Adobe Illustrator might be the most powerful vector application around, but it doesn’t always provide the exact functionality you need. One easy way to level up its abilities – without having to remember tedious workarounds or shortcuts – is with third-party Illustrator plug-ins.
However, while there are many Illustrator plug-ins, extensions and tools out there, it can be tough to know which ones add value and which ones, well, don't. And with some costing a fair chunk of cash, you'll want to ensure it's worthwhile before you shell out.
That's why we've collated what we believe are 10 of the best Illustrator plug-ins around. Every tool in this round-up provides a time-saving shortcut that will help increase your productivity – and you can download a free trial version of each one to give it a spin before you buy.
(10 not enough? Here are even more top-class Illustrator plug-ins to help you work faster.)
Adobe illustrator also starts supporting plug-ins, quickly and greatly its abilities. Free Download Adobe Illustrator 10. Adobe System all product service are paid or premium. Free Adobe illustrator 10 is also license software but we are provides our buying adobe software with serial key free download here. Nudge Panel plugin. Nudge Palette is a plugin for Adobe Illustrator that allows you to adjust the position of an art object, patterned fill within an object or dash pattern along a path. Clicking the arrow buttons will move the dash or pattern by one point.
Speed up your workflow
While we’re on the topic of time-saving shortcuts, you’ll find a wealth of pro tips and tricks from leading designers and illustrators over in the #10MinSkills section of the Astute Graphics blog. From a faster way to vectorize hand-lettering using the Pen tool to how to quickly add texture to a vintage logo without leaving Illustrator, the series is designed to help you learn new skills over your lunch break.
Read on for our list of the 10 best Illustrator plug-ins…
01. VectorScribe
- Company: Astute Graphics
- Price: £69
- Free trial period: 14 days
Known as the “vector Swiss Army knife” of Illustrator plug-ins, this powerful add-on makes it easy to manage points, paths and handles. You can also create and edit vector shapes, and add and edit corners.
Highlights include a Reposition Point tool, which lets you slide a point along a path while working to maintain the path shape; and an Extend Path Tool, which lets you extend or trim paths to exact lengths or intersections. Meanwhile, ghost handles make it easy to reshape paths by dragging, and Dynamic Corners give maximum control over which corners to edit.
VectorScribe's dynamic measurements mean you can accurately measure everything from simple lengths to angles and path areas in an instant – removing any guesswork when you need to get things exactly the right size. And, speaking of size, as well as speeding up your workflow, VectorScribe can help reduce your file sizes, too.
02. FILTERiT
- Company: CValley
- Price: $129
- Free trial period: 15 days or 30 uses
CValley Inc's FILTERiT is a suite of Illustrator plug-ins that add a range of effects to your fingertips. This collection of versatile tools lets you quickly create everything from simple to complex vectors in a matter of seconds.
The latest version, FILTERiT4, provides a variety of new effects. With 3D Transform filters, your objects can be transformed into spheres, spirals, donuts or cylinders in seconds. And you can prepare images for web animation with a few mouse clicks or stylus prods thanks to the Trace option, which also lets you easily produce motion blur effects using Illustrator′s Transparency tool.
03. Phantasm
- Company: Astute Graphics
- Price: £59
- Free trial period: 14 days
You get Photoshop-style color control at your fingertips with this Illustrator plug-in. Phantasm is a simple but brilliantly effective tool that aims to bridge the gap between Illustrator and Photoshop. It does this by adding the bitmap-editing tools that are missing from Illustrator's vector workflow – making functions like Curves, Hue and Saturation, Levels and even Automation available to vector artists.
Phantasm also adds a serious set of prepress tools to your kit, with duotone and halftone options, an overprint preview and a separations option. This means you can create all manner of print designs without leaving Illustrator – rendering Cmd+Tab a distant memory.
04. Mesh Tormentor
- Creator: YemZ
- Price: Free
This excellent Illustrator plug-in is completely free. Developed to give you greater control of Gradient Meshes, Mesh Tormentor takes the frustration out of creating complex gradients. It automates what can otherwise be tricky, tedious work, bringing a raft of new commands – including a Smooth tool, Show Aces and/or Corner Nodes, and Convert Knots into Vertexes – to produce amazing vector results. (Read what we had to say about Mesh Tormentor when it came out.)
05. CADtools 10
- Company: Hot Door
- Price: $349
- Free trial period: 7 days
In a Ronseal-esque piece of descriptive naming, CADtools adds CAD functionality via its Illustrator plug-in. The huge outlay is justified by its incredibly useful feature set, which includes the ability to snap objects and project art onto isometric grids – saving hours of backbreaking vectoring.
CADtools has just about everything the Adobe-addicted CAD designer could require, adding so many essential time-saving tools to your Illustrator workflow that you'll wonder how you lived without it. That productivity boost doesn't come cheap, but with a seven-day unrestricted use trial, you can give it a whirl before you open your wallet.
06. Xtream Path
- Company: CValley
- Price: $139
- Free trial period: 15 days or 30 uses
CValley's Xtreme Path plug-in for Illustrator takes an endlessly repeated part of a vector artist's workflow and changes it… Among other features, Xtreme Path gives you the freedom to grab anywhere on a path and edit from that position, rather than adding control points.
This will take a great deal of getting used to, but the benefits are that it increases efficiency and adds more control. And that isn’t all that this plug-in offers. The Symmetric Edit tool is beautiful, and Smart Rounding is fantastic – and the 15-day trial period gives you plenty of opportunity to have a play before committing your pennies.
07. Texturino
- Company: Astute Graphics
- Price: £59
- Free trial period: 14 days
Texturino removes the need to switch to Photoshop as part of your texturing workflow. With this plug-in, you can create natural, organic artwork – all without leaving Illustrator.
Standout features include an Opacity brush, which lets you quickly brush the opacity mask of art objects to add depth. There’s also a Texture tool for adding raster-based textures as live effects to filled paths, live text, gradient meshes and raster objects; and a Texture brush for brushing textures in or out.
The plug-in ships with a full set of high-quality repeating, non-repeating and grunge textures, and more free textures are available once you sign up on the Astute Graphics account page after purchase. You can also import your own PNG images to use as textures.
08. EskoArtwork Data Exchange Plug-in
- Company: Esko
- Price: Free
- Free trial period: N/A
Adobe Illustrator 10 0
Slightly more niche, the Data Exchange Plug-in is a free and simple-to-use Illustrator plug-in that acts as a bridge between Illustrator and Esko applications Automation Engine, PackEdge, Plato and ArtPro and ArtiosCAD.
Esko's applications are mainly designed for those working in packaging design, so if you’re a vector artist working in this area, the Data Exchange plug-in is a boon. It enables users to open native Esko app files in Illustrator without converting and flattening them, and apply swatches, objects and full Ai files upon the ArtiosCAD design.
09. VectorFirstAid
- Company: Astute Graphics
- Price: £49
- Free trial period: 14 days
What's with all the unnecessary compound paths and clipping masks when importing artwork from other sources, particularly PDFs? If this is something you’ve had issues with, try VectorFirstAid – it'll tidy up your vector files at the touch of a button, and your clients will think you've slaved away for hours.
Essentially a file optimization plug-in for Illustrator, VectorFirstAid not only makes your files more efficient, reducing file size and clutter in seconds, but it can also reassemble corrupt Illustrator files that have been recovered using PDF data. Handy.
10. Control plug-ins
- Company: Hot Door
- Price: $98 or $20 each
- Free trial period: 7 days
The seven Control plug-ins from Hot Door enable you to ramp up your productivity with new techniques for editing, organizing and labeling your work.
The Illustrator plug-ins can help you select artwork with custom search criteria, create layer groups for organization and printing, nudge artwork at less than 1pt increments, log your time spent on documents, call out artwork and document attributes, and attach tags to artwork for counting and tracking materials.
The Control plug-ins are available individually for $20 each, or $98 for the whole set, and the trial allows unrestricted use for seven days.
I was following a simple Hello World tutorial given in adobe illustrator CS4 sdk package.
I followed all the steps and wrote C++ code in Visual studio 2013 and it built successfully without any errors and 2 files were generated *.aip and *.ilk.
Now the tutorial said to place the plug-in binary file in the illustrator's plugin folder.
It didn't specify which file is the binary file (I assumed the *.aip file) and the plugin path for illustrator (I think this is the path 'C:Program Files (x86)AdobeAdobe Illustrator CS4Plug-ins')
Now when I launch the adobe illustrator application, on startup I get the following error.
Error loading plugins.*.aip
Can anyone tell me what's wrong. Is the path wrong ? Is the file wrong ? or is there some obvious step that I am missing ?
2 Answers
I've found the solution. The problem was the tutorial is specific for 32 bit system and doesn't mention 1 change we have to make for running our 64 bit plugin.
I added the x64 platform to my project. Here are the steps:
Select the 'Build | Configuration Manager...' menu item.
In the 'Configuration Manager' dialog, choose ' from the 'Active solution platform' drop down.
Best Adobe Illustrator Plugins
In the 'New Solution Platform' dialog, 'x64' should already be selected in the top drop down and 'win32' should be selected in the 'Copy settings from:' drop down (and the 'Create new project platforms' check box should be checked. Click Ok and you can now build 64 bit versions using the x64 platform.
Browse to this folder:
look for a duplicate ADMplugin.apl file (probably named ADMplugin(1).apl) and delete it.
AI should start normally.
I had the control panel.aip issue and this worked for me. I tracked down the problem by temporarily removing the plug-ins folder from this directory...
...then starting Illustrator. The program crashes on startup. When the crash report appears, looking at the content of crash report points to ADMplugin.apl.
Source: http://www.techrepublic.com/forums/discussions/illustrator-cs5-error-loading-plugins/
Pang