As part of our celebrations of 10 years of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator, Astute Graphics are pleased to announce the release of DirectPrefs. This is a new and completely FREE plug-in for Illustrator CS6 and CC (currently up to CC2015.3) that brings quick and clear control of vital Illustrator preferences.
How you benefit from DirectPrefs
Draw at angles — the next best thing to being able to rotate artboards in Illustrator
Quickly change your arrow key nudge distance
Show/Hide and Lock/Snap-to Guides and Grid
Customisable panel to cater for common personal design requirements
All control is found through a convenient panel, which automatically appears when first starting Illustrator following installation:
DirectPrefs joins both SubScribe and Autosaviour FREE as being completely free* to install and use. It also has the new added benefit of requiring absolutely no activation or license key. Simply install-and-go!
*No purchase necessary. Non-customers will be required to supply a valid email address.
How to get DirectPrefs
Customers: log into your Astute Graphics account page and download the current Unified Installer.
For further details on how to install and locate, please refer to this video:
DirectPrefs and Protractor
Some users of our leading commercial plug-in for Adobe Illustrator, VectorScribe may recognise the top-most Constrain Angle element of DirectPrefs. In VectorScribe v1 and v2, it featured as the Protractor panel. But with the release of VectorScribe v3, the Protractor panel was removed to aid clarity of our major toolset. It was then developed further and made into DirectPrefs to benefit all.
All Astute Graphics customers operating Illustrator CS6 and CC, including users of any previous version of VectorScribe, plus non-customers can install and use DirectPrefs.
Whereas it’s possible to have both the Protractor and DirectPrefs panel open simultaneously if VectorScribe v1 or v2 remains installed alongside DirectPrefs, there is no added benefit. Therefore it’s recommend that the Protractor panel is simply closed.
Important information for VectorScribe v2 customers
When downloading and running the latest installer, by default our latest major upgrade — VectorScribe v3 — will be installed by default. This is typically a paid for upgrade.
Any VectorScribe v2 customers who do not wish to upgrade to v3 at present, can still download the latest Unified Installer and add DirectPrefs to Illustrator. However, you will need to untick VectorScribe on the installer (as shown below) to ensure that version 2 remains available.
