep it like really rough pencils as a base.

I used to just do it for, you know, selling in concepts for work I was doing. So I don’t usually create things out of Fresco as a final product. It’s always just like a sketch pad for me.

And I’ve been using it more as speaking of like some new stuff coming to Sketch to Vector in Illustrator beta now. So I’ve been doing a little bit more sketching and then testing how that actually gets converted into vectors. So you’re sketching in Fresco, you’re sending it to Illustrator beta, and then you’re using the Sketch to Vector in the beta? Yeah.

Yeah. So in Sketch to Vector now you can actually, there was just a big update yesterday that I didn’t actually was coming out and I was playing around with it. So it’s been moving along really rapidly.

But essentially it is like, you know, I see it as a really improved way of image trace where, you know, image trace is great if you have good quality assets to start with. Let’s say you have a low res image or a rough sketch, it can actually build the vectors intelligently. It can add colors and shading and all that.

But for me, it’s really great when it’s like, it adheres strictly to the design that I’m sending it, but it’s adding a little bit more creativity to it, more shading, line work. And it’s also, you know, helpful to sort of get things ready to refine a lot quicker. So yeah, I’ve been taking a lot of the sketches I have in my sketchbook that I never actually took anywhere.

I’m like, okay, cool, I’m going to use them now to like test this out. And it’s actually been interesting to see how I might work a little differently now. You know, these sort of doodles on my page suddenly are really quickly getting to this stage of editability inside Illustrator.

Is there prompting tips that you can share for getting there quicker? That’s actually interesting because that was part of the update that came out yesterday that the team has actually built in suggested prompts with references. So, and one thing that was actually requested from the community was the ability to actually get strokes coming out of this. And now it’s actually possible.

So, I was testing that out yesterday. But yeah, there’s kind of like a little reference of like line art, you know, block, silhouette. The line art is a stroked path, not a shaped path.

Not a filled shape, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I found it yesterday. So, I’ve been doing a little pressure testing on that. So, that is one of those things where I’m curious, like in what cases it works best.

I haven’t done that much with it. So, yeah, it’s really interesting, because I thought that would have been just beyond where they could get to right now. So, the fact that’s kind of already happening and, you know, there’s movement.

So, yeah, it’s come a long way where I had been testing it predominantly over the last few weeks, which I guess it’s been a few months now. Time doesn’t really travel the same anymore. I have a lot of pen and ink sketch drawings.

I try that. I think the thing is, yeah, there’s so much creativity that it sort of doesn’t get off the page, because it is so intimidating to get some of these ideas started. And that’s how I see this.

It’s starting to make me think, like, I can get something really quickly going and then use all the other tools in Illustrator to build it out. And, you know, I had like a guy hiking, and I sketched him. And then I was like, all right, cool.

I’ll try it this way. I’ll try it that way. And just getting these sort of like quick iterations built, changing the surrounding frames I would design.

So, it was exciting to have parts of the artwork get there, and then using the rest of my Illustrator skillset to build more of a graphic design around it. So, yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see what people think. But I think, you know, some use cases I was testing out this morning was old fuzzy logos of the classic thing is, you know, I talked to the community about like how to use image trace.

And there was like, I have a print shop, or I have the CNC shop and laser cutting, and I get these assets from clients, they only have a PNG, it’s low res, I have to like do my best with image trace to get it up to a quality where it’s going to be sharp and detailed with less cleanup. And you can actually just go in and like do that with Sketch to Vector now that is intelligently going to understand what they’re seeing and sort of fixing up any of the distress and the low res pixelation. And yeah, some people I’ve had conversations following like a post I have on Reddit, and they’re like, yeah, I’ve got this issue with this, you know, what would I do with image trace? I’m like, well, actually, hey, let me test this and Sketch to Vector and they’re like, oh, actually, that’s what I’m going to use from now on to like, solve these like low res client logos that come in.

And yeah, it’s incredibly powerful. How does it handle text in a logo? It’s actually shockingly good. Yeah, one of the ones I was doing this morning had just like fuzzy text, like handcrafted vintage apparel or something.

And it was tiny little text all pixelated. And it basically understood what it was supposed to be achieving. And it intelligently added that in.

But in terms of like editability, editable text itself, it’s not there. But who knows? It’s not there today. It’s not there today.

It could be tomorrow. Yeah. Well, you had a tip that you shared with me before we started recording about the beta version of Illustrator.

So just for clarity, we’re talking right now the Sketch to Vector is in Illustrator beta, right? It’s not hasn’t been rolled out into the full release. So what is your tip for if you have problems downloading the Illustrator beta? Yeah, because you know, I sometimes it’ll disappear the little tab if you’re in the Creative Cloud desktop app. But if you go to adobe.com, you’ll always be able to just download the beta from the tab there, just go to your apps icon and then go to beta and then you’ll find all you know, I’m playing around in After Effects beta now as well, because I got variable font options now with animate and text and it was really fun.

So yeah, kind of there’s so much coming down the line in all the apps that get dropped in beta. So you know, the team actively is asking me and my friends and colleagues to like go out and get people testing the beta because we want to like, get real feedback, it actually always gets to the team. Yeah, so you go in the beta and you can always go to, you know, say you do a generation with turntable or Sketch to Vector, there’s a thumbs up, thumbs down in there.

So you can hit one of those and let know if the generation worked if it was up to your quality. And those sort of feedback always helps to, you know, continually improve these as well. So I might come up with a little lead feedback box, add that in and share it with the team.

So yeah, it’s incredibly helpful to be in the beta testing these. Yeah, it’s fun to be on the cutting edge of all this stuff, too. Yeah, and especially for people who share tips and tricks, you know, for these tools online, it’s a great place to be to like, you know, get ahead of what’s coming and know like, where everything’s going and start to craft how they would actually use the tools.

That’s how I’m sort of working now is getting very more, you know, in touch with how I would have been doing this in my previous job as a freelance designer or illustrator. And it’s better to show like real world cases, like you’re saying, people don’t know exactly how turntable might fit in their workflow. So it’s up to us to share how these tools can actually fit into the workflows to let us do our job a little bit better and a little bit quicker.

So yeah, that brings us to CreativePro Week. I wanted to mention that we have CreativePro Week in Nashville this year, the end of June. And you’re going to be there.

I will. And really hoping that you come with whatever the latest and greatest is. Yeah.

And show us how you’re using these tools. Really looking forward to that. Yeah, me too.

Yeah. It was my first time last year. And I hadn’t been on stage for quite a few years at that point.

I took a break after the pandemic. And then it was like, hey, get on stage at CreativePro Week. And I was like, all right, let’s do it.

So I have a bit more experience over the last year. So I’ll be excited to get on stage. Yeah.

I’ll be introducing you. Oh, nice. You’ll be comfortable.

Great. Yeah. Great.

Yeah. Well, I can’t wait to see you in real life at CreativePro Week. And we have a code for our listeners to get $100 off their pass podcast.

It’s simple. Just podcast is the code. So I hope you can all join us there.

And thanks for joining me, Luke. It’s always a pleasure to spend time chatting with you. I look forward to seeing you in person at CreativePro Week.

And we’ll keep this conversation going on. What’s the latest and greatest and what we like about it? Yeah. Reach out to me.

Anyone who is interested in feedback or that’s my job is like gathering feedback and telling the team what’s happening. And where is the best place to reach you? Best place? You can always get me on Velvet Spectrum on Instagram or every other platform there is except TikTok. There’s a dot in the middle because somebody had Velvet Spectrum there.

So I’m really annoyed. Velvet Spectrum. We’ll put that in the show.

Velvet Spectrum. Yeah. Awesome.

Okay. Cool. Thank you.

Thank you, Theresa. See ya.