Review: Randomill for Adobe Illustrator

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Suppose you wanted to randomly recolor, resize, rotate, restack or reposition one or more paths in Illustrator. How might you do that, and what creative possibilities would open up to you and your artwork if such transformations were easy to apply? Let’s check out Randomill, a plug-in extension for Illustrator that makes all this possible in one panel.

Setup and installation

Randomill is the creation of Boris Boguslavsky. It can be purchased from the product website at https://www.randomill.com/. The cost is $25 for a single license; there is no trial mode available. Purchasing a license provides access to both Mac and Windows installers.

Installation and activation were straightforward. After running the installer, Randomill can be found in Illustrator’s Window > Extensions menu. I clicked the Activate button in the panel, copied and pasted my license code into the Activation dialog, and Randomill was ready to use.

The Randomill user interface

Randomill presents a somewhat oversized panel with controls for 10 randomization functions: Fill Color, Stroke Color, Stroke Weight, Scale, Rotation, Opacity, Blend Mode, Position, Order and Selection.

Figure 1: The Randomill panel is shown the right of Illustrator’s native panels

The color of the panel will change to match Illustrator’s user interface preferences.

Each function in the panel can be expanded to show options via the buttons on the right. The options include HSL ranges or swatch sets for fill and stroke colors; minimum and maximum values for scaling, stroke weight, rotation, opacity and position; a full checklist of blend modes; and the number of objects for selection. The stacking order of objects can be randomized or reversed.

All of Randomill’s options are easy to understand. When selecting what to randomize, a group is treated as a single object.

With each parameter having its own on/off switch, it’s easy to pick and choose what gets affected with a single press of the large “Randomize” button at the top of the panel. Also at the top are buttons for turning all controls on or off, and for expanding or collapsing all options. Alerts can be shown at the bottom of the panel. 

There’s no Randomize button alongside each function; Individual buttons would enable faster transformations, especially since the main button can scroll out of view when working further down the list of options in the panel.

Figure 2: Scale options in Randomill. The Randomize button is scrolled out of view above this function.

Innovation

I set out to create two designs featuring randomization that would be tedious to execute manually.

First I created an array of rectangles in a brick pattern, and used Randomill to recolor them. The entire operation took two minutes – and I am quite happy with the very first result. Check it out:

Figure 3: Bricks before randomizing


Figure 4: Bricks after randomizing

There are 252 bricks – I can’t imagine having to recolor them one-by-one. Nor would Illustrator’s built-in Recolor Artwork have worked as well; Randomill enabled me to select a range of hues, and to specify the minimum and maximum saturation and lightness. Here are the settings I used:

Figure 5: Settings for brick colors

Using Recolor Artwork would have required a pre-set swatch library, and can only randomize saturation and brightness.

For a second design I created 5 ovoid shapes, each with a drop shadow effect applied. I then worked iteratively, duplicating the objects then applying Randomill repeatedly and selectively to change their positions, rotation, scale, fill colors and stacking order. Here are all the settings I used:

Figure 6: Settings for an abstract composition

Randomill worked quickly to transform all the shapes. Undo is available to reverse changes wrought by Randomill. I finished up by repositioning just a handful of shapes manually to end up with this abstract work in under 15 minutes:

Figure 7: Abstract ovoids

Reliability and Performance

Randomill worked well on my main workstation, a late 2015 iMac 5K with 32 GB of RAM running Mac OS Big Sur and the latest version of Illustrator CC. One function however, lagged to the point of not being usable: Selection. With just seven closed basic paths selected, randomizing the selection took minutes. By comparison, the Super Marquee tool from Astute Graphics had no problems making live, random selections that could be modified on the fly.

Support and Documentation

The Randomill website includes an Interface section that explains each function and its options. The product’s YouTube channel demonstrates how to use Randomill to create a variety of interesting abstract, geometric and object compositions that take full advantage of the available transformations.

Figure 8: Sample of art created by Randomill’s author

Help is not available in the Randomill panel, nor are there tooltips when hovering over its controls. The panel’s flyout menu includes a Contact option and logging to help with support requests.

Value delivered vs. the cost

At a cost of $25 for a perpetual license, Randomill delivers good value. There are alternatives; Randomization scripts for Illustrator are available for free from various sources such as Github. One of these is Randomus, part of a bundle by Alexander Ladygin. Randomus has 6 functions that can be randomized, compared to Randomill’s 10. The dialog box for Randomus is modal, and it has limited options for each function. Randomill offers many more options in one standard panel that’s convenient to use in your workspace.

The Final Word

Randomill succeeds in offering a unified, friendly interface for random transformations in Illustrator. It is one of those plug-ins I ended up playing with a lot because it’s fun to discover the results it produces. It can take on practical randomization tasks too, and utilizing its many options allow for selective transformations that would otherwise be quite tedious to perform manually. With its multiple functions and ease of configuration, the possibilities for creating unique compositions with Randomill are endless.

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Ari M. Weinstein is a brand development coach who uses Adobe Illustrator extensively for client work including infographics, logos and merchandise artwork. Ari has been using Illustrator for over 30 years since it was “Illustrator 88” (version 1.5) and is a contributor to the Illustrator Wow! Book series. Learn more about Ari on his website at https://ariw.com
  • Boris Boguslavsky says:

    Hi Ari,

    Thanks for the review, I really appreciate it! I hope the plugin serves you well!

    As for the random selection performance issues you’re having, it’s pretty bizarre. I’ve tested the function on my 2011 Macbook Pro as well as my Windows desktop and have had no issues. Randomly selecting from just 7 objects should certainly not take minutes. It should take a second at the most. It’s a hard issue to diagnose since I can’t replicate the problem on my end.

    Regardless, I’ll be looking into it.

    Thanks again,
    Boris

    • Boris, thank you for writing about that. Based on your own testing, and the fact that Randomill is otherwise rock-solid, I would encourage our readers to give all 10 functions of your plugin a try.

  • Kaca Depan Penggantian Kaca depan says:

    Nice article!

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