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:

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.

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.

Type Preferences

• Show East Asian Options: enable features for East Asian typography;
• Show Indic Options: enable features for Indic scripts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Performance Preferences

• GPU Performance: enable or disable GPU acceleration for better performance.

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.