Application Preferences

Managing & Navigating Artboards

Adobe Illustrator's preferences allow you to customize the application's behavior and appearance to fit your workflow. Access these preferences through Edit > Preferences (on Windows) or Illustrator > Preferences (on macOS). Here's a summary of the common preference settings:

1. General Preferences:
   • Undo Counts: Set the number of undo steps available;
   • Show Tool Tips: Enable or disable tooltips that provide information about tools and features;
   • Highlight Anchors on Mouse Over: Helps in identifying and selecting anchor points;
2. Interface Preferences:
   • UI Brightness: Adjust the overall brightness of the user interface (light to dark themes);
   • Highlight Color: Change the color that highlights selected items;
   • Scale Cursor Proportionally: Scale the size of the cursor in relation to the screen;
3. Type Preferences:
   • Show East Asian Options: Enable features for East Asian typography;
   • Show Indic Options: Enable features for Indic scripts;
4. Units & Display Performance:
   • Units: Set the measurement units (inches, points, pixels, etc.) for various elements like general, strokes, and type;
   • Display Performance: Adjust the quality of the display for smoothness or speed;
5. Guides & Grid Preferences:
   • Color: Choose the color for guides and grids;
   • Style: Set the style for guides (lines, dots) and grids;
   • Snap to Grid: Enable or disable snapping objects to the grid;
6. Smart Guides Preferences:
   • Alignment Guides: Show smart guides when aligning objects;
   • Construction Guides: Display guides that help in the construction of objects;
   • Snap to Point: Enable snapping to anchor points;
7. Appearance of Black:
   • On Screen: Set how black appears on screen (rich black or accurate black);
   • Printing/Exporting: Control how black is represented in printing or exporting;
8. File Handling & Clipboard Preferences:
   • Save in Background: Allows Illustrator to save files in the background;
   • Export Clipboard: Control how the clipboard handles copying and pasting content to other applications;
   • PDF Compatibility: Set the default for saving files with PDF compatibility for easy editing in other Adobe applications;
9. Performance Preferences:
   • GPU Performance: Enable or disable GPU acceleration for better performance;
10. Plug-ins & Scratch Disks:
    • Additional Plug-ins Folder: Set a custom folder for additional plug-ins;
    • Scratch Disks: Choose hard drives for Illustrator to use as additional memory if system memory runs out. Select which drives Illustrator uses for temporary storage when processing large files;